Exactly! We just had that other guy recently who was completely plastered plow into a mountain.. and not long ago the con artist who spiral dove his twin out of the clouds near LA, or before that the guy in a Mooney who was in the clouds, not instrument-rated or on a flight plan drill into the Lake Hughes VOR mountaintop... I take the whole "about as safe as riding a motorcycle" thing with a "massive boulder" of salt..
That's really heart breaking
Sorry for your loss and condolences to his family and friends
Having destroyed things with a backhoe (sometimes intentionally) I'd not risk it on an airplane unless it was literally the last hope.
They needed the loader to drag the fuselage above the high tide line. After that was done the rescue folks used saws and other tools to cut him out.
I think that is Seduction Point about 10 miles from Haines runwayYou can see, with a rising tide, time was a critical factor in saving the survivor.
Sure, I guess my point was that I hate to think that my (theoretical) daughter is equally likely to die sitting next to me a on plane vs riding on the back of some dude's motorcycle. Maybe the stats work out, but given that I don't do stupid pilot tricks or fly and drive after drinking, or fly pipeline inspections, etc.,.. that already makes me safer than the group
Statistics mean squat when applied to individuals. Your theoretical daughter's safety is almost completely tied to whether you or the theoretical "some dude" fly/ride safely, with well maintained equipment and all of those other factors we like to pay attention to. There's a higher likelihood of getting smacked on the motorcycle by other idiots, though again -- it's not completely out of your control.
That's my whole problem with it though, and because GA is not nearly as standardized or regulated (thank God) as commercial operations, you really can't just compare "pilots" against each other..
Just wondering what types of things are you hearing?
Sorry, but the comparison between flying and driving makes no sense at all, even less so with motorcycles. You can check the weather. You can’t do a pre-ride check for idiots. Distracted, dumb, drunk or complacent, every time I go out in a car I’m amazed at what I see in other drivers. I live on a residential street in a quiet neighborhood in a podunk town in upstate NY, and I see people all the time rolling through stop signs, flooring it from one stop sign to the next (how fast can I get to Stewart’s!), looking at their phones. I saw one dude drive by smoking a bowl. It’s insane. We had a Turkey trot 5k a few years back that a buddy of mine organized, he asked me to man the main intersection in town to stop drivers briefly when groups of runners went through. I stood there for an hour. It is one stoplight, traffic from 3 directions (one road is a one-way). The number of times I almost got ran over, much less how many near collisions I saw, was just astounding.
I think the flip side is a near total lack of enforcement of traffic laws. Why do people drive down the road, totally oblivious to everything around them as they busy themselves with their phones? Because they can do so with zero chance of getting ticketed for it. And even lacking specific laws about cell phone use while driving, I’ll bet every jurisdiction has laws regarding careless, negligent, and/or reckless driving. All that’s needed for enforcement is already there, except for cops that aren’t already staring at laptop screens as they drive down the road.^^^If we put as much effort into teaching people to drive as we do into teaching them to fly, we might change this.
had someone blow a stop sign and make a turn in front of me today. Talking on a cell..
Dam near mad it a bad day for both of us.
