On Sunday, January 28, 2018 at 2:15:07 PM UTC-7, Jim White wrote:
This thread is very thought provoking. I wish to declare a principal: I am
against excessive rule making.

I am of the opinion that it is down to the director to look for and
intervene when he / she sees unsafe behaviour and then have the authority,
and balls, to sanction or disqualify the pilots that take disproportionate
risk.

Jim

Precisely. I have a proposal that I think addresses BB's issue without any new rules. Here's how...

We already have the rules that we need:

10.9.1.4 Pilots must pay particular attention to safety during the process of finishing, landing, and rolling to a stop. A pilot whose
finish, pattern, landing, or rollout is deemed unsafe by the CD is subject to a penalty for unsafe operation (¶ 12.2.5.1).

12.2.5.1 Unsafe operation (including all phases of flight and ground operation) (¶ 10.9.1.4, ¶ 10.9.3.4): maximum penalty = disqualification.

In the rules guide or by declaration of the contest CD, it shall be overtly recognized that thermalling in the flats (wherever there isn't a lower escape) at or below 300 feet is defined to be unsafe.

It will be recognized that an assessment of low thermalling can be made if and only if the glider lands within 30 minutes of the time of the infraction such that the flight recorder will have a presumed to be valid pressure reference. The proposed penalty may be 200 points for a first infraction, for example; and perhaps zero for the day on a second infraction.

In practice, when the scorer has time to address the matter, he will examine the flight logs of pilots who have landed out to determine whether any low thermalling had occured within the 30 minutes prior interval. If he finds such, he brings the data to the attention of the CD. The CD makes a penalty assessment taking into consideration the data presented and any other relevant factors.

This would create a strong motivation in the cockpit to not take a chance of losing a lot of points on a low save attempt that probably won't work anyway. We all know that recovery attempts at a very low altitude are quite unlikely to succeed. The cockpit calculus changes in exactly the way that BB (and most all us) desires to reduce the occurence of spin-in accidents.

With this, we avoid a lot of new rules and complication. Our flying liberty is not grossly impacted. With a 300 foot standard, most pilots would be motivated to break off at around 500 or 600 feet because they would not be able to precisely judge where the 300 foot AGL point would be and are motivated to not take a chance on the points loss.

All of my numbers here are just for example. My numbers might be refined by more careful consideration or even adjusted at the discretion of the CD for different sites.