On Tuesday, August 5, 2014 1:32:47 AM UTC+1, son_of_flubber wrote:
On Monday, August 4, 2014 4:35:58 PM UTC-4, John Galloway wrote:

It has often been hypothesised that FLARM might cause

complacency but no study has found evidence of that.



There's evidence that the introduction of bicycle helmets has not reduce injuries. http://www.cyclehelmets.org/1013.html This is probably because helmets have changed behavior. Human nature is common to cycling and soaring..



That said, two careful pilots with Powerflarm are safer than the same two pilots without Powerflarm.



The cycling helmets (or car seatbelts/airbags) and human nature experiences are often raised in discussions about the supposed risk of complacency gliding with FLARM. There are two ways in which these are invalid comparisons:

The first difference is that on the roads it is very unlikely that "near miss" accidents will previously have gone unnoticed before the introduction of the safety gear whereas when gliding with FLARM most comment that they are amazed at the number of near misses that they have been alerted to that they must have been missing pre-FLARM. Similar to what Ramy is reporting, the aspect of human nature that seems to kick in with most glider pilots using FLARM is the bit that says "This is a lot more risky than I had realised - I had better improve my look-out"

There also is another huge conceptual difference - unlike passive safety measures on the road, FLARM is an active communication system. It pretty soon dawns on pilots that FLARM use results not only in alarms one receives but also alarms one gives to others. If I am getting a lot of alerts it means that I am giving alerts to a lot of others. Any pilot with half a brain then starts to think "not only should I look out better, I should also change how I fly with respect to avoiding giving FLARM alerts to other pilots" i.e. FLARM etiquette. (This is is often reinforced by WTF! radio calls).


John Galloway