I understand from the article that you looked at both US and German reports for the source data. Were there any significant differences, or did the accident causes break out in similar percentages?

Lynn Alley
"2KA"

Lynn Alley - great question. Overall the results are fairly similar and for many individual causes the numbers are too small to be statistically significant. That said, the following differences stood out to me and are significant:

Germany has a higher share of accidents in standard emergency situations - this is driven mainly by a much greater use of winch launches, which are more accident prone than aero-tows because pilots must react very quickly in case of a cable break or winch slow down before they stall and spin in. (It also takes a greater number of winch launches to get into lift because you can't wait to release until you're in a thermal.) The low attainable altitude on the winch also tempts pilots to thermal too low near the airport - thus Germany has a higher share of accidents caused by "delaying to land at the airport".

The US has a higher share of "fateful decision" accidents which I believe is attributable to a larger percentage of flights occurring in unforgiving terrain (most of Germany is flat with plenty of fields - similar to the Midwest.) The US has greater numbers of accidents due to "delaying decision to land out" and "out of glide range". I also looked at the data from Austria (although they are not included in the stats) and you will also see a greater share of decision mistakes there since almost all of the soaring takes place in the mountains.

Hope this helps.
Clemens