The interest doesn’t come from wanting to see random destruction like rubberneckers do. Commercial passenger aviation is as safe as it gets and incidents require multiple things to go wrong.
An aviation disaster is a fascinating thing because it pushes forward safety protocols or engineering safeguards.
There is nothing interesting about a car that smashes into a guardrail, which is what rubberneckers are into.
An other aspect of aviation disasters that is much more interesting than other disasters is that aviation has had a long history of using a different approach when it comes to investigation and human factors. Even the language we use, like "pilot error" is deeply connected to aviation disaster history, which get applied in many more areas than just aviation.
