I keep coming back to this article, for me the standout insight is that skill etc does not increase safety, it just determines your "upper limit". What actually determines your safety is the decision making that prevents you getting too close to the upper limit.
I think a useful insight, not just for dangerous sports but anything with high risk of failure and large decision volume.
> The overriding determinant of pilot safety in hang gliding is the quality of pilot decision making. Skill level, experience, quality of equipment; all those things are not determinants. What those things do is determine one’s upper limits. More skill gives you a higher limit, as does more experience or better equipment. But safety is not a function of how high your limits are, but rather of how well you stay within those limits. And that, is determined by one thing; the quality of the decisions you make. And
I've also read this article a number of times in the past - I used to fly sailplanes, and did a paragliding course at some point. Somewhat regularly I feel a strong urge to pick up paragliding more seriously - I think flying is one of the most beautiful things in the world.
However, pretty much every time that happens I force myself to research the safety situation (especially given that I have a daughter now) and I can't justify the risk to myself.
This part pretty much captures it:
> And that, is determined by one thing; the quality of the decisions you make. And how good do those decisions have to be? Simply put, they have to be just about perfect.
Also - "perfect" in this case means you have to be _very_ conservative, especially as a beginner, or as someone who doesn't fly regularly. Which, in turn, is going to result in less skill maintenance.
Turbulence being invisible + the power of air + the limits of these unpowered flying devices in terms of control and cushioning adds up to a lot of risk if this is an activity you do over a number of years.
Similar situation, and I know from my early kitesurfing days where you are stuck waiting for the weather, and then pushing sketchy conditions because you've only got limited time etc. This but with seemingly higher consequences have kept me away from flying for now. Really love the idea of getting into it.
I even flew RC slope planes for a while instead, which really illustrated how easily you get on the wrong side of the weather, with much lower consequences!
My understanding is that's how a lot of small aircraft crashes happen. "Well, the weather's worse than I'd like to fly in... but if we wait until tomorrow we'll miss our reservations (or whatever) and everything will be delayed... eh, it's probably fine, let's go ahead, doesn't seem that bad."
"Plan continuation bias", or as the (powered) aviation community colloquially refers to it, "get-there-itis". It's definitely a common factor in commercial aviation incidents too (though more often 'should we land here or divert' than 'should we take off').
I've never been hang gliding, but I get the sense from the article there there's another factor at play here that may be less applicable to powered pilots that should have a good understanding of the risks from their required training and pre-flight planning. An important element in the essay seems to be that hang glider pilots don't have a good understanding of the risks - due to the way crashes are perceived in the community - and that is a prerequisite for doing a competent risk analysis and formulating a safe plan in the first place. They're blind to the risks they're taking, and consider the sport safe, even when they are frequently crashing.
The teaching point of the essay to me, is more that if something can be 'safely' accomplished 99% of the time, but 1% of the time it is deadly, it is extremely unsafe, but due to confirmation bias from 'always' being successful, won't be seen as risky, and in those situations we humans need to be very deliberate about our decision making.
Community perception is an interesting point, and it reminds me of a book, Black Box Thinking [1], which I wouldn't outright recommend, but it does an interesting job of comparing safety culture across aviation and medicine.
> it is imperative that we create the systems and the culture ... to help educators learn from errors rather than feel stigmatized by them
Aviation has a very strong culture of publishing and scrutinising near misses and mistakes, and that culture leading to positive feedback loops that improve safety.
Medicine (historically, and the book's argument) chalks up mistakes to "one of those things".
Applying this to hang gliding, I managed to find quite a few careful analysis examples of accidents on forums. Obviously less scrutinised than aviation, but probably fair to say generally has a culture of safety consciousness, but in the context of an inherently deadly sport. Fair to say aviation, medicine and hang gliding all are varyingly deadly.
Well, you gotta have that skill in the first place to make good decisions. Without skill and experience in place. If you don't have skill in place to analyze situation properly the only good option is absolutely the safest one (which might be not to try in the first place)
If you don't have the skills, then the good decisions are either to not participate or to gain them.
This, of course, raises the question of whether the latter is a safe option. This can be approached statistically - are the incident rates higher in training than among skilled pilots? Only if they are do we have to move on to the second question, which is how to safely acquire the skills needed to have the option to be safe.
I think about a parallel in juggling - It's not the catches, it's the throws. To a bystander, it's very impressive that you can catch all the balls; but if your throws are bad, it's impossible to catch them - the pattern gets away from you.
