On 30 Oct, 09:56, wrote:

Almost every week on this
group, we get another sad message informing yet another fatality. And
most of the cases, pilots has been extremely experiensed. We know that
they haven't done any stupid moves, they just lost the control of the
plane on wrong situation or the plane has failed on them.

People often ask me "Is gliding safe?" My reply is always the same -
"No, it is not safe, but it's is not hard to make it personally safer
- don't be bloody stupid."

Does S&G still publish accident reports [1]? They used to categorize
the causes: "Instructor failed to take over in time", "Poor field
selection", "Rigging error" and so on. However, almost all - certainly
90+% - of accidents had the same meta-cause lurking behind the report:
bloody stupidity.

Pressing on through an unlandable area on a dying day? Bloody stupid.

Forgetting to connect the elevator before launching, and then not
checking? Bloody stupid.

Flying in dangerously tight gaggles for the sake of a few points?
Bloody stupid.

"Just [losing] the control of the plane on wrong situation"? Bloody
stupid, almost certainly.

All you have to do is not be bloody stupid (and discourage bloody
stupidity amongst those around you) and you can decrease your own risk
enormously.

Ian

[1] Don't read it any more. There are only so many time I can be
enthralled by "Derek Piggott takes a fresh look at winch launching",
"Our chairman's son goes solo on his sixteenth birthday" and the task
for Day 3 of the last Eastern Counties Club Class competition.