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A newsgroup may well be one of the worst imaginable venues for 'selling
safety' (other than Twitter, of course...) but the recent threads focusing on it set me to musing. Don't look for any pithy snippets of panacea wisdom in what follows, but if some of it gets a reader or two to cogitating on their own about their particular soaring situation, then maybe some of us may 'somehow, magically' become slightly safer than we would've been without the cogitating...and I'm a fan of motherhood, apple pie, and 'safety.' For the record, count me as one SSA member who wholeheartedly approves of and agrees with the sentiments in Al Tyler's and Rich Carlson's 8/25 letter to members. (For non-SSA readers, Tyler is Board Chairman of the SSA; Carlson is Chairman of the Soaring Safety Foundation [SSF].) Their letter is a focused, heartfelt, even actionable Great Start to 'getting a pilot's attention' on the importance of incorporating an active safety focus into one's approach to the sport. It's my understanding they've received multiple (possibly even numerous) letters of encouraging feedback, itself an encouraging sign. Maybe even from RAS-ers. At least one includes a thoroughly thought out 'safety program' (my characterization) I hope elements of which - all, in an ideal world - become a fundamental part of SSA and 'the U.S. soaring movement.' That's you and me, not 'someone else.' I find it encouraging/validational I'm not the only soaring pilot who amorphously feels 'the safety message' maybe hasn't been terribly well presented - at least in the U.S. To me, it's almost as if certain aspects of 'soaring safety' are (perhaps) perceived as 'so self-evident' that they don't need to be mentioned, certainly infrequently dwelled upon, during training. After all who, by adulthood, doesn't know that when you go higher than you're willing to fall - and, faster than you're willing to walk into a brick wall - you're taking life-endangering risk? Yet, any semi-focused attention to human behavior around us, anywhere, any day, quickly makes evident that many humans routinely act as if the two preceding realities don't matter to them...at least not when we happen to be watching. To often true for soaring, too, sad to say. Yet - and this is an experiment I've run many times out of bemused curiosity (and, sometimes, as a means of improving my life-continuance chances in friends' vehicles, dismayed chuckle) - if you're ever in a situation to 'ask the obvious,' - e.g. "Joe, are you ready or wanting to die today, during this activity?" - you often, not always, will get the expected answer. Which is to say that most people, when they actually do stop for a moment to actively ponder possible, not far-fetched, consequences of their actions, provide what they believe is a rational answer. 'Rational' though isn't synonymous with 'informed.' (Try questioning interstate-tailgating friends, for a possible eye-opener.) When I try to reconcile the paradox of 'self-evident, life-threatening risk,' and 'simultaneously unaware/unincorporative behavior,' part of me wonders if/how much education (lack of?), 'culture' and 'related concepts' interact. Probably most readers can think of a few 'cowboy soaring pilots' they've seen; maybe even a few knew some in this category who've died 'cowboying.' (I have one strong 'probable'.) But most of the now-dead soaring pilots I used to know were not cowboys. A few had demonstrated (to my way of thinking) a certain talent for 'questionable thought/practices' but were not obviously deficient in their stick and rudder skills. Most I'd place in my 'normal Joe' pilot category (in which I include myself). Further, the occasions of their deaths tend to be generally innocuous situations - hitting a ridge tree on an utterly benign, non-ridge-soarable afternoon, stalling/spinning into the ground from several thousand feet aloft, the dreaded inadvertent stall spin on the base-to-final turn on a benign day at a flatland airport, etc. Simply put, my group of now-dead-by-soaring friends and acquaintances died 'situationally unremarkably.' Various ad-hoc reviews of NTSB glider fatalities over the years leads me to conclude this is the norm. Exceptions exist, but the largest proportion of U.S. glider fatalities since the 1970s are (in my view) not from actual (as distinct from perceived) emergency situations. In other words, 'normal soaring deaths' are typically due to situations any average glider pilot might find themselves in on any routine - doesn't have to be XC - soaring flight. I could tabularize my investigations, but that would sort of defeat one hope for these musings, which is to encourage readers to perhaps engage in more 'thoughts on soaring safety' than they otherwise might. You don't have to look far to find folks who have stated, or do in all seriousness state, "You can't sell safety." Ford Motor Company; I could probably find a Tom Knauff statement to this effect; etc. And maybe that's part of the problem, the concept that 'safety' has to be 'sold.' Rubbish!!! Safety either is or is not an inherent part of one's approach to any life-endangering activity, and the *degree* of it is far from easily quantifiable. Sailplane manufacturers can, and do, continually improve 'sailplane safety': engineered cockpit reinforcement and 'crushability', improved seatbelts, ballistic parachutes. Pilots sometimes join in: upgraded seatbelts, ballistic parachutes, temperfoam, etc. All to the good, but woefully incomplete insofar as risk to pilots' lives is concerned. Beyond the 'mere mechanics' of safety, surrounding and enclosing 'mechanical safety' is an entire universe of 'safety as a concept.' At its most fundamental, 'conceptual safety' is the avoidance of an accident. No manufacturer can help us here! (To do so would be to intentionally commit corporate suicide, i.e. "You'll be safer if you don't buy my sailplane.") QED, Joe Pilot is part and parcel of any glider's 'safety package.' What soaring pilot would wish it otherwise? And this brings us full circle to the concept of "selling" safety. I'll argue it is 'our JOB' to do so, at every level of the sport, from club instructor, to commercial (e.g. FBO) instructor, to (any level of) club pilot, to clubs themselves (beyond instruction per se), to individual pilots in any setting. Failure to do so isn't merely 'an inconsequential inaction,' but arguably irresponsible if not outright endangering to the continuing health of the sport itself. When I was a neophyte, I looked not only to my instructor, but to my peers and friends in the club, and beyond them to 'the experienced pilots' for 'safety input.' I was a veritable 'eager, if somewhat overawed, sponge.' Maybe I was abbienormal in that regard, but if so only in degree, not in concept. Eventually I was able to detect - and confirm by asking those whose judgment and opinions had gained further respect in my eyes - 'dodgy pilot activity' (including pre-/post-flight). Even later I developed the ability and confidence in my own judgment to make 'defensible judgmental assessments' on my own. There's absolutely nothing remarkable or unusual about that progression. I was, perhaps, luckier than I might have been in my 'choice' of training club (the only one around where I happened to move to after school), but in no other way was my beginner's situation unusual or different from any other beginner's. Each beginner was/is/will-be entirely dependent on others for their absorption of all that is 'soaring,' which includes not merely the stick and rudder training so obvious to everyone as necessary, but also the maybe-not-so-obvious 'other stuff.' Which just happens to include 'the safety stuff.' 'Safety' isn't amenable to compartmentalization. The absence of 'certain thoughts, concepts, and thinking' in everyday glider-based flight scenarios is simply 'less safe' (than their presence), and it's up to those who know to imbue those who are seeking to know, or simply in ignorant need *of* knowing, with the requisite knowledge. To help them hear, comprehend and ultimately develop a conceptual approach to 'safe flying.' The full monty of 'safety' includes words, might/should-often include hands-on demonstrations, actions ("Do as I do, not as I say..."), and arguably 'daily life.' Safety isn't something we switch on when we get into a glider cockpit, it's an approach to our entire involvement *in* that activity. It's a mindset, an awareness, that also just happens to include lots of nuggets and snippets of ad-hoc actions and knowledge, too often mistaken for safety itself. Reflectively, Bob W. |
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