If you do anything that anyone employed by an airline, airport, or relevant Federal agency doesn't like, you're gonna have a bad time. They can and will irritate, inconvenience and humiliate you. Flying in a plane or being in an airport is not a right and they can pretty much do whatever they want to whomever they want.
This is why if it's less than 12-14 hours, I'll just drive.
Driving is substantially more dangerous to your physical person than the various infringements upon your rights to privacy and such incurred by dealing with the TSA. While abhorrent, they are generally not physically harmful (unless you're sufficiently attractive to warrant sexual assault at the hands of the TSA piglets).
Furthermore, this assumes that you can burn a day or two to make a meeting a few states over. I'm not sure if you have that sort of time to spare, but I don't.
You could always just remove yourself from the TSA's jurisdiction. They're doing checkpoint stops to search vehicles without probable cause or warrants on the highways now, too. Bonus points for not paying the TSA salaries through contribution to US federal tax income and add-on ticket fees, too.
The safety assumption isn't exactly a given. The statistics cited represent passenger miles, not events. The formula is basically (passengers * trip miles)/deaths
Comparing automobile-related fatalities is challenging.
The standard comparisons given do not distinguish between passenger deaths and automobile-related deaths. 15-20% of all auto-related deaths are pedestrians and bicyclists. It also doesn't differentiate between trip types. Is there a difference between 24 hours driving from NYC to Miami via I-95 and 24 hours of driving within NYC? The published statistics do not speak to that.
I would conjecture if you were able to compare the relative dangers of inter-city interstate/freeway driving to a similar flight (including getting to/from the airport), you'd find that the safety gap was far narrower.
Also, lots of automobile fatalities are due to intoxicated drivers driving off the road, so if you don't drink and drive your odds get a whole lot better than the quoted statistics. And if I remember correctly, a large percentage of fatalities occur at intersections (especially left turns), so if you drive on highways you avoid those too.
The intoxication thing is another real issue with the stats.
Deaths get labeled as "alcohol related" and double counted all of the time. If I'm walking down the street drunk or riding in a cab drunk, that is tallied as an "alcohol related" crash.
I think in the uk the injury and fatality lists include those killed by a car not in it. Also the drunk drivers and drinkers hit by cars are not separated.
I was referring to personal travel as I don't travel much for my 9-5 or contract work.
I've thought of the later option, although not specifically due to the TSA, just generally. If my income was 100% contract and could survive the time zone shift I might actually test it out for a few months, but there are too many positives in the US that outweigh the negatives.
If you do anything that anyone employed by an airline, airport, or relevant Federal agency doesn't like, you're gonna have a bad time. They can and will irritate, inconvenience and humiliate you. Flying in a plane or being in an airport is not a right and they can pretty much do whatever they want to whomever they want.
This is why if it's less than 12-14 hours, I'll just drive.