Out of curiosity: is this a unique American issue? How does the US compare to other soaring nations? Maybe we can learn something from a comparison.
Does anyone have data on that?

Uli
'AS'

I don't know, Uli. IIRC, top pilot Bruno Gantenbrink of Germany was the first to publicly address the fallacy of the "most dangerous part of soaring" so I suspect the U.S. is not the only place where the data conflict with what we'd like to believe. His insightful speech, published in Aerokurier more than 25 years ago, is on the DG site and should be required reading for all of us in the sport, but especially cross-country and competition pilots.

https://www.dg-flugzeugbau.de/en/lib...ty-comes-first

More thought-provoking reading on the same subject is Aussie Bruce Taylor's account of a day at our Nationals at Nephi a few years ago. I heard this top pilot speak about it the next morning at the pilots' meeting and I wish everyone could have been the

https://glidingaustralia.org/mag/GA32.pdf

If there are lessons to be learned from other countries, we should seek them out. Perhaps someone could look at the data.

Chip Bearden
JB