I started mountain biking in the past year, and it's interesting to think about how this applies to that sport. There's a common refrain that you aren't getting better if you aren't falling, which really bothers me. In part, I think it's intended as a consolation, trying to find an upside in something that sucks. But there is also a sense that if you aren't pushing beyond your boundaries, you can't improve, and therefore if you aren't falling, you must be stagnating.
This narrative is so compelling because there is a certain underlying truth to it. You don't really appreciate how effective your tires are until you reach that boundary where they start to slide out. You need to jump a few times before you get a feeling for how to jump. You can minimize your risk in other ways, but you can't eliminate it entirely.
But on the whole, it feels like there is a culture within mountain biking (though certainly not amongst all riders) that you should always be pushing your boundaries to improve and that if you are eking out thinks out at 99% or whatever like the guy talks about in the article, you're doing things right.
I've done a lot of mountain biking, and for years I rode bike trials¹.
I think on a bike it's fine to push your limits, because the consequences are less severe than for hang gliding, especially if you aren't doing big drops.
Trials riding is technical, but it isn't fast, so one unexpected thing is that you get better at crashing. Kind of like in Judo, where there is a correct way to fall, falling often enough at slow to moderate speeds teaches you how to fall better.
Now I mostly ride cross country, but every once in a while, when I get into a sketchy situation, I fall like a cat, whether it be over the bars, off the back, hopping off the side, I have a deep well of experience from previous crashes to draw upon.
I'd say in mountain biking the enemy isn't falling or crashing, it's falling or crashing at speed. I _know_ it's fun to go fast, but if you switch your mindset from: "I'm going to get through this section faster than you" to "I'm going to get through this section _better/cleaner_ than you." you can keep the fun alive while keeping the consequences down.
So what is 'better,' it could be without putting a foot down, without shifting down to the granny gear, without skidding etc...
This is why I think mountain biking is way more fun than road riding. I don't have to have elite level fitness, or massive quads to be 'good' at mountain biking. Take a roadie out on a mtn bike ride for the first time and they will probably blow all the steep climbs at first, cos they don't have experience in modulating traction through the back wheel. Eventually they would learn to project though the bike and feel where the back wheel is touching the ground at all times, which takes your riding to the next level.
In motorcycle riding the idea of "failing" is more of a warning. You will fall off your bike one day and that fall could kill you. It is not if but when. So the culture is more about when the fall happens how can you do everything in your power to prevent it from being deadly. But then some idiot pulls out in front of you when you have a green light and you go across the car hood, land on your back, break a few vertebrae, and the idiot who cut you off drives off never to be seen again. But at least most riders I know are thinking about safety in some way as opposed to pushing yourself to the limit on your motorcycle.
One of the things that's nice about extreme sports is it's very clear where your boundaries lie and when you've crossed the line. You need the encouragement to find them which is where i think the whole "push yourself" comes from but once you do then you know where you stand. I use to do a lot of skateboarding when i was younger and taught my boys how to skate. I would tell them, attempt to violate the laws of physics and you will be punished. A hard slam is a very clear signal that what you assumed was not the case.
This is true for some but not all "extreme" sports. EG it is pretty untrue about any sport that requires you to travel in avalanche terrain; there is very little feedback when you are in dangerous situations, and when there is feedback about a poor decision, it is not always clear that the bad outcome was a result of your own action.
As the saying goes, “There are no bold and old pilots.” If flying and hang gliding teaches you anything, it is to take the right decisions within the framework of safety you have experience with. It’s a bit like knowing how to ride a bicycle, but you want to do a wheelie when it rains – not the right decision.
Circa 2022, the safety and community policing is strong enough to weed out non-safe pilots. I know pilots are as old as 80 years old and have been flying for 40+ years without incidents.
My father used to fly when I was little, but he quit. When I asked him about it he said he used to think that it was only the crazy ones that got killed. But then a few people he knew as careful and level headed died in accidents. My father's conclusion was that the sport is inherently dangerous, and he wanted to make sure that he was around while me and my siblings grow up, so he quit.
This must have been in the early eighties. Maybe the gliders and/or training become better. But still quite a few people died. Since then more people do paragliding, which to me seems to be inherently safer.
I'm not convinced that paragliding is inherently safer. The speeds are lower, and it's not "head-first". But at least a hang-glider is a solid device that can't randomly collapse (a common cause of paragliding accidents). From what I've seen in terms of safety stats, they are similar, with sailplanes being a bit safer (though my sense is that that depends on whether you fly sailplanes in the mountains or flatter areas, with mountains being significantly more dangerous).
