Man Law

[youtube:141a3jmg]http://youtu.be/8RLCD-PpWqU[/youtube:141a3jmg]

You're driving down a one way residential street. Speed limit is 25 mph. Cars are parked along one side. You are keeping your distance from those cars to maximize visibility and reaction time and traveling at 23 mph. A kid comes flying out between the cars as fast as his bike will go, looking over his shoulder behind him at his friends. He makes a bee-line collision course for the front of your modern pedestrian-safe non-polluting wonder-smug car, but there is two seconds of reaction time, not to mention stop time. The hard tires your gas saving car wears to improve mileage reduce your braking performance. You punt the kid into the air in your 30 mph closing speed. He flys into the air and smacks his head onto the curb, putting him into a coma to die one day later. Are you at fault for chosing to drive onto that street? Choosing to save gas? Choosing to leave your driveway?

Alternate scenario, you are driving between San Jose and Santa Cruz. You are keeping posted speed but no less because you are being overtaken frequently from behind, and you know closing speed is the number one cause of accidents. Still, rounding a bend you have a blowout and as soon as there is a runoff after the turn, you start to pull over but there is a car with two teenagers standing next to it in the runoff area. With your blowout, your breaking and steering performance even with the ABS can't keep you from punting one of the kids into the air, only to smack his head on the concrete divider next to the runoff area, putting him into a coma only to die one day later.

The point is, life is dangerous, and the end is certain. Leaving the house means taking on the risk of killing or being killed, regardless of caution taken. Sure, our legal system builds in incentives to try to enrich oneself on the random misfortune of oneself or ones loved ones, and perhaps I would do the same, but we should recognize that perversion as what it is, a lottery ticket that should be canceled.

For those with kids, assuming they could assess the relative risks, would you rather your kid flying the plane try to ditch in the water, risking their own life, or land on the beach, preserving their own while risking the lives of others. Really? What would you wish?

Seriously boys. This life thing is risky. Death is certain. It's not necessarily anybody's fault and evolution made sure that people are shockingly skilled at acting in their own self interest. In addition, in moments of stress, people are required to make quick decisions. Grow up, grow a set, recognize the reality of life, and move on.

Folks, I am new on here, I have a few gray hair around the sides, I have built and worked on Lancair's, flown in them, First, the propeller came off, Continenal's have had crankshaft problems in the past. An Lancair IV-P comes over the fence about 85 miles an hour with the engine running. Think, no propeller, the cg is out, so he is having to come down about 130/140 miles per hour, can't see much out the front, and sides are also covered with oil. he could only see an outline of the beach, he was praying that no one on the beach, he did not have the time to change if he could have seen out front.. I guess if there had been two trees on the beach, you would wanted him to go between them because the book says to. He did what he had too with what he had, and he will cry a long time over it.

A very poignant post.
+1.

Like all post crash discussions, there are a lot of coulda, shoulda, woulda on this one as well. When the engine is out, the thinking and decision making are no where near what everyone is expressing in this thread. While engaging in discussions in this thread everyone has the time to think and come up with their responses-we also have the luxury to go back and delete or add words and sentences. But when you lose an engine and "it" has really hit the fan, the time to make a decision and act upon it are very short. If this pilot had known he would hit someone, I am sure he would not have gone where he did, but to condemn him now is purely monday morning quarterbacking. If you have not been in a situation that this pilot was in, then everything you can think of saying is theoretical at best..... I feel sorry for the poor jogger as well, he was either at the wrong place at the time or his time had come....

...Babar.

You guys keep going back to these stories about car crashes and "split second" decisions.

This was not a split second decisions and he had millions of miles of ocean he could've easily landed in.

A lot of these expensive homebuilts are uninsured for the hull, I have always wondered if that translates into a greater desire to "save" the airplane in an emergency landing given the amount of dollars and time invested. Landing in the ocean would almost certainly destroy the airplane. Landing on the beach might not.

What leads to you to believe that an amateur built experimental is any more or less likely to have hull insurance than a certified spam can? Insurance on my ABE is cheaper than the Bo.

The number one rule of nature is supposedly self-preservation. I have no problem with that concept.

Tell me ....you're locked in a room, maybe even with your family and one stranger. You're given a gun and only one bullet and you are told one person must die before you can escape. It is NOT going to be me nor my family. (Even the damned teenager....)
Lose an engine, prop, wing, whatever...... you do everything you can to survive....

Secondly you worry about what you're going to hit, or if you're going to hit someone down there.

Maybe the guy or passenger couldn't swim. Then land on a near-deserted beach. That wasn't some movie, and he wasn't Robert Duvall....

Why don't we just have him drawn and quartered while we are at it?
Wow, how arrogant we are.

Hope you are never in the same situation. Or Jason for that matter.

I know an old Marine F4 jock that says the "Great Santini" is still alive, and "Bull" was confused as to why he was killed off. IIRC the book was written by "Santini's" son.

Yep, that's true, at least according to wiki .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Santini

Boy, with all that tenseness in the air last night, I think a few guys just needed to get um.....relaxed with female company.

Maybe the jogger didn't see the plane and ran out in front of it ?
We don't know we were NOT there.

Very Bad day all around. If forced with this situation, I'll try to slip and see where I'm going at what -- 130 KIAS. into the bank of knowledge it goes, room for lot's more

+!