On Monday, January 13, 2014 6:55:05 AM UTC-6, son_of_flubber wrote:
(Title intended to add a bit of levity to serious post.)



Soaring can kill you, but how do we put that risk into perspective?



A statistics based Mortality Calculator helped me do that. I answered a few questions about my medical profile and age and it told me that statistically I have a 19% chance of dieing in the next ten years from natural causes or from an accident of any kind. Say a 1 in 5 chance. (Sucks of course..) The calculator does not properly weight the fact that I'm a glider pilot, so how do I adjust for that?



It's obvious to me that my chances of dying in a glider are much much better than 1 in 5. So it is much much more likely that I will die of some other cause before I live long enough to die in a glider. Worrying about a glider accident is completely irrational (until I disregard the inherent dangers and start flying like an idiot.) Sure it could happen, but it is much more likely to die from something else. And as I get older, the odds of dying in a glider continue to drop.



An article about the mortality calculator. http://www.thedailybeast.com/article...-on-death.html



The calculator http://eprognosis.ucsf.edu/

"Worrying about a glider accident is completely irrational..."

You obviously haven't read the famous Gantenbrink article:
http://www.dg-flugzeugbau.de/safety-comes-first-e.html

Nobody decides to go out there and start "flying like an idiot" as you put it. Your thinking is flawed and dangerous in itself. When going to a contest or just to fly locally, I visualize myself driving in the opposite direction on the freeway, with my body and my glider intact and I vow to fly in a way to make that happen.
Herb