Most of the time, the airplane flies at such high altitudes that I can't make out what is going on down there, and when it's lower down it goes so fast that I can't take a good long look anyway. Those deaths weren't as flashy as a gigantic ball of fire in the sky, and people-killing cars remained in fashion until now, and in the meantime we've managed to make driving roughly 14 times safer than it was back then (relative to miles traveled). Apparently, the commenter meant that today's aircraft are the culmination of a long series of optimizations toward the goal of traveling from A to B fast, safely, and with lots of cargo.