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#11
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There is no simple answer to comparative safety of gliding and driving,
and few statistics that I am aware of to make a numerical comparison. Among the bases of comparison one might try are fatalities per event (launch vs car journey), per unit of time spent doing it, and/or per person doing it, but data for any two equivalents are hard to come by. One very crude measure is say 24 million drivers ( a guess - use your own figure if you think that's wrong) in the UK kill about 4000 people a year (which includes passengers and other road users) - say 1 per 6,000 drivers. Gliding has less than 10,000 pilots (an overstatement because not all are P1 each year) and we have about 5 fatalities (nearly all being participants) each year - say 1 per 2,000. So this method of counting gets at least 3 times the risk. Increasing driver/passenger numbers and reducing the number of active pilots would worsen the ratio. On the other hand, people exposed to gliding risk each year could include all 30,000 temporary members (most having one or two air experience trial lessons), just as car fatalities include passengers. Redo the sums accordingly if that helps. People at risk from gliding include those on the ground. Although such fatalities are very rare, they are not unknown - I knew one person who was killed by a cable snapping back when released from a tow truck, and I know of one woman killed on a public footpath by a glider landing next to it. One could add in the friends, families and hangers on at gliding sites to increase the base and so reduce the incidence rate. These latter refinements bring in more people "at risk" but at a much lower real level of risk than somebody who is in the cockpit many times in a year. But then, the car fatalities include people who are drivers, and also those who are front seat passengers and rear seat passengers - the latter generally being at much lower risk if they are strapped in. Once you start trying to refine the risk levels, there is no end - competition and aerobatic pilots are probably generally more at risk than careful local-only pilots, but stupid local-only pilots who mishandle cable breaks are very much at risk. The two risks I know of where you cannot personally reduce the level to zero by your own efforts - airframe integrity, and collision from the blind spots - are among the lowest of all incident levels. So we are left with most of the risk being in our own hands - the nut behind the stick is the biggest risk factor. Chris N. |
#12
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How many of those people killed due to accidents in
cars are due to drunk drivers, drugged up drivers, p1ssed off drivers etc etc etc. There is NO COMPARISON between gliding and an everyday chore. If you are asking to determine whether gliding is safe then yes. Gliding is safe. It is as safe as you would like it to be. It can also be as dangerous as you would like it to be. But it is a sport in which YOU DETERMINE how risky it is. Owain At 15:00 29 August 2003, Jj Sinclair wrote: Ephraim, Soaring is not the safest sport around. If I were to hazard a guess, it would be on a par with skydiving. Most of us in the sport enjoy the danger aspect up to a point. That point for me is when my actions could result in a landing in anything other than a farmers field or a dry lake. I draw the line there and hold back to get more altitude before committing my tender body and sturdy craft to any situation that could result in me sitting in a pile of fiberglass ruble. For the most part, the sport is just as safe as you want to make it. Oh, there is the rope brake on takeoff or the unseen mid-air, but these are rare and part of the reason we want a sport with a little unknown factor to deal with every time we *Slip the surly bonds of earth* The best advice I can give you is; Don't do anything that you are not comfortable with. Having said that, you must press the edges of your comfort zone, or you will never grow in the sport. For the new pilot, the edge of comfort will usually be slope soaring. Ease into it by staying out 200 feet from the rocks, always turn away from the rocks. Always keep your speed up, until you have checked out the area for squirrely air. Come join us, we are a band of brothers, doing something that not every Tom, Dick and Harry is doing and we like it that way. JJ Sinclair |
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#15
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Can anyone tell me how safety statistics for soaring compares with
