Jerry_Atrick

I am in Somerset in the UK (South West). Up until Friday, I have a share in a TB20 near Farnborough. While I was working in London it worked out well (except it spent 6 months in for a bare metal respray, which was most frustrating), but as I live c. 200 miles from the airfield, it is not practical.. .So am looking for something.. With the COVID crisis, I am holding off purchasing; Love TB20s and TB21s, but there aren't too many on the market, and those that are are way overpriced and under-loved.

C182s are a great and versatile machine and a lot of people don't realise they have slightly better numbers that SR20s. So, once the clouds over the economy clear a bit, I will be looking at those, Dakotas (though not a fan of single doors anymore), PA32 Cherokee 6 300s/Lance, or similar. A mate over here, originally from Toowoomba, has a later mode C177RG.. they are cracking aircraft, too. I am thinking of crossing to LSA as within the UK, suitably equipped LSAs can be used for instrument flying.. but while they are good from some European countries we have reciprocal agreements with, they aren't good for all without bureaucratic faff. .. and you can't instrument fly them in any other European country.

Way back in 1996, which was my last year in Aus before first emigrating, I worked in Traralgon servicing Morwell and Hazelwood power stations. Occasionally flew from YMMB to YLTV to go to work (lived in Melb), although in winter had to go rent a unit as I was only VFR... Still have a whizzwheel I bought from La Trobe Valley Flying Club.. good, solid metal thing... still use it, too!

thanks

Pardon my ignorance (which all of you are already aware ;-)), but what is SIS? Googled it and nothing relevant came up...

WHat do you fly.. Are you down gippy way?

The aircraft was en route & landed for a comfort break. I was in my hangar at the time & did not see it land or take off. I got a call to say it had crashed. There were various theories but nothing was ever proven or even followed up as I understand it.

That is a worry! Nothing to learn from, then...

How are ya, cobbah? Welcome to the club!

Wow.. that is educative. From my short stint in a state OH&S regulator in Aus, I know that they do take an us and them approach - it seems to be in the Aussie regulator psyche..

The CAA have their issues, but on the whole, they seem to be very fair about how they deal with those they regulate.. they do understand people aren't perfect and accidents happen. Naturally, complete stuff ups are unlikely to be tolerated, but submitting a report will not attract undue attention, unless it is falsified, I guess. If we are deined class D transits, we are encouraged to report it and people do. Not sure anything happens, but there is no fear of reprisal.

Very sad as the system cannot improve if they are actively discouraging feedback - which sounds like what they are doing. And this cannot be in the short or long term interests of safety... Maybe their acronym stands fro Completely Against Safe Aviation?

Piper Cadet?

Convert it to remote control and just add fuel....

Check flight was at Damyns Hall...home strip is mentioned in the photograph....you might find it difficult to fly with someone willing to sit nest to you for the check flight....as far as I know only the school at Damyns meet the requirements for dual instructional flights and BFR renewals.

On a different subject I have switched my insurance to a sort of pay as you go cover...basically you pay what is the minimum legal requirement of 3rd party liability and, if you wish for full hull cover, book and pay for each days actual flying... not sure if I am allowed to mention companies in this forum but you can check it out online....

I think I have seen the insurance company advertised in Flyer magazine or on their forums... Good idea... and from memory they cap the annual premium to what it would have been if you had havetaken out continual insurance for the year so you don't end up paying more.

When I did a gig for one of the state's compo authorities, the most statistically dangerous profession was working as a butcher or abottoir worker..

Life is not only about taking risks.. it is a risk. Just walking down your stairs at home (if you have them) is a risk. I assess the risk and don't grab the hand-rail; when I am in later years in life, I may will probably grab the hand rail.