The video mentions the article. I wonder if the video host Tom's intro slide makes another interesting point - survivor bias. Statistically someone will make it through decades of bad decisions unscathed, and with generous self-appraisal will call it good decision making, when it actual fact they were just of the lucky. (survivor bias - shouldn't look at extremely successful companies for inspiration)
I'll watch the rest of the video, but wanted to thank you for sharing it, and sharing your perspective. I am by no means risk averse, and long to fly one day, but after a few years of one dangerous sport, and considering joining friends in paragliding, I looked into the safety aspect and it seemed too risky (coming from one deadly sport, I felt like I needed a break, not another)
I don't know anything about hang gliding but, has there been a culture shift since this article was published in 1998? e.g. the things he describes like breaking a downtube on landing (or crashing as he says), is that considered not-normal now? What has changed in the past 24 years?
Some sites have great safety culture. Others don’t. (In Seattle, there are good examples of this.) accident reports still have higher license ratings more frequent than p1/p2, but that’s unadjusted for flight hours.
A nice read, despite me knowing nothing about the sport. Many good
thoughts about risk we could heed in SE and cybersecurity.
The primary determinant of failure is bad decision making, not skill,
experience or equipment. In the absence of feedback, bad decisions
look like good ones, because we get away with them, and that
reinforces risk taking.
The author suggests that reflective practice is a key to improvement
but most of us don't think over our actions - we just constantly "get
away with" the outcomes.
One thing made me laugh;
"...respectable occupations of many hang glider pilots;
doctors, lawyers, computer programmers."
Anyone who finds this topic and/or scuba diving to be interesting might enjoy Gareth Lock's book "Under Pressure," which adapts learnings in human factors from aviation safety and other sports to scuba diving -- which has also been going through similar shifts in thinking over the years.
It seems like this is partly a case of "Never again" vs "Life happens" thinking.
A lot of people, when something bad happens, like breaking whatever a downtube is, or even a bone, chalk it up to "Life experience" and think it's an acceptable or necessary thing.
They say stuff like "Exceed your limits so you know your capabilities".
It's similar to the "Drop out of college for a 3 month backpacking trip, learn about life not math".
Wheras some people would instead say "I don't need to know my limits. I know where they aren't, and that's enough to avoid going near them".
Trouble is, those people don't hang glide in the first place!
Very much in my area of interest, only applied to motorcycles. The author redefines for himself "safe flying" from not having any incidents to not making any mistakes that could lead to an incident. And indeed I know plenty of people on motorcycles who make plenty of mistakes but haven't been in accident yet so they think they ride good. I personally take it down to 50% every time I make even the smallest of errors, even if it would be unidentifiable to someone observing.
I believe this gets you a nice safety bonus. At least you don't continue to shrink that error margin by telling yourself "so far so good". But you're still nowhere in the clear. Not making any mistakes is not humanly possible. And chance plays a role in dangerous sports no matter your skill or safety consciousness. So in the end you can only accept the risk or not.
Bonus related joke: A man slips and falls off a tall building. As he passes every floor he tells himself "so far so good".
There are big differences between sport motorcycling and pleasure motorcycling and aviation. If I'm just touring the countryside and my front wheel gets a little loose, I am going to dial everything way back. But if I am on the track and the front isn't at least a little bit squirrelly in every corner, then I'm going to dial it up. Even if I bin it on the track, I am likely to walk away. But if an aviator makes a critical error they're going to be dead.
> That sentence,
“The most dangerous part of gliding is the trip to the glider field”
is the dumbest, most ignorant saying that has found a home in our sport.
> The only thing they were doing up there was waiting for the start gate to open 1000 meters lower. And when it did open, they all dove down with air brakes open at 110 knots.
The fact that the standard and 15 meter pilots squeezed the last 50 meters of height out of the thermal can only mean that something was wrong with their thinking.
> Everybody has to develop a safety strategy for himself. The simplest is to eliminate the risks that are completely unnecessary.
I think it is failure to differentiate between moments of risk with safety margin and risk without safety margin (or with substantially reduced margin) that puts most people in danger.
We tend to look at overall "risk of dying doing a sport" and fail to maintain awareness to identify these specific moments.
For example, our family wakesurfs on Lake Tahoe. My wife considers boating and wakesurfing pretty safe. However, in June the water temp is 53 degrees F. If our boat sinks 3 miles offshore and nobody sees it, life jackets will not save anyone. The boat sinking that fast is unlikely, but it is possible. I consider that an unacceptable unmitigated risk, and ask her to stay near shore when she drives.. yet she never does, and when i scold her she thinks im nagging and annoying.
