Much has been written and discussed about this issue.
If we in gliding can find the solution, we are made.
Safety experts around the world have focussed on this, James Reason and
others, all the "causations" have been identified - the weak link is
people - pilots, car drivers, workers in industry, NASA, add infinitum.
Like Mark has suggested, until every single person considers safety all the
time/every time, there will be accidents.
John Hudson
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mark Newton" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Discussion of issues relating to Soaring in Australia."
<[email protected]>
Sent: Friday, November 04, 2005 12:29 AM
Subject: Re: [Aus-soaring] ACCIDENT & INCIDENT REPORTING
Roger Cox wrote:
There has been debate about recruitment or the lack there-of, of
new pilots. Maybe the argument that 'there are no new ways of wrecking a
glider, ergo let's not talk about it' ignores what recruitment there is.
Roger, I think you might have missed the point a bit.
Your characterization of the argument is completely off-beam. A more
accurate rendition would be, "There are no new ways of wrecking a
glider. If we are going to talk about it, then lets do so in a productive
way." I don't think anyone around here has advocated not talking about
accidents.
As I said earlier: There is obviously a group of people clamouring for
this. I'd like to know what they hope to get out of it which they
wouldn't be able to get out of well-written, well-targeted articles
which didn't require someone getting hurt to provide the source material.
Those articles would take exactly the same amount of time to write as
an accident report would; and they could cover wider-ranging safety
issues because they could teach lessons about accidents we haven't had
yet; and they could be written by literally ANYBODY, instead of imposing
upon the time of an already flat-out RTO or CTO; and they wouldn't need
to wait until someone got killed or maimed.
Yet the very same people who regularly (mundanely, boringly, take your
pick) cry out for accident reports don't seem even remotely concerned
about the absence of that kind of material, and they lack the modicum of
motivation that'd be required for them to simply do it themselves.
Like many other fields in life, gliding appears to have its share of
people with not much knowledge but with very strong opinions. Giving
people like that a drip-feed of accident data is disastrous, because
their lack of knowledge leads to them forming some of the most
wrong-headed
assumptions and conclusions you can possibly imagine, which they then
proceed to spread, loudly, to anyone who will listen, to the detriment
of the safety of us all. One needs only to peruse this single year's
archive of this mailing list to see people who want to ban spins in
Puchaczs,
ban spin training altogether, abolish low-level rope break training
for aerotow, deny badge claims for gold height for pilots who don't have
oxygen, and all kinds of other similarly "intellectually extravagant"
ideas
which are born out of a healthy dose of ignorance coupled with the kind of
self-righteous conviction that's almost religious in its magnitude. Like
gliding bar-talk, only national in scope.
Has anyone noticed Martin Feeg's "It Happened Recently On An Airfield"
columns in Soaring Australia over the last year? They're brilliant!
A couple of paragraphs, a strong safety message, and heavily dosed
with jump-out-and-shout inspiration to /think/ about safety issues.
We should have more of them, because they're much more useful than reading
about an infinite procession of different aircraft at different airfields
on
different dates flown by different pilots having precisely the same
heavy-landing accident, which appears to be what the Robert Harts of the
world want to see column-inches in Soaring Australia wasted on.
(aside: Redmond Quinn observed that the accident report for the IS28 heavy
landing featured on video in the safety seminar roadshow this year was
actually written about 20 years ago and published in the GFA instructors
manual in the section that deals with teaching final approach and
landing...)
There is also that saying that in a lot of pursuits it is the
very young [inexperienced] and the very old [complacent] who get caught.
Sure -- But do any of us, regardless of experience level, /need/ to read
about someone getting hurt or killed to jolt us out of complacency?
Here's a stunning suggestion for every reader: If the answer to that
question is, "Yes," please leave the gliding movement, because you're a
hazard to the rest of us. And I'm not just saying that for psychological
impact, I'm saying it because it's bloody true!
You ("the royal you" :-) have a responsibility to think about safety
and integrate it into everything you're doing. If you stop doing that
because you haven't read an accident report lately, there's something
seriously wrong. Seriously wrong with your safety mindset, your training,
and your airmanship. If you can't fix it you need to get out before
someone
gets hurt.
And if you're a person who thinks they don't fit that mould, but who
thinks that /other people/ will... well, I suspect that's similar to
those individuals who know that /they/ can view certain types
of entertainment material without incurring enough psychological damage
to become axe-murdering rapists, but want it banned because a poorly
defined group of unnamed /other people/ can't. I'd challenge those
individuals to work out what kind of evidence they're going to use to
show that those other people exist and can't be helped in any other
way, but only after they've read and internalized this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection
("the operation of expelling feelings or wishes the individual finds
wholly
unacceptable—too shameful, too obscene, too dangerous—by attributing them
to
another.")
1,$s/accident/incident/g if it makes you feel better.
- mark
[ winning friends and influencing people since 1971 :-) ]
--------------------------------------------------------------------
I tried an internal modem, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
but it hurt when I walked. Mark Newton
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