How dangerous is soaring?

[apologies if this is a double-post - the first one didn't seem to go
through]

On Oct 31, 4:04 pm, jeplane wrote:
On Oct 30, 6:50 pm, Ramy wrote:
" No matter how safe you think you are, the risk is still
significantly higher than most normal activities (such as driving)"

You sure?

How many times have you seen a traffic accident on your way to the
gliderport?...

That question reflects a very typical, but not very productive
approach to the issue at hand. The plural of "anecdote" is not "data."

Data such as that in this PDF is why I personally feel fairly certain
when I say that flying gliders is considerably riskier than most of
what you'd call "normal activities":

http://www.ntsb.gov/publictn/2007/ARG0701.pdf

See page 15, which shows (for year 2003) bar graphs for both the raw
total and fatal accident numbers per general aviation sector, and the
total and fatal accidents per hours flown for each sector.

Observe that the numbers for gliders are 19.45 accidents per 100,000
hours flown, with 5.07 fatal accidents per 100,000 hours. That's
second only to amateur-built aircraft, with 21.6 and 5.5 respectively.

Contrast that with the numbers for single-engine piston-powered
airplanes with 7.91 accidents and 1.41 fatal accidents per 100,000
hours. In 2003 at least, gliders had 245% more accidents and 360% more
fatal accidents per hour than the puddle-jumpers that comprise the
majority of the US general aviation fleet.

There's no breakdown for poor saps like me who combine the two worst
categories by dabbling in amateur-built gliders, but my bet is that
the numbers would be somewhere between the two.

As concerns comparisons between the accident rates of flying and
driving, I defer to this analysis by Harry Mantakos:

http://www.meretrix.com/~harry/flyin...vsdriving.html

Given those numbers, I normally feel fairly confident when I say that
soaring is much more dangerous than driving, and is perhaps comparable
to riding a motorcycle. But I do tend to get odd looks when I go on to
say that I gave up riding on the street and took up Formula IV
roadracing (125cc anything-goes full-fairing 2-stroke bikes with top
speed of about 100 mph) because I thought it was safer as well as more
fun.

Bottom line: I don't recommend flying or soaring to just everybody.
Based on what I know about their methods, means, and risk aversion,
for some folks I recommend knitting or photography.

Thanks, Bob K.