Pilots with weakening vision - please install Powerflarm

On Tuesday, July 9, 2013 4:09:34 PM UTC-4, jfitch wrote:

Look at the numbers. I believe we have around 10 - 15 fatalities a year in the US in soaring. Let me pick 12 as a average for the sake of discussion.. That means that in 20 years, of 240 people that died, just 2 are from glider-to-glider mid air collisions. Eliminating those you still have 238 fatalities. You are reducing your risk by less than 1%.

The past 20 years are not a terribly good predictor of the next 5 years when you consider that a number of pilots are now seeing their vision deteriorate due to age. It happens gradually so the change sneaks up on you.

Take a minute to reread Vaughn's post which is very much to the point:

On Saturday, July 6, 2013 4:43:42 PM UTC-4, Vaughn wrote:
Some of you might also want to consider eye surgery. If nothing else,
do it for the sake of your fellow aviators. A while back my vision
deteriorated to something slightly better than 20/40. (Still FAA legal!)

At that point, I typically couldn't see other planes in the pattern,
and reluctantly came to the conclusion that I wouldn't want to share the
air with somebody in my condition, so therefore I shouldn't be there.
So I got surgery, even though the doctors had called my condition
"marginal".

The difference after cataract surgery was literally night and day!