If we are comparing risks of one activity v another, then, regardless of how much control we individually have, we have to look at the stats. We can do everything in our power to minimise the risk, but that does not alter the overal stats. We use the stats to work out where we should expend our efforts more to minimise the risk. For me personnally, when flying, EFATO is my biggest concern and I pour over google maps satellite images of airfields I don't know and design a plan for an EFATO at different stages of flight. However, as I recall (and I may be wrong), statisically you are more likely to come a cropper from engine failure in the cruise. It doesn't mean I should drop my EFATO planning, because IMHO, it is the least able to be effectively practiced in training and one has a lot less time to react if it does happen. But the stats cyrstallised my thinking, too in terms of risk assessment and I now pay more attention to potential inflight issues enroute.

Well done, @lee-wave. I was at Blackushe last Tuesday to show the buyer of my share the TB20 the aircraft (he didn't even attempt to haggle) and it was not as busy as normal, but there were more flying than I thought.. the cafe was open and I think it is fair to say social distancing was being very loosely observed. I am popping into Dunkeswell today to see if they are doing checkouts because it is now 8 months since I have flown (long story about long time the TB20 was in the shop getting a respray).

What airfield do you fly from?

Over here, we don't end blind calls with the airfield. We will first make a call to the station if there is one, and if not, we will repeat the call to the location traffic. The call when you are expecting someone to answer is:

"Dunkeswell traffic, Golf Alpha Bravo Charlie Delta 10 miles to the south 5 tousand on one-zero-one-niner, request join". If you get no response or you are doing an initial call to a non-manned aerodrome, it will be:

"Dunkeswell traffic, Golf Alpha Bravo Charlie Delta 10 miles to the south 5 tousand on one-zero-one-niner, joining left downwind runway zero-niner" (I don't think that is a runway at Dunks, but you get the idea. If you don't know what runway you would omit the runway and maybe say for an overhead join or other proecedure used at the airfield.

BTW, when flying in France (accidentally posted this in an entirely unrelated thread), then vous devriez essayer de voler en France. Ils parleront français aux pilotes français et anglais à tout le monde. Bien sûr, l'EASA n'y fait rien

Which for some reason does not translate back well...

It should say, you should try flying in France. They speak French to the French pilots and English to everyone else.. and of course, EASA does nothing about it.

Buggah! Must have either had too much to drinkl, or had multiple tabs open. Given I had nothing to drink last night (a rarity for me, but, the medical is coming up so taking a breather), I guess I started posting in the wrong tab. The above was supposed to go into the Voice is not good enough thread. I will copy it there.. Sorry!

Hmmm.. Maybe the problem was I didn't have anything to drink.. dehydrated! ;-)

Vous devriez essayer de voler en France. Ils parleront français aux pilotes français et anglais à tout le monde. Bien sûr, l'EASA n'y fait rien

Which for some reason does not translate back well...

It should say, you should try flying in France. They speak French to the French pilots and English to everyone else.. and of course, EASA does nothing about it.

We don't have the draconian security requirements of Aus, despite being far more susceptible to terrorism attacks, but the GA scene here, too has required some mettle to stay involved. We are losing airfields left, right and centre; the CAA is interpreting rules rather strictly, the level of bureacracy at airfields is on the increase, out airspace management is a joke (go to skydemonlight.co.uk and check out the airspace in SE England), ATC is fragmented, class D transits are fast becoming a thing of the past, etc. And then add EASA on top of it, many people either went LAA, which seems reasonably well run, or simply hung up their headsets.

But, I like to take a different approach and look at the positives - The CAA here have a strict liability rule, too. But they will only enforce the real bad or persistent breaches. I busted Heathrow's airspace back in Sep by about 400'. At the moment, the UK is taking airspace busts very seriously. The Farnborough West controller was right onto me, I immedately acknowledged and thanked him for telling me and entered a steep descent (after looking out). On landing, I gave Farnborough a call and again thanked them and let them know why (which was I was so focussed trying to get my call in on the overloaded frequency that I momentarily lapsed in concentration of where I was heading and went through a TMA step). They said they had to file a report by law, but given I was listening, responded and took action, it should make things easy for me. I never heard from the CAA. One of the columnists of a flying magazine described how he had a similar bust on the same day but was required to attend an online training session and test - he was not responding to calls from Luton, who he was speaking to in order to get a clearance. A Cessna pilot busted Luton to the overhead, orbited a bit, flew out of their zone, busted back into itand did the same before moving on. He claimed he thought he was at some mil airfiled miles away. Had his licence suspended for a year, I think. So, for me, despite the strict liability obligation, so far, it seems to be being applied rationally.

