On Sep 14, 12:36 pm, Ian wrote:
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.

I posted a link to an accident report earlier where a pilot had a
collision at 1,500' (slightly less than 500 m), and survived by
bailing out.

In the accident I referred to where the pilot was not wearing a
parachute, the collision occured at 2,500'; however, the report did
note that it whether the pilot would have had time to bail was an
unknown (the glider impacted the ground 30 s after collision - must
have been a very uncomfortable period).

With driving, there are too many other vehicles and too many poor
drivers to guarantee that you can avoid having a collision, so I drive
the safest car I can afford (going by the SafeCar and EuroNCAP tests).

With gliding, however, you have really only yourself to blame if you
have an accident. While I fully support FLARM, there's no stealth
gliders out there which you can't see before they hit you. Whether or
not you stall/spin at below 500' and whether or not you land in a safe
field is entirely down to oneself. So I don't particularly go out of
my way to fly gliders with good crash impact performance (i.e., any
ASW from 24 on, followed by DG 101s on). I still wear a parachute
though - that's a no-brainer, with a proven record of saving lives.


Dan