Comment by api_or_ipa | Hacker News Reader

Comment by api_or_ipa | Hacker News Reader

I was lucky enough to have a father as a pilot who paid for me to get my private pilots license. Despite the exorbitant price tag, I look back on that education as immensely and uniquely beneficial to my development.

As per his demands, I would complete a solo circuit* in an airplane before I drove a car solo. It didn't help that the airport I was learning was nestled in a tight mountain valley and notorious for it's shifty winds. The best lesson I learned was one of immense personal responsibility. It didn't matter what caused the accident if you ended up dead. That kind of responsibility-at-all-costs mentality has stuck with me to this day. Don't put yourself in a position where something or someone else can cause you to suffer. Check that the fuel attendant put the right amount of fuel you asked for in your airplane. Check that the mechanic wired the flight controls correctly. Check that the weather forecast is rational. The meteorologist isn't going to climb into your airplane and fly into that region-- you are.

This holds true for every part of my life. I don't follow cars close enough so that I depend on their judgement.

If you've got the money, I strongly recommend anyone to get their wings. It's the best education I've ever received.

* American pilots will know this as a 'pattern': takeoff, loop around the airport and immediately land. The shortest complete flight possible.

Your diligence was not unwarranted. Before anybody runs out to get their wings, realize that general aviation is quite dangerous. Here are two links that use similar math to arrive at the same 20x-more-dangerous-than-driving figure:

http://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/198/how-dangerou...

http://philip.greenspun.com/flying/safety

"flying is no more than 10 times as dangerous per mile of travel."

That may sound like flying is considerably more dangerous than driving, but this is an overall statistic. Most GA accidents happen because the pilot did something stupid like taking off without enough fuel, or flying into weather they weren't equipped to handle. So if you avoid doing stupid things, you can stack the odds considerably in your favor. The risk of flying can be comparable to the risk of driving.

Driving is dangerous, and if it takes "stacking the odds considerably in your favor" to make $THING only as dangerous as driving, I think it's safe bet that $THING is a pretty dangerous activity.

I'm actively working toward my PPL now but let's not pretend it's a safe venture by any means. You're strapping yourself onto a single lawn-mower engine that was build in the 60's that someone bought for $20,000 five years ago.

Of course, the same applies to driving. Take out DUIs, excessive speeding, texting, etc. and the accident rate associated with driving goes way down as well.

The problem is that when you're driving your fate is much more in the hands of the drivers around you than when you're flying. A stupid driver often takes out nearby cars along with their own. It's extremely rare for a stupid pilot to take out any aircraft but his own.

While true, you can still heavily tilt the odds in your favor while driving by being attentive, being in control, and avoiding bad weather when possible.

And, on the flip side, it's unlikely that another plane is going to run into you but you're probably a lot more exposed to events out of your control such as unexpected weather (e.g. crosswinds) and mechanical failures with serious consequences in a plane than in a car.

That's sort of the debate here, I think. Given $DANGEROUS_THING with $EVENTS_BEYOND_MY_CONTROL, I want to predict and plan for $EVENTS_BEYOND_MY_CONTROL to the best of my ability.

What's more unpredictable: stupid human drivers, stupid robot drivers, complex mechanical machines, or weather? Who is John Galt?

Hmm, I tell myself the same things about my driving ("I avoid doing stupid things, so I have stacked the odds in my favor.") -- possible since the causes of most car accidents are well-known.

I guess in both cases, we believe we have improved the odds, but also in both, we don't know how much.

There is the additional problem that our efforts to improve our own safety may be less airtight than we imagine.

That's true, but not particularly actionable. "Avoid doing stupid things" isn't something you can just decide to do directly. It's a good goal, but you need to find more specific ways to achieve that goal.

There are long established ways to reduce the incidence of stupidity. Always using checklists, always getting a weather brief, establishing personal minimums, etc. Of course, all of this will be covered as a standard part of any flying safety course.

IMO just saying "avoid doing stupid things" is dangerous. It's too easy to take that advice and say, well, I'm obviously not stupid, so I'm safe. And then you fly into a thunderstorm or stall while turning final or forget to connect a control surface, because avoiding stupidity has little if anything to do with being smart.

You can definitely stack the odds heavily in your favor, but it takes a lot of effort.

I didn't mean to imply that not doing stupid things is easy, merely that it's possible.

general aviation is only dangerous because of person between the controls and seat. Modern engines don't fail and the likelihood of exogenous events occurring are very very remote. Should you properly contain errors caused by pilot error, flying is remarkably safe.

Can't we build our own propensity for imperfect decision making into a calculation of safety? Can I not realize that while I consider myself more rational and cautious than my neighbors, they likely feel the same, and X% of them die when they try to fly?

I would consider this "second derivative caution". It got cemented into me when I was taking hang gliding lessons and saw one of the most stone cold cautious members of my class become exuberant and act rashly on a landing, and break his arm quite badly.

You're only restating the problem. Flying is dangerous because user error is common. That's the why of the what.

That's not quite true. Outright structural failure is not common, but there is a small but non-negligible category of accidents that are originate in improper maintenance, contaminated fuel, and similar non-pilot related causes. And piston aircraft engines have a disturbing tendency to fail compared to turbine engines or even automobile engines.

If you draw the line that it's the pilot's responsibility to ensure that the aircraft is airworthy then I guess you can place the proximate blame of that on the pilot, too. By that rationale, however, all car accidents are also your fault, because of the catch-all rule that says you may not drive so fast so as to put "persons or property at risk" or however it's phrased.

improper maintenance, contaminated fuel, and similar non-pilot related causes.

Before you ever takeoff, you must check for these things.

> maintenance:

do a full walk-around of the aircraft, checking for any damage. You can't catch everything, but you should be thorough enough so that if anything sudden did happen, ie: your airplane got clipped by the fuel truck, that you would catch it.

> contaminated fuel

Aviation fuel is dyed blue. Before every flight we take a small sample of fuel from the bottom of each tank to ensure water hasn't contaminated our fuel. On highwing aircraft we also draw fuel from the fuel lines leading down into the engine. This is sufficient to almost completely rule out fuel contamination.

I'm not saying that sudden accidents don't occur, merely that they are extremely remote. Even then, it is the responsibility of the pilot to plan accordingly and to further mitigate the consequences of mechanical breakdowns.

The production system for building most cars, I'm not sure about planes, is heavily dependent on built in quality. There are final quality checks, but not a comprehensive double checking of everything. The assumption is someone or some process will not pass on a defect. This is different from pre-flight checks though.

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