statistics for driving automobiles? If you are wondering if flying is more dangerous than driving the answer is an unequivicable yes. How much more dangerous is hard to determine (do you drive drunk?). Most of us have to drive, whereas flying for most is recreational. If you want to reduce your requests find the toughest, most demanding instructor you can (I assume you are a student). Demand extra instruction, not just the minimum required for the ticket. It is informative to read the accident reports at the NTSB web site. Most glider accidents are pilot error, and most fatal accidents are stall-spin. You can train for this (see above). It is absolutely imperative that you take the correct action for each and every emergency. I recommend getting some power instruction even if you have no intention on getting a power license. You can get alot of landing practice this way and you will appreciate the issues faced by your tow pilot. |
#16
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I have had people I know ask me about the "soaring thing"....What do you do
when the wind stops?......etc. I tell them that glider flying is something like crossing a stream jumping from stone to stone. Then I ask them if they have ever done that...you know, jumped from stone to stone as they crossed a stream. Certainly, most people say "yes". Then I ask them if they ever just jumped up in the air and then looked to see if there was a stone to land upon. Naturally, everyone looks at me with a strange look and says..."Of course not!!" Then I explain that in soaring we go "from stone to stone" only the "stones" are safe landing places...in other words, you never jump off from one safe landing place without the altitude in hand to either make it back or then proceed on to the next safe landing place ( the next "stone"). Most people, when they see that glider flying (soaring, as I prefer to call it) is not some sort on unreasoning, suicidal passtime, understand that it CAN be safe. And, like many things from mowing your lawn to skydiving, your personal judgement is quite important in determining the risk level involved. So, I guess that is my point....develop good judgement and the risk level is manageable....fail to develop good judgement in any endeavor and the risk lever goes way up. Don Johnson, Reno,. NV |
#17
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"DonDLHMN" wrote in message ... I have had people I know ask me about the "soaring thing"....What do you do when the wind stops?......etc. I tell them that glider flying is something like crossing a stream jumping from stone to stone. Then I ask them if they have ever done that...you know, jumped from stone to stone as they crossed a stream. Certainly, most people say "yes". Then I ask them if they ever just jumped up in the air and then looked to see if there was a stone to land upon. Naturally, everyone looks at me with a strange look and says..."Of course not!!" Then I explain that in soaring we go "from stone to stone" only the "stones" are safe landing places...in other words, you never jump off from one safe landing place without the altitude in hand to either make it back or then proceed on to the next safe landing place ( the next "stone"). Most people, when they see that glider flying (soaring, as I prefer to call it) is not some sort on unreasoning, suicidal passtime, understand that it CAN be safe. And, like many things from mowing your lawn to skydiving, your personal judgement is quite important in determining the risk level involved. So, I guess that is my point....develop good judgement and the risk level is manageable....fail to develop good judgement in any endeavor and the risk lever goes way up. Don Johnson, Reno,. NV Don, Very good analogy. Frank Whiteley Colorado |
#19
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I'm doing 40'000km per year (and I don't have the impression that I'm that
exceptional), half of it between the place I live and the airfield. That's about 500 hours, or 3 times my annual flight time :-( -- Bert Willing ASW20 "TW" "Bruce Hoult" a écrit dans le message de ... In article , (Martin Hellman) wrote: When I got back into soaring in 1994 I had a similar concern and concluded that, within about a factor of two, soaring and driving had about the same risk of dying on an annual basis. That estimate is consistent with the UK poster who came up with 6000:1 for driving and 2000:1 for soaring in the UK, since my estimate was rough. (It's hard to know how many glider pilots are active.) Also, it could be that the crowded skies in Europe produce a higher fatality rate. On an hourly basis, that makes soaring much more dangerous for the typical pilot who flies about 100 hours a year, vs drives about 500. Who the heck (other than a professional driver) drives 500 hours a year?? The average car here in New Zealand does around 15,000 km/year, and we drive a *lot*. If you assume an average speed of 80 km/h (which is probably a bit low) then you're talking about something like 200 hours. I suppose there may be a lot of people in other parts of the world who spend a lot of time waiting at traffic lights, or in traffic jams. But that's not *driving*, and it's surely less likely to kill you than is driving at 100+ km/h. If you're going to count that time towards "driving" then I think to be fair you've got to also count the whole day I spend at the glider field, not just the hour of that I spend flying. -- Bruce |
#20
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