While clearing airport security, you hear an announcement that you cannot make heads or tails of. Oh no, will I miss my connecting flight? You wonder: Why in the world don’t they make announcements understandable? You lucked out this time: The announcement, whatever it said, must have been for another flight.

You board the plane but wish you had stuck to your diet, because either you have gotten fatter or the seat has shrunk. You also hope that the mother with a screaming baby you saw at the gate doesn’t choose the seat next to you. You nervously watch her coming toward you, but she continues walking by you … a sigh of relief.

Then you hear another unintelligible announcement by the flight attendant, spoken a mile a minute with no pause between sentences. The attendant is obviously reading lines straight from an instruction sheet. You catch something about $5 for a beer, so you surmise it must be about the beverages and the dozen peanuts they generously serve.

The airline personnel should get credit, though, for their emphasis on safety. They illustrate the release of the oxygen mask, which you should place over your nose and mouth and breathe normally. I always fear that I’ll be sitting in the plane’s tiny bathroom when unanticipated turbulence causes the oxygen mask to dart out of its nest and has to be placed on nose and mouth. This would present a challenge for me — a multitasker I am not.

The scariest announcement, though, is the one coming from the cockpit prior to landing. Garbled, low volume and entirely unintelligible. It sounds like the pilots are distressed or preparing for a crash landing.

We’ve had enough of this: Something has to be done about making announcements intelligible in airports and on airplanes.

Airports and airplanes do not have a monopoly on unintelligible announcements. Train stations and trains tie for first place. At train stations, electronic bulletin boards could compensate for the poor-quality announcements, but they are tiny and hard to find in the shadow of the gigantic, brilliantly lit screens advertising Sony products.

You can manage to make it to the designated platform by guessing and following the crowd, but there is a train on each side of the platform. Which train is mine? If you are traveling business class, your car is usually at the end of the train, but if you can’t see the front of the train, how can you tell which end is which? Ask the conductor, I guess — if you can find one.

Once the train is under way, announcements about the next train stop are challenging, especially when all you can discern from the announcement is the last sentence: Don’t forget personal belongings. The confusion is compounded by the absence of clearly visible signs of the station’s name on the platform.

On the positive side, train bathrooms are more spacious than those on an airplane. You just have to be careful, because using them is like casting a line from a fishing boat in turbulent waters.

Another challenge is going to the dining car, which is never the car next to yours. Returning to your seat carrying a paper tray, with drinks and hot dogs in both hands, requires a balancing act. It feels like being in a canoe but without paddles.

I hope that one day, given this high-tech age, we will have a public address system for mass transit that offers clear and understandable information. Until then, there are too many challenges that make me hate traveling.

My wife reminds me that the joys of travel by plane or train far outweigh the nuisances. Pack your bags!

Michel A. Ibrahim (micheljackie7393@gmail.com) is a retired professor of public health who lives in Baltimore.