So what? Seriously, so what? If 10 people died from eating crisps (en-US: chips) a year, would you stop? There are endless edge-case examples I could pull out. You can't possibly know what the real odds are because it isn't news when someone /isn't/ asked to move his airline seat away from two children. The reason it isn't news is because it is by far the more common event!
So: Do you want to risk a 1 in a million chance of someone tsk tsking at you until you explain yourself to help a little lost girl? If your answer is "no" then I think that makes you kind of a bad person, just like those United employees.
You could look at it this way: The only way of increasing the perceived probability that an adult talking to a child is just being nice is to increase the number of times that exact event happens.
So: Do you want to risk a 1 in a million chance of someone tsk tsking at you until you explain yourself to help a little lost girl? If your answer is "no" then I think that makes you kind of a bad person, just like those United employees.
You could look at it this way: The only way of increasing the perceived probability that an adult talking to a child is just being nice is to increase the number of times that exact event happens.