Our LAA has had its critics in the UK forums, but is generally seen to be a reasonable self-regulator and the CAA give them virtual complete autonomy. They don't seem to have the restriction RAAus pilots have with respect to controlled airspace and flying over populated areas (they don't have full FRTOL's but I think they have to pass a cut down version anyway)., suitably equipped planes (which I believe can include some GA types like C172s an Warriors) can legally be flown in IMC as long as a) the LAA has expressly approved that aircraft for IMC flight and b) the pilot has an IMC rating (or IR® as it is now known). Also, they can go to France, Germany, Spain, Italy and I think, Austria without the prior permission requirement (but they can't fly IMC there).

Despite the moaning, there is plenty to look forward to!

@KRviator - I don't know your personal circumstances, but assuming nothing untoward, you have a great plane; you live in a country with open skies that affords you some fantastic flying. And the club scene is virtually unrivaled, giving a great social dimension which is lacking in most countries. Unless you think you are at grave risk of breaching a rule, don't let the pollies and jobs-worths win and shut you down. Unf, my SWMBO pulled the plug and our return to Aus at the last moment.. OK, the bushfires and the rain put a damper on things for a bit, but while we have Europe, which is also spectacular, I would bite someone's arm off to be back flying in Aus.

Quoting myself here.. that is pretty conceited

 

Re the below, I will go through in more detail later (I actually don't do the math anymore; I finished in model governance). Have to look for work now...

 

 

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Let me say the same thing differently by asking you some questions.

1. In the light of the above calculation, what do you think the probability is that LSA flying is safer driving a car?

On the raw numbers, no... but... see later...

2. In the light of the above calculation, what do you think the probability is that LSA flying is more dangerous than riding a motorbike?

Again on the raw numbers, yes (note, I just had a quick look and wasn't sure why you were dividing kms by 30... but it doesn't really matter).

3. Before the above statistics were presented to you, did you have any idea if LSA was safer or more dangerous that driving? If so, what did you base your assessment on? Was the thing more or less reliable than the calculation above?

I had my thoughts (based on the UK) .. .Intuitiuvely and anecdotally, my thoughts (as with others here) is risk could be expressed as Car < LSA+GA < Motorbike (I am GA but know a lot of LSA folk who thik the same).

4. Do you have a better way of comparing the risk? If not, do you not have a clue how dangerous LSA is compared to travelling by car? As in, no clue?

