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01-04-2011, 02:52 PM
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Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: Ramona, CA
Posts: 2,370
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Quote:
Originally Posted by fly3g
Assume vehicle velocity is head on collision at 140mph (i.e both vehicles doing 70mph)
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That is a bad assumption. A recent episode on Mythbusters tackled this and they proved that if both vehicles crash head on at 70 mph, it is similar to crashing into a static object at 70 mph. There is no "doubling" of the speed.
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01-04-2011, 03:33 PM
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Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Colorado
Posts: 44
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Kinetic Energy
Bruce - you are correct the speed isn't doubled, I corrected the KE values so the total assumed the individual vehicles KE in the total. Still a bigger number and I am not sure what the Myth Boys found but all that KE goes somewhere???(Metal deformation, heat, residual motion of parts). I was just trying to compare the magnitude of the energy available when it goes bad.
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01-04-2011, 03:42 PM
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Join Date: Dec 2010
Location: Jacksonville, FL
Posts: 219
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The pro/con of 3rd class medicals aside, the scope of the issue itself is worth reflecting on. From a recent AOPA summary:
"The FAA processes about 450,000 medical applications each year. Only about 0.7% of applicants are denied, and many of those just accept the denial and don?t continue to pursue certification. Of those who do provide additional information to the FAA, about 0.1% of them receive a final denial. So, that boils down to about 300-400 final denials each year."
At this point, I'll switch from data to two assumptions:
1. Of those 0.7% who were denied and didn't pursue certification, most accepted that they didn't meet the medical requirements or they had no further interest in flying. (Let's save the debate on the requirements for elsewhere. They simply knew they wouldn't qualify or didn't care to).
2. In any population of 450,000 - but especially in populations of 450,000 mostly middle aged and older individuals - there are likely to be 400+ individuals many of us wouldn't want to climb into a cockpit with due to their limited physical abilities.
A medical denial to an individual with an interest in aviation is a BIG issue. The issue itself is numerically minor and, as suggested by the numbers, may well justify the medical class. What I hear most folks complaining about (and you see in this thread) is the process itself, which can be medically costly, involve reviews of long duration (altho' that has been improved over the last few years as reviews were pushed down to the regional FSDO level, and are especially costly for professional pilots who earn their living in the cockpit.
It's especially disappointing to hear of a case (early in this thread) where those responsible for a govt. process can only offer a shrug of the shoulders for a decision that, on any other level, apparently was not defensible. That's unfair to the individual but also to the credibility of the process itself.
Jack
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01-04-2011, 04:53 PM
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Join Date: Feb 2005
Posts: 571
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I know I went to public schools, but even my limited math tells me that with 7/10 of 1 percent failing annually, we are talking about over 3,100 (not 300+) people every year who can't fly from that point on because a government agency that is supposed to be promoting aviation says they can't. I don't care much what others think on this one, I say that is wrong and in my judgement constitutes an indefensible government intrusion in the life of the nations citizens. Commercial and airline flying is another matter entirely, but there is no justification for this level of limitation on people who simply want to fly an aircraft recreationally.
As others have said, as soon as you fail your 3rd Class physical and can't fly any more, you can go get in your car and drive home through any neighborhood, school district, or on any Interstate in this country or any other. You can't fly OVER them for a even a split second, but you can drive ON them for hours, in a vehicle that weighs (typically) three times as much as any GA airplane and which has little freedom of maneuver (compared to an aircraft) without hitting another vehicle full of people.
Truth is, the sky could be raining airplanes (though it's not) and the odds would be that the vast majority wouldn't hit anything. I say if you are medically safe to drive a car, you are medically safe to fly a GA airplane. It's long since time for the FAA to drop 3rd Class medical requirements entirely. And, yes I still have mine and don't expect to lose it anytime soon.
Regards,
Lee...
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Lee Logan
Ridgeland, SC (3J1)
F1 Rocket #160 flying
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01-04-2011, 05:03 PM
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Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: Madison, Wisconsin
Posts: 778
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Jack Tyler
2. In any population of 450,000 - but especially in populations of 450,000 mostly middle aged and older individuals - there are likely to be 400+ individuals many of us wouldn't want to climb into a cockpit with due to their limited physical abilities.
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I would add to this that there are pilots out there I wouldn't choose to fly with, not because of their physical health but because they display obvious evidence of poor judgement. Personally I've known two such individuals who are no longer with us due to their own foolishness in an airplane.
On the other hand I've yet to meet someone who later crashed due to incapacitation.
