Sender: <marv@lancaironline.net> (Marvin Kaye)
To: lml@lancaironline.net
Date: Fri, 17 Sep 2004 10:22:23 -0400
Message-ID: <redirect-415098@logan.com>
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 receiver=logan.com; client-ip=63.82.232.100; envelope-from=marknlisa@hometel.com
From:  <marknlisa@hometel.com>
Subject: Accidents, or Non-Accidents?

*CAUTION* Long post...

After more than 25 years in the training business there's is one thing I 
can tell you with absolute certainty:  YOU CAN'T TEACH ATTITUDE.  

Share your experience, discuss others' experience, draw attention to the 
nascent bad attitude--these are all tools used to teach safety (an 
ATTITUDE not a FACT).  But eventually your student is gonna solo.  At that 
point, they are making their own choices based soley on their own opinion 
of what's safe or unsafe.

You can teach cognitive skills (when you move a lever it causes this to 
happen) and psycomotor skills (for this response, move the lever this much 
but no more) readily enough.  These kinds of skills are easily (too 
easily?) learned by most.  Facts and physics are immutable.  

But the right attitude (if you move the lever more than this much under 
these circumstances *even if it is fun* you *might* get hurt, hurt someone 
else or break something) will either be accepted or rejected because it's 
not based on fact.  

"MAY CAUSE INJURY." 

"COULD RESULT IN DAMAGE TO EQUIPMENT."  

We see cautions and warnings like this all the time on product labels and 
in operating manuals.  They all have a common theme: the *POTENTIAL* of 
danger.  Unlike physics and facts, cautions and warnings aren't definite; 
only under the proper circumstance or happenstance, mixed with the wrong 
*attitude*, do they become probable. Even then, sometimes, we avoid 
disaster (God protects fools and children... which are we?)

We can read about others' experiences until our eyes cross, but until we 
make that personal choice to internalize the lessons we are doomed to 
repeat the same mistakes.

With that being said, I propose a new way of looking at things.  We spend 
most of the time in discussing accidents concentrating on what this or 
that person did or didn't do to cause it.  In many (most?) cases, unless 
the person survived and chose to share honestly, *we really don't even 
know* what happened... we speculate.  I've always been uncomfortable 
learning safety lessons based on speculation.  

What if we *knew* for sure that a person's decision-making or piloting 
skill had averted disaster?  What if a pilot's decision to do (or not do) 
something resulted in the safe completion of a flight under potentially 
hazardous conditions?  Could we learn anything from those situations?

I'd like to see folks posting more experiences where good decisions 
resulted in *avoiding* an accident/incident.  I've seen some of that on 
this list, but without the emphasis or analysis on *why* a particular 
course of action was chosen over the alternatives.  

Some of you may feel uncomfortable doing this; you might feel as though 
you're bragging.  Believe me, we'll get enough "arm-chair quarterbacking" 
that by the time the discussion is over you'll think you should hand over 
your ticket to the nearest FSDO.  Perhaps in a nod to those too modest to 
participate (and/or to keep the mudslinging from discouraging the thin-
skinned) our moderator can work a scheme allowing annonymous posting.


Mark Sletten
Legacy FG N828LM
http://web.hometel.com/~legacyfgkit


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