If I said I could have anything more than a guesstimate of how risky LSA flying is compared to car driving, I would be lying. But if came out with a straight, 1 fatality per 40,000,000 hours v 1 per 100,000 hours, that would tell me it is possible, even probable, that the risk of LSA flying is more dangerous than driving mainly because of the difference in magnitude - but it is not necessarily so. The road deaths are all road deaths.. we think this as drivers/riders and pax/pillions; and unhelpfully, there is no definition in the docs, but I found one here: https://www.bitre.gov.au/sites/default/files/Road_Safety_Australia_1117 INFOGRAPHIC 2 March 2018.pdf and it includes "vulnerable" road users, which includes peds and cyclists (and motorcyclists). The data you cited for motorcyle fatalities (which I read as 15% of the fatalities, not 30%) was in 2008, and according to the infographic, vulenrable user road-deaths has been increasing as a percentage, so more up to date data could be used, but for our purposes it should be good enough. However, we would have to exclude all other vulnerable users as they don't figure in LSA fatality statistics - well.. they shouldn't have an impact as one would hope with the rules, we aren't taking out too many innocent bystanders when we bite it. And, as per previous posts, I would be looking to remove or smooth statistically irrelvant data until it is not significant. It may presently not be significant, but without analysis, I can't tell. Thinking for cars, I would expect that there would be a lot more journeys that are way outside the bounds of what would be attempted in an LSA weather wise, urban v. highway driving, etc that would materially skew the results. I have many times driven in thick fog - as have others. You mentioned the number of people per car/motorcycle..that is one other area to look at because the number of people dying per fatal incident may also be a factor. Maybe a split by factory and homebuild - there aren't too many homebuilds out there in road user land and there will be a huge difference in homebuild quality despite inspections, so including all homebuilds may also not be a fair comparison. You have to look at the numbers to work out what is statistically significant and for the purpose of what you want to compare. Some of the above may not make sense to smooth/leave out depending on the context you are comparing the risks for.

5. It is generally accepted that travelling by commercial airline is safer than travelling by car. Do you accept those statistics? Why? Commercial airlines travel vastly greater distances vastly faster than car, by people who travel for different reasons and motivations, and less often, so how can you compare the risks?

I would believe these based on the fact the stats are compiled and analysed with appropriate model governance to provide assurance. As I mentioned earlier, motivation is not a factor, but the context is. Rarely is airline flying used as part of the enjoyment of the trip, especially long-haul. But, it is about from getting from A to B over longer distances So, a more accurate comparison of risk would be to exclude or smooth all those small car trips, or change the model to affect it. So instead of saying how many deaths per mile or hour travelled in an airline, you may use how many fatalities per passenger (or more accurately, occupant) mile or hour travelled and compare that to the same metric on a per-passenger/occupant mile/hour for road users. This can help smooth the dataset inconsistencies. You could seriously write a book on it. As an example, a few years ago, on a London radio station they made some comment about how polluting large ariliners are in that a one-way flight from London to Miami is the equivalent of the emissions of 8 family cars per year. So I called them up and on air explained why the logic may be flawed.. One of these aircraft hold, say 300pax. To keep it simple, multiply the 300 pax by the c. 4,500 miles. This is the same as taking one person 1.35m miles (give or take). Now, taking an average family car, and lets assume 4 people per car for the average of 12,000 miles per year. This gives us 384,000 miles for 8 cars; the airliner is c. 3.5 times more efficient than a family car. In other words, if we all drove the same pax miles as airliners do, the world would be a lot worse off than it is.

Your are being too all-or-nothing about whether or not data has any value, and dumping the data just because it is imperfect. Take the comparison of death rates between car drivers and motorcyclists: most of the the fatalities might be from weekend riders and most of the kilometers might be from professional riders during the week (I don't know). That does not mean that the comparison is meaningless, it just means that you need to take that into account when you are deciding if buying a motorbike to ride on the weekend is a good idea.

For the purposes of deciding when to ride my motorcycle, yes.. for comparing the relative safety of motorcycle riding to recreational (in the general sense) flying, no. We wouldn't normally "dump" data; we would normalise it to make a meaningful risk comparison... This might mean excluding outliers, smoothing spikes and troughs, using randomising and/or gaussian functions, etc.. Or it may be that one data set is not able to be normalised and does have to be dumped. There are so many differences between recreational motorcycle riding and recreational flying, I could have just said they are too differnt and left it at that. We don't; we say lets find the best way to correlate them and exlcude the worst to get a meaningful comaprison. Otherwise, I am simply distorting the figures, nominally to support my view? Who knows?

It is wrong to say that you cannot compare risks when someone rides for a certain amount of time, and fly for a certain distance. It does not matter what the motivation is. The further/longer you fly/ride/drive, the greater the risk. Simple as that.

