“Move quickly to the closest usable exit, taking nothing with you.” Yet here again are images of passengers trundling suitcases and carrying hand luggage across the runway, after evacuating a British Airways aircraft that caught fire before take-off at Las Vegas.

“快速走到离你最近的可用出口，不要携带任何物品。”然而，英国航空公司(British Airways)的一架飞机因在拉斯维加斯起飞前着火而进行疏散后，这样的情景又一次出现：飞机跑道上的乘客们拖着行李箱，拿着手提行李。

The last time such safety breaches were publicised was after the fatal crash of an Asiana Airlines jet in San Francisco in 2013. Some commenters on social media even attributed passengers’ thoughtlessness to a Chinese tendency to put material things ahead of human lives (Chinese nationals accounted for half those on the flight).

上一次媒体曝光这样的违反安全规定现象，是在2013年一架韩亚航空(Asiana Airlines)飞机在旧金山发生致命撞击事故后。一些社交媒体上的评论者甚至将乘客的轻率之举归咎于中国人把财物看得比人命重的倾向（航班上的乘客有一半为中国籍）。

If nothing else, the BA accident has disproved that slur: under pressure, the British are just as capable of the same act of stupidity.

撇开别的不谈，英国航空的事故至少驳斥了上述诋毁：在压力之下，英国人也会干出同样的蠢事。

Jacob Steinberg, a Guardian journalist who was on the BA flight, gently admonishes critics: “If you weren’t there, how do you know how you would have reacted? People do odd things when they panic.”

乘坐了此次航班的《卫报》(Guardian)记者雅各布斯坦伯格(Guardian journalist)温和地责备批评者：“如果你不在现场，你怎么知道你会作何反应？人们在惊慌的时候会做奇怪的事情。”

True. One Asiana passenger recalled he had gathered his belongings out of habit. When we are allowed to carry so much, and of such material value, on to aircraft, it may be natural to grab those things before exiting. In the end, the Asiana accident report did not refer to the problem.

的确。一名当时在韩亚航空航班上的乘客回忆，他收拾自己的东西只是出于习惯。如果我们被允许携带那么多的贵重物品上飞机，在离开前拿走这些东西或许也是自然而然的。最后，韩亚航空的失事报道并未提及这个问题。

But plenty of other incidents are complicated, sometimes fatally, by bag-toting passengers. A study of 46 evacuations from June 2000 found half of passengers tried to take items with them, including large framed pictures and musical instruments.

但乘客在事故发生时依然带走物品的行为让其他许多事故复杂化，有时这是致命的。有人研究了2000年6月以后的46次疏散，发现有一半的乘客试图带上个人物品，包括大相框和乐器。

As pilot and author Patrick Smith has written: “Leave your stuff. It will all be returned to you later. [If] it winds up incinerated, well, you should be happy to have lost it. Lest it have been you in there.”

飞行员兼作家帕特里克史密斯(Patrick Smith)写过这样的文字：“把你的东西留下。之后自会归还给你。（如果）它最终烧成了灰烬，你应该为失去它感到高兴。否则就是你在那里了。”

Happily, there were no fatalities in the BA fire. But if I had been the last passenger out, I might well have asked those in front of me why their carry-ons came first.

所幸英国航空的这次飞机起火事故中没有人死亡。但如果我是最后出来的乘客，我很可能要问问我前面的人，为什么他们的行李在我之前离开。