On 4/5/2016 1:59 PM, wrote:
Which is safer; a conservative pilot who thinks they are safe, or a pilot
aware of their inclination to push things but thinks themselves switched on
enough to pull it off?


Excellent, thought-provoking, question! Particularly if we place "reasonable
mechanical competency" in both pilots' cockpits.

Probably not (yet?) answerable, though...

Judging from this millennium's NTSB statistics, the MUCH larger proportion of
fatalities have (apparently, so it seems to me) come from the "not obviously
actively pushing things" group of pilots, regardless of whether they may have
been "conservative" or "inclined to push physics' dangerous limits."

By way of example, one (cartwheeling, apparently) fatality involved an attempt
to land on a road, when the NTSB noted (they thought? a glider pilot thought?)
a perfectly landable field was less than half a mile away. I choose to imagine
this pilot thought success chances were better on a
"should-be-via-routine-driving-observationally-known-rife-with-obstructions"
road than going into a "surface-maybe-not-so-observationally-known-smooth"
field. FWIW, the "roads are good" misconception was common among 20+ years'
worth of new-to-XC pilots from our Club at a site in the (flat, huge fields
common, sparsely settled) panhandle of Texas. Memory sez the idea had to be
disabused each year, when it arose during formal/informal training/bull
sessions. No one ever did land a glider on a road, and so far as I know there
was never any OFL damage EVER incurred between 1989 and 2009, the only camp
years I had direct exposure to. Funnily enough, there *were* a few minor -
e.g. gear-ups - landing damages occurred at the (ex-WW-II) camp airports. Many
a club member made their first-ever OFL at that camp.

Back to the question above, I'm inclined to think "limits awareness" is a
better way to approach piloting than not, just as (say) it's better when
driving on highways. While (as someone noted earlier this thread) "There's no
fixing stupid," I believe lack of "pushing limits" awareness IS fixable.

Bob W.