Owning before obtaining a PP license

"Dude" wrote in message
...
Because they know too little about accident statistics, and they believe
that the plane is safer than the statistics show.

Many of the fatalities in Cirrus aircraft have been CFIT. So they want to
take those out. Unfortunately, no one thinks the result would be valid.
The whole point of the statistic is that it is about the only objective
measure of safety. We cannot even predict the performance of a car in the
fatalities per million stats with much accuracy, but after the fact we can
usually see some sort of reason for a failure.

The idea with CFIT is that it's "not the plane's fault." The question is, is
there something about the SR-2x that encourages pilots to do stupid things?
I've argued before that the chute could have this effect by creating a false
sense of security. However, we're in dark territory here because the numbers
just aren't big enough yet to justify statistical assertions. It is entirely
possible to get a cluster of CFITs and the fact that the rates have
regressed to more typical levels may be nothing but the trends working
themselves out. In other words, all this fancy new training might have no
effect at all.

Over a longer-term period we will be able to draw conclusions by comparing
Cirrus, Lancair, and Diamond airplanes to each other, and the new
glass-panel Cessnas will give us a chance to compare against decades of
non-glass Cessnas to see what effect they might have.

Until then, all statistical assertions are subject to very high margins of
error, such that I find them dubious. We are left to draw conclusions the
old-fashioned way, by gut instinct.

-cwk.