The motivation is alsmost irrelevant.. but the factors that apply for a given situation or classification are. In this example, I was using similarities - not motivations. I may ride a motorbike because I want to feel the speed, live the leans and forces felt negotiating the twisties, or take my helmet off and feel the wind in my (two) hairs. I may want to fly a plane to be free of the bounds of the earth, avoid the crazy motorcyclists or just not have to sit behind other traffic (except at the airport). These are the motivations. I was simply looking for common data points with which to express risk or probability that are valid between the two activities.

BTW, in terms of risk of fatality, we are taught the more experienced and current we are, the less risk we have.. this would intuitively hold true and I presume is based on statistical analysis; we may suffer an engine failure but if we are current and experienced (and practised), we may have a much better chance of survival than someone who isn't.. It does not stand, if we are looking purely and probability, that the longer we do an activity, the more likely we are to suffer a problem, but assume we are. We should then all fly once a month for an hour and we will all be OK, right?

As for the idea that comparing distance based on speed being erroneous, it's not. LSA's fly in a pretty specific speed band. The issues of headwind are going to be smaller than the individual differences in LSA speeds. As all winds are headwinds, as it were, you could take headwinds into account by saying that there is, on average, a 5 kt headwind. It does not make a difference.

See above, and also this may be a definitional thing, but isn't the best selling LSA range, Vans? And don't they travel at decent speeds and altitude - better performance than your average GA machine? Morgans? And a plethora of other LSAs? Even microlights are getting faster and higher (the VL3 is probably exceptional, but blows the pants of most SEP GA high performance aircraft for speed and altitude). Over here, we can have almost calm ground conditions and at 2,000' easily hit 20kt winds... And higher speed winds the higher you go. 5kts average headwinds (without the numbers) seems incredibly small to me. There is an issue of cross-wind takeoffs and landings with lighter aircraft, but winds aloft are not representative of winds (or lack thereof) on the ground. Either way, it is still not a valid comparison anyway, because once in the air, you tend to fly constant airspeeds and more or less constant direction with well defined turning points. On the ground, you still have varying speeds per hour and are constantly changing throttle, braking, changing direction, slowing, speeding up, etc.. It is simply not a valid comaparison. As an example, my 170 mile one way trip to London on a Sunday evening ahould be able to be done in well under three hours; I try to maintain a motorway speed of 80mph and only 25 miles of that is not on motorway - 8 miles is on 50mph and the rest 30.. I can't be bothered with the math, but that would make it in the order of 2:35, but I rarely get it below 3 hours because there is always something to slow you down, somewhere.. Not so with flying normally.

If someone is wanting to work out how safe flying is, they can compare it to driving *or* riding a motorbike. If someone wants more accurate data, they can drill down and modify the *base rate* of risk by taking into account their hours, temperament, aircraft, weather and etc.

Agreed.. My stance is you have to drill down to a certain level before risk comaprisons are useful at all - the level you have to drill down to will depend on the differences in what you are comparing. But you are right, it is somewhat subjective as to the level of statistical error (or inaccuracy) any one person will tolerate before they will accept the finding.

Re the below, I will go through in more detail later (I actually don't do the math anymore; I finished in model governance). Have to look for work now...

-------------------

Let me say the same thing differently by asking you some questions.

1. In the light of the above calculation, what do you think the probability is that LSA flying is safer driving a car?

2. In the light of the above calculation, what do you think the probability is that LSA flying is more dangerous than riding a motorbike?

3. Before the above statistics were presented to you, did you have any idea if LSA was safer or more dangerous that driving? If so, what did you base your assessment on? Was the thing more or less reliable than the calculation above?

4. Do you have a better way of comparing the risk? If not, do you not have a clue how dangerous LSA is compared to travelling by car? As in, no clue?

5. It is generally accepted that travelling by commercial airline is safer than travelling by car. Do you accept those statistics? Why? Commercial airlines travel vastly greater distances vastly faster than car, by people who travel for different reasons and motivations, and less often, so how can you compare the risks?

