Flight training before learning to drive?

Here's possibly a stretch of a question...

My daughter is only 7 but already I'm thinking of her driving and,
hopefully, learning to fly (like me). I'd love to teach her myself if
she shows interest.

I've heard many times that a pilot makes a safer driver and, looking
at myself & some other pilots I know, I believe that may be true. I've
never seen statistics but would be interested in knowing if this is
fact statistically.

Anyway, I expect to be a CFII & further soon (com./inst. now) and was
wondering if anyone has ever taught a sibling (or anyone for that
matter) to fly before they learned to drive?
Do you think it would make for a safer driver?

Ricky

"Ricky" wrote in message
...
Anyway, I expect to be a CFII & further soon (com./inst. now) and was
wondering if anyone has ever taught a sibling (or anyone for that
matter) to fly before they learned to drive?

My daughter had her Private license in both gliders and SEL long before
she had a driver's license. Our strategy was simply to keep her so busy
(and for us to be so accomidating with rides) as to delay her going through
all the hassle of actually getting her operator's license. It worked! Most
of her friends had already wrecked their first car before our daughter was
driving by herself. She never had any serious accidents, and I don't even
remember any tickets.

Vaughn

"Ricky" wrote in message
...
Here's possibly a stretch of a question...

My daughter is only 7 but already I'm thinking of her driving and,
hopefully, learning to fly (like me). I'd love to teach her myself if
she shows interest.

I've heard many times that a pilot makes a safer driver and, looking
at myself & some other pilots I know, I believe that may be true. I've
never seen statistics but would be interested in knowing if this is
fact statistically.

Anyway, I expect to be a CFII & further soon (com./inst. now) and was
wondering if anyone has ever taught a sibling (or anyone for that
matter) to fly before they learned to drive?
Do you think it would make for a safer driver?

Dunno if it made him a better driver, but my brother's son started as soon
as he was tall enough to see out the side of a T-18 (still to short to see
over the panel).

--
Geoff
The Sea Hawk at Wow Way d0t Com
remove spaces and make the obvious substitutions to reply by mail
When immigration is outlawed, only outlaws will immigrate.

On May 4, 8:24*pm, Ricky wrote:
Here's possibly a stretch of a question...

My daughter is only 7 but already I'm thinking of her driving and,
hopefully, learning to fly (like me). I'd love to teach her myself if
she shows interest.

I've heard many times that a pilot makes a safer driver and, looking
at myself & some other pilots I know, I believe that may be true. I've
never seen statistics but would be interested in knowing if this is
fact statistically.

Anyway, I expect to be a CFII & further soon (com./inst. now) and was
wondering if anyone has ever taught a sibling (or anyone for that
matter) to fly before they learned to drive?
Do you think it would make for a safer driver?

Ricky

From my own experience as a youngster and later on as a CFI my opinion
would be that you are safe and indeed well advised to treat the two
issues separately. In my case, I was exposed from about age 8 to a
serious flying environment where I was around flying and people who
fly almost constantly.
This culminated in an age 16 solo.
I wasn't exposed to driving until age 15.

As an instructor, I would advise that age 7 is just fine to start a
youngster with an aviation exposure and education. Plenty of time
later on for the driving. The reasoning for this is that almost all
required to produce a safe driver has to be done while driving (expect
learning the driver's manual of course), but flying requires a much
deeper and more comprehensive learning curve where much of what has to
be retained is learned outside the cockpit.

So feel free in my opinion anyway, to start the exposure to aviation
as early as your child's interest dictates it can be done. It's never
too early to begin answering questions, and with a few well placed
cushions and some monitoring from you, actual flying of the airplane
can inspire a child as nothing else in the world could achieve.

As for me, I loved every second of my early exposure to aviation. In
the end analysis, I'd probably say that my learning to drive simply
made my trip to the airport a bit faster :-)

Hope this helped a bit, and the best of luck to you and your daughter.
Dudley Henriques

In article
,
Ricky wrote:

Here's possibly a stretch of a question...

My daughter is only 7 but already I'm thinking of her driving and,
hopefully, learning to fly (like me). I'd love to teach her myself if
she shows interest.

