Hard Deck

On Friday, February 9, 2018 at 9:57:46 AM UTC-8, BobW wrote:
What am I missing? Are (arguably,
often-casually read/absorbed/understood by non-podium-contenders) contest
rules *seriously* considered a more powerful influence on pilot behavior than
the obvious, immediate, economic-/health-risks "imminently-possible downsides"
associated with every off-field landing?


If you've not seen participants taking substantially higher risks in competition than they otherwise would, you haven't been to many competitions. Including but not limited to soaring competitions. As a pop metric, the Google search "taking risk in sports competition" returns 106 million results including countless academic papers studying the subject. That's one the the major reasons there are rules in competitions.

And - one more time - the rules may not have any effect on some competitors, but it prevents everyone else from having to do the same thing to be competitive. The argument that the individual pilot is solely responsible for their own safety was lost when parachutes were required, and the presence or lack of one has no possibility of affecting others scores or behavior.