Cockpit video recording -- the time is now.

I'm sick and tired of reading about glider crashes and never knowing what actually happened. We badly need to be able to learn from the misfortune of our soaring compadres.

The obvious answer is that we all have a camera mounted over our right shoulder that will simultaneously monitor the scene out the front canopy, monitor the panel instruments and monitor the pilot's flight inputs. Such a camera would be effective even if operating at a low frame rate -- perhaps something like 5 frames/sec. With today's technology such a unit could be quite small and the cost would be reasonable. The camera automatically goes on when flight is detected and off when flight stops by any of several easy detection means. Flight video would be logged to a micro SD that is looped over after some number of hours: 10 hours, 24 hours, whatever.

The only technological challenge would be making such a recorder fireproof. The latest horrible crash did ignite an incinerating fire. But fires are a rarity in glider accidents. Step one could be a video logger that does not necessarily address fireproofing.

How can we make this happen? Clearly individuals will not be highly motivated to go out and buy one since they are unlikely to personally benefit from their own camera. It needs to be somehow mandated. I would hate to look to the government for a mandate as it would take too long among other issues.. How about a mandate from SSA? Contests? Clubs? OLC? or tow operators? Every glider needs to have a video logger running on every flight.

One other sociological factor would be that there not be discrimination allowed on the release of the data. The data needs to be available for anyone and everyone to analyze upon its retrieval. Pilots, attorneys, widows, government entities and insurance companies should not have say in that matter. We need to think up a good solution to that. Maybe the pilot doesn't actually own the logger and media. Maybe the SSA owns the logger and leases them on condition of data availability upon any reportable accident.

No more mysteries! We need to know what is causing our accidents so we have a chance to fix the problems.

On Monday, October 1, 2018 at 4:06:02 PM UTC-4, Steve Koerner wrote:
I'm sick and tired of reading about glider crashes and never knowing what actually happened. We badly need to be able to learn from the misfortune of our soaring compadres.

The obvious answer is that we all have a camera mounted over our right shoulder that will simultaneously monitor the scene out the front canopy, monitor the panel instruments and monitor the pilot's flight inputs. Such a camera would be effective even if operating at a low frame rate -- perhaps something like 5 frames/sec. With today's technology such a unit could be quite small and the cost would be reasonable. The camera automatically goes on when flight is detected and off when flight stops by any of several easy detection means. Flight video would be logged to a micro SD that is looped over after some number of hours: 10 hours, 24 hours, whatever.

The only technological challenge would be making such a recorder fireproof. The latest horrible crash did ignite an incinerating fire. But fires are a rarity in glider accidents. Step one could be a video logger that does not necessarily address fireproofing.

How can we make this happen? Clearly individuals will not be highly motivated to go out and buy one since they are unlikely to personally benefit from their own camera. It needs to be somehow mandated. I would hate to look to the government for a mandate as it would take too long among other issues. How about a mandate from SSA? Contests? Clubs? OLC? or tow operators? Every glider needs to have a video logger running on every flight.

One other sociological factor would be that there not be discrimination allowed on the release of the data. The data needs to be available for anyone and everyone to analyze upon its retrieval. Pilots, attorneys, widows, government entities and insurance companies should not have say in that matter. We need to think up a good solution to that. Maybe the pilot doesn't actually own the logger and media. Maybe the SSA owns the logger and leases them on condition of data availability upon any reportable accident.

No more mysteries! We need to know what is causing our accidents so we have a chance to fix the problems.

Agree, but as an intermediate step, lets all set our loggers to 1 fix/sec instead of the 1 fix every 12 seconds as it was common years ago. Memory has become cheap! Also, lets make the loggers somewhat crash-worthy. I am not asking for it to survive g-forces, fire and deep ocean immersion like the 'Black-Box' of an airliner but maybe it could be made a bit more intelligent by making it able to detect a spin and then speed up the logging rate.

Uli
'AS'

Automotive dashcams are pretty decent today and not too expensive.

But, looking over my shoulder, weigh benefit vs. issues.

I am not saying yes or no, what I am saying is run this through SSA and AOPA legal BEFORE jumping up and down too hard.
Let GA aviation legal peeps weigh in first, give us ideas, pluses and minuses.
Let users, weigh in.

Then, and ONLY then, "maybe" involve regulatory/government types.
Think of the comments regarding ADS-B mandate, gliders are currently exempt in most cases. I shudder to think of costs to marginal sites if the FAA said we were no longer exempt in most cases.

Yes, some of us would be safer. Then again, some of that would be because you just lost pilots and clubs/operations.

I am NOT disagreeing.
Yes, it can be fairly cheap per ship.

ADSB is more expensive, but likely to have more positive impact, but still a lot of negative attitude.
Accident investigation is a minor percentage of glider flights.
While nice, and less expensive, please keep regulatory peeps out until aviation legal EXPERTS can weigh I .

