On Friday, January 17, 2020 at 6:40:31 PM UTC-8, wrote:
It's snowing and for entertainment sake I thought I'd throw this question out there.
One of the selling points of the -24 and later Schleicher gliders is the "crashworthiness" of the fuselage. Waibel won the Ostiv, we've all seen pictures of the test rig dropping a fuselage after a simulated crash. It makes sense. 30 years later does it work?
With out looking at accident reports I can name a handful of fatalities in modern Schleichers. They don't make a difference in a high energy impact obviously, but how often do we see survivable low energy accidents? Of those low energy crashes, not all of them are going to hurt you anyway. I had a friend bounce a DG100 on its nose after a loss of control on T/O and he survived with stitches on his leg. Over run accidents? I've never heard of one causing serious injury. I have to admit I FEEL more safe in my -24 than say, a Libelle were the cockpit is a bit more robust than an eggshell but I'm not sure it's gonna matter if I screw up turning base to final one day.
Please respond soon. The snow is set to continue through tomorrow, I've watched everything on Netflix, I'm out of beer and waiting for the epoxy to set.

I saw an ASW27 crash on very late final, all pilot error. It dropped a wing/started to rotate. Mangled a wing, broke the tail boom, canopy flew off. I thought for sure the pilot was going to be injured.... and then he climbed out, stood up and walked around. The great undercarriage may have helped here as well.