On 9/14/07 5:36 AM, in article
, "Ian"
wrote:

On 14 Sep, 10:05, Dan G wrote:
On Sep 13, 7:33 pm, Paul Hanson

wrote:
Wear your chutes folks

A pilot in Britain died in 2002 when his glider was damaged in a
collision but he did not have a parachute. The pilot who had flown the
glider previously did not use a parachute due to his size, and when
the accident pilot got into the glider afterwards he did not get a
parachute to use himself. When a person helping him board commented on
the lack of a parachute, the accident pilot replied "it'll be
alright".

But remember the Idaflieg survey which found no evidence that anyone
had ever made the decision to use a parachute from a glider below
500m and survived. There were a fair number of cases when the actual
deployment happened much lower but it seems that the time it takes to
leave a glider as about the time it takes a badly damaged glider to
fall 500m.

I don;t wear a parachute when flying myself: I prefer "not hitting
things" to "trying to survive after hitting things"...

Ian


Here in the US authorities tried for many years to teach drivers to avoid
having accidents. It just didn't work, and the injury and fatality rate from
motor vehicle accidents only began to come down when seat belts, airbags,
better designed highways, better crash design of vehicles, a more deployed
and trained EMS system and many other innovations came into being.

"Just don't crash" just doesn't work. It's a delusion to believe otherwise.

Respectfully,
Bullwinkle