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Comment by psyc | Hacker News Reader

I take the same thing from that quote. I have a good friend who has become one of the top competition paraglider pilots in the world. A lot of paragliders see him as doing terrifying, reckless things. He's told me that he considers himself a conservative pilot, and that he doesn't take risks. I agree with his self-assessment. I've known him a long time, and saw him ascend through a long, well-ordered series of incremental challenges.

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Luck only lasts so long. You don't last long at sports like this if you aren't cautious and well-trained, that's for sure.

I'll offer a counter anecdote to yours: I was talking to a guy this weekend who had been a serious hang-glider for over a decade when he was younger. Every time a friend would have a problem, he analyzed it and saw that because of the way he operated he wouldn't make the same mistake and could therefore rationalize his continued participation in the sport. Eventually though, he had a problem, he made a mistake, it scared him, but it took fully two years of continuing to fly before he finally worked through it and decided that he could never eliminate enough risk and quit flying.

EDIT: I may have mischaracterized his response and removed "error-free" language and clarified with "eliminate enough risk".

Climbers do this type of analysis too. Accident are reported,filed, and are published in a yearly volume. You can also search online:

http://publications.americanalpineclub.org/

It's a great supplement to experience,

German equivalent, must read if you're a climber and know the language: http://www.bergundsteigen.at/

Austria, Switzerland and Germany have a very long rock climbing history (unsurprisingly), and their respective climbing associations are obsessed about safety.

So, both of the replies to my comment seem like they assume there's a need for a strong assurance that "it won't happen to me." I know hundreds of para/hang pilots, and I think the majority of them don't think about it that way. We already made a fundamental decision to risk life and limb to fly.

We engage in that kind of analysis continually, and collectively. Our conversations are like 80% post-mortem, all the time. Somebody gets hurt, the whole community analyses it in minute detail, the pilot writes it up, we watch video of the incidents. We check in with ourselves about whether we would make the mistake, whether we have the knowledge/skill/pre-flight routine to avoid it. Contrary to the other commenter, constant self- and peer- assessment is extremely useful. It's just that the goal isn't to assure ourselves that we won't get hurt. The goal is simply to improve our odds. That's all.

Most of us know multiple pilots who died unexpectedly, sometimes very good pilots in benign conditions. I'd guess every one of us knows someone who broke their back. We're very conscious of the risks, people who think their skill puts them above it are in the minority. We only talk about odds, and increasing our time between incidents. Those few of us who have been unscathed know that we're due. It's worth it. I've seen a paraplegic come back and fly again.

EDIT: Yes, "eliminate enough risk" sounds much more like para-talk to me. My instructor always harped on about high-percentage vs low-percentage decisions. He was downright gleeful about responding to ubiquitous "Is flying safe?" questions by popping catastrophe reels into the DVD player.

We had two high-profile paragliding deaths over the past year in my area. One, a seasoned pro who'd flown (and instructed) here for decades apparently took a risky line (if you don't have enough altitude or updrafts to make it over a saddle, there's nowhere to go) and didn't make it. She knew the area well and knew the issues but something went wrong - what specifically happened is unknown of course, maybe canopy collapse. The second was a father who took his daughter up, failed to clip himself in correctly somehow, got disconnected, and fell 1000 feet. His daughter didn't know how to fly but survived her subsequent crash landing.

* I'm not a paraglider, so apologies if the terminology is off.

There is an old saying in climber culture: "There are old climbers. There are bold climbers... but, there are no old, bold climbers."

My dad used to say the same about fighter pilots (he was one).

> ... he wouldn't make the same mistake and could therefore rationalize his continued participation in the sport.

In the early chapters of the book The Right Stuff, Tom Wolfe says that this was the normal attitude among test pilots about their brethren who crashed and died. "How could anybody fail to check his hose connections? And how could anybody be in such poor condition as to pass out that quickly from hypoxia? ... One theorem was: There are no accidents and no fatal flaws in the machines; there are only pilots with the Wrong Stuff. (I.e., blind Fate can't kill me.)"

I've never heard anyone describe themselves as a reckless or unsafe driver. I'm sure majority of people before accidents say they're conservative drivers.

Maybe he's right, but... self-assessments of skills are rarely useful. Survival bias and all that.

A combat fighter pilot once told me that 90% of pilots were fearful they were not good enough, and covered it up with bravado and drinking. The other 10% knew they were good enough.

*weren't good enough

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