"Fred" wrote in message
ups.com...
My fear, though, is that the talking heads who
form much of Americans' opinions will start speaking out about the lack
of sophisticated equipment on board the sailplane. You know the kind:
"if that glider had an encoding transponder on it, this never would
have happened."

When you hear that, please point out to the speaker that the sailplane
pilot was following all the regulations

Here is a controversial part. While it's true that gliders are not required
to have a transponder, and thus it's also true that "the sailplane pilot was
following all the regulations", it's not the whole story. An argument can be
made that this particular regulation, arbitrary as any other human-made law,
might not be all that wise after all. This particular regulation, or lack of
thereof, allows us to go up without a transponder and kill ourselves -- and
possibly many others -- to our hearts' content. Does it mean that we should
stand by this regulation as one of our "freedoms"? I honestly don't know.
The law does not keep us from doing all the stupid things in the world --
common sense does. Sometimes, anyway.

OTOH, I can't quite agree with the N.O.H. theory, either. It's a simple
cost/benefit analysis. We don't have to accept all the risks as "normal" if
we can mitigate some of it at a reasonable cost. It boils down to the
definition of "reasonable", of course. So far, on the average, we as a
community seem to perceive the risk as very low and the cost as
"unreasonable". This Monday may have changed this proportion somewhat --
miraculously, without even great loss of life.

Of course, in a perfect world where FAA was up-to-speed with technology and
airlines considered their options carefully, we'd all be flying with
low-power, low-cost ADS-B or FLARM-like devices since the beginning of the
GPS era. In the real world, meanwhile, we have to fend for ourselves a
little bit if we hope to survive.
"The-law-says-we-are-right,-so-we-won't-lift-a-finger;-let-them-change-instead"
kind of attitude is not very constructive and may not achieve too much good
in this world where the money talks (but doesn't always think).
--
Yuliy