Just because you have a mid-air, it is not necessarily your fault or
something you could have avoided. A good example is being hit by a power
aircraft overtaking you from behind.

The reality is that seeing aircraft that are on a collision course with you,
even if you know where they are can be incredibly difficult. I am a big
believer in prevention (installing transponders, etc....) but having a BRS
is, like an airbag, a nice feature to have when everything else fails.

Mike Schumann

"Dan G" wrote in message
oups.com...
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




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