I've heard many times that a pilot makes a safer driver and, looking
at myself & some other pilots I know, I believe that may be true. I've
never seen statistics but would be interested in knowing if this is
fact statistically.

Anyway, I expect to be a CFII & further soon (com./inst. now) and was
wondering if anyone has ever taught a sibling (or anyone for that
matter) to fly before they learned to drive?
Do you think it would make for a safer driver?

I took flying lessons well before I started to drive. I wouldn't say I
"learned to fly" at that point, as I didn't get my rating until much
later and I didn't really have the proper judgement or mental attitude
for it at the time. It's hard to say if it helped me with my driving.

A decade later when I started in on it again, I think it helped my
driving a fair bit even though I was 25 when I came back to it. The
ideas of being "ahead of the airplane" (or car, as the case may be), of
planning ahead, of doing things the "right way" as far as you are able
but doing whatever it takes to survive if something goes wrong, all of
this became much more apparent to me during flight training. I think
this has made me much safer, but of course 80% of drivers believe they
are above average. If a young person is mentally mature enough to absorb
these ideas then I could see it being a big help.

My little brother will be 16 this summer and is learning to drive. When
he came to visit last summer we got him a few lessons with my club. We
found an operation near my parents' place (I fly gliders so he wants to
fly gliders, and that's tougher to find) and paid it a visit last fall,
and supposedly he's been anxious to get back out there. He's asked me a
lot of good questions about flying and driving, like responding to
emergencies, the learning process, exercising judgement, and even just
the mechanics of the stuff. It seems to me that being in command (even
with the instructor) of a more unusual craft has given him an extra
interest in the whole idea and it is my completely inexpert opinion that
this will probably translate into being a safer and more knowledgeable
driver than would otherwise be the case.

--
Mike Ash
Radio Free Earth
Broadcasting from our climate-controlled studios deep inside the Moon

On May 4, 8:24*pm, Ricky wrote:
wondering if anyone has ever taught a sibling (or anyone for that
matter) to fly before they learned to drive?
Do you think it would make for a safer driver?

I'd think it would be worth a shot. Flying skills, methods and
techniques certainly transfer, IME.

I am of the opinion that kids learn to "drive" long before they take
the wheel. Those that don't spend all their time in the vehicle
playing video games, etc., anyway. They learn to endure and ignore G-
forces.

Learning to manage velocity and momentum seem bound to encourage
greater control of practically any vehicle.

Back in the day I got my first driving lessons sitting on a lap
learning to point the car on a path intended to not need correction,
probably in anticipation of eventually sending me out to plow.

I think I've learned something that I can apply to driving from every
different type of vehicle/equipment I've operated.
-----

- gpsman

Ricky wrote:
Do you think it would make for a safer driver?

Ricky

The evidence would be if an auto insurance company offered discounts to
pilots. Their actuaries don't miss much.

Curt

In article ,
Curt Johnson wrote:

Ricky wrote:
Do you think it would make for a safer driver?

Ricky

The evidence would be if an auto insurance company offered discounts to
pilots. Their actuaries don't miss much.

Might could be a small enough group for them to safely ignore.

Steve Hix wrote:
In article ,
Curt Johnson wrote:

Ricky wrote:
Do you think it would make for a safer driver?

Ricky
The evidence would be if an auto insurance company offered discounts to
pilots. Their actuaries don't miss much.

Might could be a small enough group for them to safely ignore.

Progressive gives me a couple hundred bucks a year discount for
belonging to IEEE, which has 375,000 members worldwide. There were
624,007 certificated pilots in the U.S. in January 2008 according to the
FAA.

Curt Johnson wrote:
Steve Hix wrote:
In article ,
Curt Johnson wrote:

Ricky wrote:
Do you think it would make for a safer driver?

Ricky
The evidence would be if an auto insurance company offered discounts
to pilots. Their actuaries don't miss much.

Might could be a small enough group for them to safely ignore.

Progressive gives me a couple hundred bucks a year discount for
belonging to IEEE, which has 375,000 members worldwide. There were
624,007 certificated pilots in the U.S. in January 2008 according to the
FAA.

Darn, I shouldn't have dropped my membership to IEEE years ago. I wonder
what other discounts there are? I can get a discount for being old
though AARP.

--

Regards, Ross
C-172F 180HP
Sold
KSWI