"Capt.Doug" wrote in message
...
"Kyle Boatright" wrote in message
You've mischaracterized what I wrote. I clearly stated that you're better
off in a field if the road has vehicular traffic or if you don't know the
road to be free of wires. Those things lead to aircraft hitting the
ground
out of control after the pilot stalls or collides with an obstacle. A
field
is a better choice because it reduces the odds of an out of control
impact.
Presumably, I should add "most of the time", because you appear to be
holding me to a standard of 100% certainty.

You've taken offense at my reply. Please don't let that detract from the
quality of the discussion.

Wires over the roadway are bad, and I agree that wires could cause a loss
of
control, which is bad. However, just ask any cropduster, fields may have
wires running overhead also.

The danger of traffic on the roadway would lead to loss of control AFTER
ground contact (supposing the pilot hasn't frozen with panic). this loss
of
control is no different than breaking a gear off and cartwheeling across
the
field- been there, done that. Ripped the seats out of the rails.

The way I see it, vehicular traffic (and particularly the variability of
traffic - what looked like a big space suddenly closes or traffic gets to
your chosen landing site at just the wrong moment) is a variable that has a
good chance of forcing the pilot to maneuver at the last minute. That's a
bad thing, and often leads to someone stalling and crashing from 50' (my
arbitrary loss of control altitude), which is usually fatal. As opposed to
a controlled touch down in a field, which is usually survivable.



The idea is to work with probabilties, and you're probably better off in
a
field than on a public road if survival is your primary consideration.

To recharacterize what I wrote for you- assigning probabilities must
include
more information than a transient pilot will likely have until the
emergency
is actually happening.. My response to your post is that the field will
not
neccessarily have a better survivability factor than the road. My
intention
was to broaden the factors to be considered when envisioning this
scenario.

D. (better at crashing than anyone I know)