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Alan Carroll
RV-8 N12AC
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01-04-2011, 05:33 PM
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Join Date: May 2006
Location: Houston
Posts: 2,012
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Would someone please tell me where I can find reference to all the incidents due to pilot incapacitation, involved others, *and* that an FAA medical would have caught/prevented?
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Bryan
Houston
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01-04-2011, 06:01 PM
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Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: La Feria Texas
Posts: 3,822
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I know I have read those figures, truth is that it seems to be ONLY the pilots with medicals falling over dead at the stick. With my pacemaker and defibrillator permanently installed, one could readily argue that I am therefore far safer than a pilot without them. Kinda like dual ingnition on an aircraft engine.
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01-04-2011, 06:52 PM
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Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Park Ridge, IL
Posts: 369
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current national financial impact of 3rd class?
If they are processing 450,000 applications per year other than the paltry fee it costs I wonder what the actual costs of running all those applications through the system and if they even cover the cost of processing.
Kind of like writing a $20 ticket for not having a $10 City sticker?
I know I used to be a Mayor in a town that still does that because we couldn't get enough votes to stop issuing them as many towns are learning that by the time you factor in the officers time, court and lawyer costs we were losing $100,000 plus in a town of 7,000!
So if you extrapalate a little if they get $900,000 in application fees but have the buildings and overhead and staff and computers and all the ancillary things to process even if they had a 100% approval rating wouldn't they be losing Millions a year that could be used to offset user fees we keep hearing about or runway improvements like the soon to finally be gone Mayor Daley spent on Meigs Field?
You still need the FAA, I am not arguing that, what I am saying is redirect the focus to the categories with the biggest impact on aviation safety not the smallest and try to get at least close to a cost benefit equation can ya!
If .007 get failed why do we need the class in the first place based on the above?
Let's focus on the TSA and the ATC issues that just seem to get worse and worse instead of all this wasted effort when as we have proven in this thread that we all know many pilots (multiplied by the fact we are all talkiing about different folks) that DO pass the 3rd class and the PPL and should NOT be flying because they are a menace in a plane and probably a car too!
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Jim Pappas VAF #13
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01-04-2011, 09:28 PM
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Join Date: Jun 2010
Location: Stilwell, KS
Posts: 1,096
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 Notwithstanding instant death & incapacitation scenarios... if I have a heart attack in a car, I can pull off to the side of the road and stop within several seconds. If I have a heart attack in a plane at altitude, I'm screwed, and so are the non-pilot passengers in my airplane.
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Katie Bosman
RV-3B sold, but flying!
Next project: ???
Builders gonna build...
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01-04-2011, 10:33 PM
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Join Date: Oct 2009
Location: Albuquerque, NM
Posts: 427
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Is enough ever enough?
Quote:
Originally Posted by KatieB
 Notwithstanding instant death & incapacitation scenarios... if I have a heart attack in a car, I can pull off to the side of the road and stop within several seconds. If I have a heart attack in a plane at altitude, I'm screwed, and so are the non-pilot passengers in my airplane.
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You're right, Katie. Perhaps for safety, we should all just give up flying with passengers. Ever. Just for their safety's sake.
I've respected so much of what you've said on this site over the two years I've been around, but I feel like you're just way off on this issue. To me, the real point boils down to two factors:
1) do the current Class III medical requirements improve overall safety enough to justify the imposition they have on otherwise safe pilots, and
2) since we can never fully quantify risk, should we abandon all activities that just might (MIGHT!) cause us harm. The leading cause of death for adults in the USA is Coronary Artery Disease. Of those who will eventually die from it, the first signs of it often appear in their teens and twenties. The only way to detect those earliest signs are invasive and expensive. Tell me: how do you propose we separate those pilots who are at risk from an in-flight cardiac event from those who are not? Would you be okay if we deny you the privilege of flight on a purely genetic basis, so that if any one of your parents or grandparents had CAD then you can't fly?
I don't think you would, and the reason is obvious. The smallest risk of catastrophe should not lead us to prohibit every possible cause for that catastrophe. Only the largest risks are those we should bother spending our resources to first understand and then mitigate. But we and our ancestors have been so effective at removing those, that the civilized world is actually a fairly safe place to live. And so even though all the statistics show that to be the case, we seem to persevere at trying to remove all risk from life, even at the expensive of fundamental freedoms.
Any of us can build a cage of our own design and force people to occupy it for their own good; we only bristle when other people want to put us in the cage they built. I think there is more danger from justifying our doing anything we can imagine to protect ourselves than there is in the sum total of the things that are actually going to kill us. Why work so hard to live in a world that is as stifling (but safe!) as the one you describe?
With respect,
Stephen
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