While i'm not a pilot, i've been up with private pilots, taken hang gliding lessons, done tandem skydives, ride motorcycles, dirt bikes, ski a ton, backcountry ski..
..i don't consider any of these activities to be "safe" or "unsafe" overall.. i consider moments of low safety margin to be dangerous and to be understood, treated with extra care and mitigated or avoided as much as possible.
This article got me thinking about the number of people engaging in relatively risky outdoor activities in the US. It seems that and gliding is decreasing on a per capita basis, but I wonder if this is a consequence of more Sports filling the niche, or a more risk adverse and less adventurous population.
Maybe it is neither in just a function of increased urbanization or monoculture.
That said, it seems like there is a general decline in serious hobbyists in a lot of fields/ activities
I have no doubt that I would see a lot of people, but I dont think it would answer the questions I am curious about, but not necessarily concerned about.
I'm neither a statistician nor a pilot, but I think the author here actually undersells the need to be 100% right in your decision-making. Because the decisions are actually linked together by the fact that they occur on the same flight. If any single decision is a bad one, the whole flight is unsafe.
If a pilot makes 50 safety-critical decisions over the course of a single flight, at a 99% success rate, I believe the actual chance of completing the flight without incident is given by 0.99^50, or ~60%. So, 2 out of 5 flights would result in an incident.
Of course, the reverse is true, if you know your actual rate of safety-critical incidents to be 1% of your flights, you can calculate how good your decision-making has been by 0.99^(1/50), or said another way: you've made the "safe" decision ~99.97% of the time.
Safety critical decisions aren’t binary. It’s generally a case where each bad decision makes choosing the next correct decision harder, but pilots do recover from some extreme situations.
A better model is perhaps how accurate do you need to be to avoid 10 tails in a row when flipping 10,000 coins every week for 30 years.
CBC radio (Ideas program) did a podcast recently on Ernest K. Gann's book "Fate is the Hunter," the safety biography of an old pilot of rough and ready passenger planes from the 1930s on, who concluded at the end he hadn't been good; he'd been lucky and therefore survived when so many others hadn't.
"Gann compiles a grim list: commercial pilots who perished during his flying career. They number more than 400."
I can't help thinking that a cultural problem is being described. The original culture was badly constructed due to ignorance, but now it's being perpetuated by inertia.
If breaking a downtube meant an automatic $1,000 fine and a year's suspension from flying that might help; but ultimately it's the honest prediction-then-self-assessment of decisions described in the article that's necessary.
But it is a good analogy for anything dangerous, where the odds are in that 100-1 to 10000-1 range so that it seems safe enough case by case but the stats hit you when you do it regularly .
The article talks about culture. It if it is OK to have a crash landing - and call it a normal landing because no harm to body, then more
accidents are likely.
Imagine people crashed their car every day but “meh just needs a new bumper!”
>>Imagine people crashed their car every day but “meh just needs a new bumper!”
I mean....have you ever been to Italty? Spain? Parts of france? I've definitely been to places where people bump into things with their cars pretty much every day and the only reaction was "meh, that's what bumpers are for". I mean those are not accidents, sure, but it shows a certain culture of recklessness.
>Imagine people crashed their car every day but “meh just needs a new bumper!”
People do crash their cars every day, and they do a lot worse than damage the bumper. 42,000 people died on US roads last year. It's the biggest and deadliest example of "normalization of deviance". American and Canadian transport planners simply refuse to follow international best practices for roadway safety.
Although that is a good point,
I didn’t mean it like that.
I meant if it became normal for every person to have a minor crash every day because of the equivalent of “meh need to buy another $50 downtube!” and they consider it,
well “a normal trip”
Flying machines seem unsafe because the pilot has limited control. Birds can quickly change the shape of their wing more drastically than planes or hang gliders, so there are less unrecoverable situations.
> “You can drop a mouse down a thousand-yard mine shaft; and, on arriving at the bottom, it gets a slight shock and walks away, provided that the ground is fairly soft. A rat is killed, a man is broken, a horse splashes.”
I think a useful insight, not just for dangerous sports but anything with high risk of failure and large decision volume.
> The overriding determinant of pilot safety in hang gliding is the quality of pilot decision making. Skill level, experience, quality of equipment; all those things are not determinants. What those things do is determine one’s upper limits. More skill gives you a higher limit, as does more experience or better equipment. But safety is not a function of how high your limits are, but rather of how well you stay within those limits. And that, is determined by one thing; the quality of the decisions you make. And