Flyfunston

Food for thought from the FAA Risk Management Handbook:

"Personality can play a large part in the manner in which hazards are gauged. People who might be reckless in nature take this on board the flight deck.

For instance, in an article in the August 25, 2006, issue of Commercial and Business Aviation entitled Accident Prone Pilots, Patrick R. Veillette, Ph.D., notes that research shows one of the primary characteristics exhibited by accident-prone pilots was their disdain toward rules.

Similarly, other research by Susan Baker, Ph.D., and her team of statisticians at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, found a very high correlation between pilots with accidents on their flying records and safety violations on their driving records. The article brings forth the question of how likely is it that someone who drives with a disregard of the driving rules and regulations will then climb into an aircraft and become a role model pilot.

The article goes on to hypothesize that, for professional pilots, the financial and career consequences of deviating from standard procedures can be disastrous but can serve as strong motivators for natural-born thrill seekers. Improving the safety records of the thrill seeking type pilots may be achieved by better educating them about the reasons behind the regulations and the laws of physics, which cannot be broken."