How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

On Monday, January 13, 2014 6:55:05 AM UTC-6, son_of_flubber wrote:

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

Bah. Your risk is exactly 50%. Either you die, or you don't.

And as others will surely point out - gliding is dangerous, way more so than the proverbial "drive to the airport".

So you better worry about dying in a glider accident - dude, it happens! A lot! And as you get older, you become even more dangerous.

Not trying to be alarmist, but there it is. I've had many friends die in glider accidents, mostly (all?) self-inflicted. All old, experienced pilots. Nobody dies in car accidents any more!

I suggest you stop trying to justify your risk via statistical mumbo-jumbo and concentrate on learning what the actual threat is and training yourself to recognize and defeat it.

It's a lot more fun, anyway...

(by the way...do you have a real name or did your parents really hate you?)

Cheers,

Kirk
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