What I will say, I would volunteer to send a link to this thread to AOPA Legal. Not only am I a member, but I pay extra for the legal aspect (since I have flown as commercial glider for decades, was CFIG for 8 years, just covering my skinney butt.).
We can see what an aviation legal expert suggests.

HmmmmmK?

Is it April 1st already?

There is no way a camera will be in my cockpit, car, home, bathroom, you
name it, without my consent.Â* And I don't care what "safety" terms you
couch it in.Â* That's simply idiotic.

You're have the absolutely right to give up your privacy, but not mine.



On 10/1/2018 2:59 PM, Charlie M. (UH & 002 owner/pilot) wrote:
Automotive dashcams are pretty decent today and not too expensive.

But, looking over my shoulder, weigh benefit vs. issues.

I am not saying yes or no, what I am saying is run this through SSA and AOPA legal BEFORE jumping up and down too hard.
Let GA aviation legal peeps weigh in first, give us ideas, pluses and minuses.
Let users, weigh in.

Then, and ONLY then, "maybe" involve regulatory/government types.
Think of the comments regarding ADS-B mandate, gliders are currently exempt in most cases. I shudder to think of costs to marginal sites if the FAA said we were no longer exempt in most cases.

Yes, some of us would be safer. Then again, some of that would be because you just lost pilots and clubs/operations.

I am NOT disagreeing.
Yes, it can be fairly cheap per ship.

ADSB is more expensive, but likely to have more positive impact, but still a lot of negative attitude.
Accident investigation is a minor percentage of glider flights.
While nice, and less expensive, please keep regulatory peeps out until aviation legal EXPERTS can weigh I .

What I will say, I would volunteer to send a link to this thread to AOPA Legal. Not only am I a member, but I pay extra for the legal aspect (since I have flown as commercial glider for decades, was CFIG for 8 years, just covering my skinney butt.).
We can see what an aviation legal expert suggests.

HmmmmmK?

--
Dan, 5J

On Monday, October 1, 2018 at 2:38:26 PM UTC-7, Dan Marotta wrote:
Is it April 1st already?

There is no way a camera will be in my cockpit, car, home, bathroom, you
name it, without my consent.Â* And I don't care what "safety" terms you
couch it in.Â* That's simply idiotic.

You're have the absolutely right to give up your privacy, but not mine.



Dan,

I'm a bit of a privacy freak too. Yet, I'm only talking about giving up my privacy when I have a reportable accident. Consider that it's already in the natural working of our society that we give up a whole lot of privacy when we have a serious accident.

And as you weigh such things, please consider your overall personal cost to benefit. We really need to start getting to the bottom of all these damn accidents. You may be the very person that has the next Stemme accident because it was never actually determined why Glider Bob crashed his Stemme. It just might have been a mechanical problem or a controllability problem that could have been determined had a video been available.

Cameras haven't been mandated in airline cockpits, so don't expect them to be mandated for gliders. It's obvious that a rule like that would be enacted to protect the public on airliners long before our miniscule risk to the public is considered.The FAA won't touch it any more than they would require cameras in training aircraft, which do thousands more operations each day than we do in gliders.

Looking for data, the latest I found was for 2015 where there were 378 GA fatalities. Our losses in the glider community just don't reach a threshold that would trigger any action by the FAA like requiring cameras or pseudo-flight recorders (hardened loggers.) Any changes will be voluntary on our part.

Insurance companies could offer discount incentives for better recorders or cameras, but it would be completely voluntary. The pushback reasons are obvious...

Paul A.

I agree, Paul. There needs to be a mandate from within -- not from the FAA.

I agree also that insurance rate incentives might be a great angle to help make it happen.

I think it's been pretty well established that the vast majority of
accidents are the result of pilot error.Â* 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.Â* Folks are simply too quick to place blame
anywhere but on themselves when the stuff hits the fan.Â* I won't likely
be crashing my Stemme due to flying up a box canyon under a decaying
cumulus (big down draft).Â* 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.

On 10/1/2018 5:05 PM, Steve Koerner wrote:
On Monday, October 1, 2018 at 2:38:26 PM UTC-7, Dan Marotta wrote:
Is it April 1st already?

There is no way a camera will be in my cockpit, car, home, bathroom, you
name it, without my consent.Â* And I don't care what "safety" terms you
couch it in.Â* That's simply idiotic.

You're have the absolutely right to give up your privacy, but not mine.



Dan,

I'm a bit of a privacy freak too. Yet, I'm only talking about giving up my privacy when I have a reportable accident. Consider that it's already in the natural working of our society that we give up a whole lot of privacy when we have a serious accident.

And as you weigh such things, please consider your overall personal cost to benefit. We really need to start getting to the bottom of all these damn accidents. You may be the very person that has the next Stemme accident because it was never actually determined why Glider Bob crashed his Stemme. It just might have been a mechanical problem or a controllability problem that could have been determined had a video been available.

--
Dan, 5J

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

I'm not filming my own death so you can delude your coward self into thinking you can avoid the same fate. You can't. Accept the risk or stay home. Must be winter the 'we need this rule to be safe' crowd are at it again.