Hard Deck

In my informal and formal polling, among people who fly contests, safety is far down on the list.

The major safety concern is that "some other bozo will run in to me," hence you can get some interest about midairs, including flarm and procedures to help avoid midairs like not setting out and return assigned tasks. Note that its always the other bozo. Midairs are far, far, down the list of actual accident causes but by far the main -- if not only -- concern of most pilots. Other refinements of the rules for safety, removing points incentives for risks, such as high finishes are down in the tar and feather and drive you out of town realm of unpopularity.

Complaining about complexity is very high on the list, until you propose measures that would actually help complexity. Eliminate the complex graduated penalties? Well, we don't like complexity but not that one. And so it goes..

John Cochrane