Bloomin' typical!

I like the new site... But a couple of suggestions:

- Can we have the same likes that we have for RecFlying? I still have a problem of blowing a love-heart to other men for some reason?

- Can it be configured like recflying in that when you click on a thread, it takes you to the next unread message?

Otherwise, good for me...

Here's my figures.. The fatality rate of active RAAus pilots is about 1 in 1000. We seem to have about 6 fatalities every year and about 6000 active members.

Now the death rate of 60 year-olds is about ten in a thousand from all causes.

As of now I am in my 70's where the death rate from all causes is about 20 per thousand per year. So getting old is far more dangerous, in mortality terms, than flying.

Any tips on how to stop getting older?

You're only as young as thewoman you feel, they say ;-)

@APenNameAndThatA, I do disagree and the reason is you are picking an arbitrary comparison for a start...

Based on @M61A1, post citing c. 90% of motorcycle accidents happen on days in good weather, and a good deal of those on the weekends, then this would imply two (or more, but for the sake of argument, let's leave it at two) things: a) Motorcycles are generally only ridden in good weather and mainly on the weekends; or b) of all the motorcycle trips that are ridden, 90% of accidents occur in good weather and of those, most occur on the weekend. There is a subtle difference between them, because, it may be that 90% of all motorcycle kms or hours ridden are during the week and variable weather and for work (courier, emergency services, etc) or to commute. If it is more towards the latter, then that would imply a few other things, namely either most of the good weather/weekend riders are recreational only - only bring their shiny chromed machines out on good days and although they may be travelling somewhere, the main purpose for the ride is to enjoy the ride.. the sort of equivalent of the $100 hamburger.. or that all those motorcylists that are extremely careful and safe during the week and in bad weather become lazy when they are recreationally riding.

What matters is if you are lumping everything together, you are not making any meaningful comparison of risk, because recreational flying (be it in RAA or GA machines) will not nominally have the same characteristics by which to comapre risk. For example, the professional rider is riding much more frequently, in different conditions and in a different state of mind; he (or she) is more concerned with miles covered and getting to and from their destination in the quickest and (hopefully) safest time as their livelihood (and possibly someone else's life) depends on it. His bike is a means to the end. The recreational rider, like the recreational flyer, is more interested in enjoying their pastime - the journey is more often than not the reason for picking that mode of transport; taking in the sights, enjoying the weather, enjoying their destination, but possibly not bhe the main reason for their destination. Also, they are generally lilely to be periodical users of their aircraft - maybe once a week, fortnight or even month... (yes some are more frequent), and what about in the winter months (although granted, winter in most of Australia is a more forgiving environment for aviaton than winter in the UK). The professional motorcylist is likely to find themselves in urban and suburban situations; stop-start, slow traffic, etc (as well as other risks such as peds, dogs, stoopid drivers and the like). The recreational rider is likely to be on urban/suburban roads for the period it takes to get to the freeway/highway to get to the mountains or ocean roads, etc.. but they are more likely to be in rural or open road situations. The bike for the recreational rider, like the aircraft for the recreational flyer is, if not the end in itself, a big part of it. How you would compare the risk of flying to urban riding of a professional is a leap of statiscial analysis I have yet to see made valid.

So, in order to compare the risk, you have to compare most like-for-like. We would remove the professional daily rider (or rides) from the equation because in terms of environmental, purpose, state of mind and other factors, they are not in anyway a valid comparison of correlative factors that make up the risk (except that they are both a mode of transport - may was well compare them to shipping accidents in the atlantic ocean). By the way, by cleansing the data, I am making recreational flying seem even more safe compared to our motorcyling brethren.

