system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
[Star Trek] Why doesn't anyone use transporter technology to make backup copies of themselves?

At one point Riker accidentally gets copied (showing you can duplicate a person) and Scotty basically preserves himself via transporter 'saving' for several decades on a disabled shuttle.

If they can do this, then why not save the last copy of people who are transported in case they die on an away mission?  If that happens then you can reconstitute them again using the saved data that you used to transport them in the first place.


And I get that the Federation has the prime directive and all, but they're hardly the only ones with Transporters.
gpt
Both of the situations you describe were dangerous as *fuck*. Scotty nearly didn't materialize, and his companion died. Riker was beamed out halfway through a unique window on a hardly-understood world and *also* almost died.

What would be a much better example is Doctor Pulaski, who basically used the transporter buffer and a biological sample to reconstitute herself pre-infection by a...complicated bio-agent that was kind of stupid in general.

Even then, she *also* nearly died in transport.

You should be detecting a theme, here. Transportation almost kills people all the time. Screwing with the process will not make that "almost" any better.