Cockpit video recording -- the time is now.

Dan Marotta wrote on 10/2/2018 8:17 AM:
I think it's been pretty well established that the vast majority of accidents are
the result of pilot error.* A few examples:

Weather did not cause that accident; the pilot's decision to take off into it or
continue into it was the real cause.

That stall/spin was not the cause of the pilot's death, it was his poor
manipulation of the controls and his inability to recover from the results of his
actions that caused the stall/spin that killed him.

Mechanical failure was not the cause of that accident, it was the pilot's decision
to fly too close or into that thunder storm that caused the in flight breakup.

I could go on but I won't.* Folks are simply too quick to place blame anywhere but
on themselves when the stuff hits the fan.* I won't likely be crashing my Stemme
due to flying up a box canyon under a decaying cumulus (big down draft).* It's my
firm belief that it was not the weather that killed Bob Saunders, but his decision
to fly his aircraft into a situation from which there was little prospect of
recovery.

"Vast majority" - does that apply to glider accidents? We can all think of
accidents where the investigators could not definitely select the cause of the
accident. For example, how does one determine what caused the mishandling - a
medical event, poor training, panic, dehydration, glasses slipping in turbulence,
suicide?

Here's an example: a friend had his ailerons partially jam in flight, but he was
able to unjam them, and land normally. Eventually, the cause was determined to be
a small bit of excess epoxy that squeezed out during the joining of the wing
halves, broke loose at some point over the years, and worked it's way to the
aileron circuit during rigging or turbulence. You'd never find a cause like that
after an accident, but a camera on the pilot might show him struggling with the stick.

The camera isn't there to give the pilot an excuse (if you are right, it will do
just the opposite), it's to help the living sort out what really happened.

--
Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA (change ".netto" to ".us" to email me)
- "A Guide to Self-Launching Sailplane Operation"
https://sites.google.com/site/motorg...ad-the-guide-1
- "Transponders in Sailplanes - Dec 2014a" also ADS-B, PCAS, Flarm

http://soaringsafety.org/prevention/...anes-2014A.pdf