Picking factor to express risk has to be valid, too.. The distance travelled, I think is not valid and here are the reasons:

- As recreational biking, driving or flying is concerned, distance travelled is probably not the key purpose of the trip - the time on the favoured mode of transport is. If you decide you want to do a day trip, you work out how long you want to be flying/riding, pick a suitable destination and go for it. In when biking, we may look at a distance, but it will be based on how long it will take to get there at a speed, which is pretty constant. In flying, we may pick a destination, but due to a stonking headwind component, may bin it for something else in the time we have available; or we may extend the entire duration of the trip (say to an overnighter) so we spend a comfortable x hours in the aircraft. My point is for recreational biking/driving/riding/cycling/whatever, it is more about time (for flying, your licence requirements are measured in hours with only the x-country component requiring min. distance).

- Comparing distance based on an average calculation of speed is erroneous. We are comparing ground speed to airpseed and in the air, we are almost always subject to a wind component that speeds us up or slows us down.. and I don't think one can reliably assume a net zero for many reasons. inclduing prevailing winds, time of day, rarely are routes flowin reciprocally, etc. At a couple thousand feet, you can easily experience a 20+kt headwind and by the time you get to your destination, the wind has dropped and you are experiencing a small tailwind on the way back. This does not affect ground vehicles in the same way. As another example, we have heard on these fora how people have been able to almost hover their aircraft in stiff headwinds; you may in theory take off into a 50kt headwind (somehow) and hold it there for your friends to see your death defying skill and get absorbed by it all that you forget that you had only an hours fuel, exhaust that fuel, stall, and lights out. You have not flown 1km, but have been aloft an hour.. To me, per hour seems a more realistic risk comparison.

Going to your project analogy - say we were comparing the risk of bespoke software development and implementation v. buy off the shelf and implement. Th risk we are comparing between them is failed software development. Sounds reasonable, but I would not use the average of all software implementations - SCADA and ERP are different beasts with different risk profiles that makes the comparison meaningless. If I was doing an ERP implementation, I would strip out from historical data non-ERP projects.

I don't think it's double standards at all.. They have to take practical decisions; normally, the decision is to impose and enforce appropriate social distancing. For the demonstrations, it was a question of allowing it to happen to minimise as much as possible the contravention to social distancing; and as I understand they were conducted under a watchful eye in case things got out of hand - or interfere and guarantee maximum social interaction - and also put your police at unnecessary risk as well.. They had a developing situation for which they had to assess and determine the best (or in this case, the least worse) course of action. We may differ in our assessment of what the appropriate course of action was, but it is not a double standard. Any of those protestors in the normal course of events breaching or endangering social distancing et al would have been dealt in the same way as those in Rye - or anywhere else.

Of the airfields/airports I have been to, it is still one of my favourites, but I was filthy at them knocking down the playground to put up an office for Oxford Aviation...

Just picking up this thread and haven't looked at the maths in great detail, but if we are talking comparing risk of flying to risk of driving (or more accurately road use), then it is an almost impossible comparison. For example, we could use the absolute fatalities per time unit (hours) or distance travelled, but at best, both are crude comparisons best left to the senationalistic press. For example, what is the big factor (outside of the pilot/driver/rider/pedestrian) missing from this the above that would have a major bearing on the numbers if it were consistent between the two? Weather. If we took away all of the accidents that happened in driveable, but poor weather (and assuming most LSA flying is done in good weather, of course), we may find the statistical averages of fatalities per hour or per distance travelled quite different for the road users.. .but would that not be a more valid comparison? Also, traffic density... and other obstructions/distractions...

In financial engineering, we have to do back testing of our risk models. This means that we have to effectively scrub yesterday's and historiucal and current data sets from all the noise that will distort the key findings and then apply the models. The maths applied to the scrubbing is usually as complex as the models themselves. Referring back to scrubbng the datasets so that we can approximate the weather conditions and model accordingly, well, you do the math.. It is not simple.

Wherever we are with respect to operating vehicles, we can mitigiate most of the risks, but not eliminate them all.. But we should strive to minimise it to the lowest practical value.