Too much Safety can kill you

[Bruce Tuncks]

In South Australia we had this regulation that over 70's had to pass a medical examination each year to keep their driving license. It was found that the main effect of this was to make many people inactive, which is a much greater danger than driving. This included a lot of people who would have passed the check, but who didn't want to go through the process. To their credit, the SA government have abolished the requirement.

 

In aviation terms, here's the risks for 60 year-olds:

 

Mortality from all causes = 10 in 1000

 

Extra mortality from flying RAAus planes = 1 in 1000

 

Extra mortality from being 5kg overweight = 2 in 1000

 

Extra mortality from being inactive = "twice that of overweight" = 4 in 1000

 

Imagine that if you stop 1000 people flying "for their own safety" and yet they were looking after themselves to keep flying. Now it is possible that some of these people will respond by becoming hiking enthusiasts, but the driving license evidence shows that these were not statistically significant.

 

So you save 1 person from a flying accident and kill 6 people from overweight and inactivity.

 

I reckon "safety" is becoming just another tool of oppression.

 

... Bruce

 

 

[nickduncs84]

If you get frustrated every time the government makes a rash uninformed decision it won't be long before you lose your mind. Government departments generally generally believe that every time a tragedy of any sort occurs, there is a law that should be changed to fix it. There was recently a truck that lost it brakes on the south eastern freeway which killed 2 innocent people. One of the responses was to reduce the speed limit for all cars travelling on the road. To my knowledge there has never been a car lose its brakes and I'm sure that changing the speed limit by 10km will not have any impact on safety at all. What I am absolutely certain of is that there was no study done to determine if it was a rational decision or not.

 

So the moral of the story is, the majority of government departments from local council and up are bloated wastes of space. But I'd still rather live in Australia than anywhere else in the world, so I'll continue to sleep well at night, even though I know a fair chunk of my tax dollars get flushed down the toilet in one way or another.

 

 

[bexrbetter]

But I'd still rather live in Australia than anywhere else in the world,

Have you lived anywhere else for any extended period of time Nick? Trips to Bali don't count

 

 

[Bruce Tuncks]

Yes Nick that's how we are getting overloaded with regulations and the regulators are becoming a great burden to support. Fortunately for them, the same rules are not applied to the regulators themselves, for example if dangerous and unnecessary height restrictions are a factor in a crash, this is ignored.

 

On the subject of other countries: The most bureaucratic state in history was Ming dynasty China. The whole country was ruled like CASA does to us. They even told you what colour clothes you could wear, and merchants had to submit a "flight plan" of their proposed journeys beforehand for regulators to approve.

 

What this achieved was to make a great country (they invented kites and gunpowder) into a failed state where warlords held sway.

 

That was long ago...these days, Australians like Jabiru are moving to China, and one of the attractions is the fewer stifling regulations.

 

 

[Guest Andys@coffs]

....... What I am absolutely certain of is that there was no study done to determine if it was a rational decision or not.

Im not so sure it wasn't rational, just not for the reasons you are thinking of....

 

1) Reduce speed of an area that has been at the higher speed for some time without issues

 

2) Police the area like crazy, but always with speed camera's and other non obvious, ie no flashing lights etc.

 

3) Rake in the dough!!!!

 

4) repeat 2) to 4) until the costs of doing 2) equal the revenue raised

 

5) sprook at election time how tax's were never raised, and how much more for your tax $ you the public have been getting

 

Sounds perfectly logical to me

 

Andy

 

 

[Guest ozzie]

Wow the government has rescinded a dopey law. Think i'll do some cartwheels to celebrate, nope can't do that they have been banned from the playground.

 

 

[nickduncs84]

Have you lived anywhere else for any extended period of time Nick? Trips to Bali don't count

Sure have mate. Lived for 5 years in Boston and have spent extended times in Canada and the UK with work commitments. Never actually been to Bali. I would move to China and build engines, but between the rotax 912 and the bex 1000 the market is a little over saturated for me.

 

 

[poteroo]

No question about it - 'safety' is the new employment opportunity. Get your kids to do one of the many 'management' degrees available - and get into HR. Aviation and industry is being swamped by it all - your school must have an SMS, be audited for DAMP, your students have to study TEM and HF. You no longer preflight - these days it's risk assessment. Yup, it's a brave new world!

 

 

[bexrbetter]

Sure have mate. Lived for 5 years ....

Cool, just a lot of people make the statement and haven't even been out of the country. Like a few other places, it has it's good and bad points. For business development, it's bad. For OHS, nannying and as you mentioned, over reaction to Darwinism's forcing everyone else to suffer and lowering the gene pool quality, it sux - very badly.

 

On the subject of other countries: The most bureaucratic state in history was Ming dynasty China. The whole country was ruled like CASA does to us. They even told you what colour clothes you could wear, and merchants had to submit a "flight plan" of their proposed journeys beforehand for regulators to approve.

What this achieved was to make a great country (they invented kites and gunpowder) into a failed state where warlords held sway.

And in Australia you get arrested and jailed for not having a gold prospecting licence. Speaking of which I love explaining to the Chinese at dinner parties how when they came here 200 years ago looking for gold that we taught them how to grow rice and use chopsticks!

 

Now did you want to discuss 2014?

 

That was long ago...these days, Australians like Jabiru are moving to China, and one of the attractions is the fewer stifling regulations.

They are not moving to China, they are "sending production to China" as in selling their product there (good news).

 

They have plenty of regulations here, it's just that they are very flexible and want to work with the problems you encounter along the way and tailor to suit. Polar opposite of trying to develop in Oz.

 

 

[sain]

Yes Nick that's how we are getting overloaded with regulations and the regulators are becoming a great burden to support. Fortunately for them, the same rules are not applied to the regulators themselves, for example if dangerous and unnecessary height restrictions are a factor in a crash, this is ignored.On the subject of other countries: The most bureaucratic state in history was Ming dynasty China. The whole country was ruled like CASA does to us. They even told you what colour clothes you could wear, and merchants had to submit a "flight plan" of their proposed journeys beforehand for regulators to approve.

 

What this achieved was to make a great country (they invented kites and gunpowder) into a failed state where warlords held sway.

 

That was long ago...these days, Australians like Jabiru are moving to China, and one of the attractions is the fewer stifling regulations.

thats just astonishing.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ming_dynasty

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_gunpowder

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kite

 

 

[pmccarthy]

Not just the gold prospecting licence. When I got my Mine. Managers a certificate in the 1970s the law said no female or Chinese could work in a mine in NSW.

 

 

[bexrbetter]

Not just the gold prospecting licence. When I got my Mine. Managers a certificate in the 1970s the law said no female or Chinese could work in a mine in NSW.

Not often, but I do get "discriminated" against here occasionally, I don't care, it's their country, I'm a guest here and they are gracious to extend their welcome to me and I am grateful for it.

 

One of the stupidities in Australia is how kind we are, plenty of things you can't do and places you can't go in China if you're not Chinese and same for many other countries. Elsewhere I mentioned the use of power words to suit Politicians and Minority groups and words such as "racist", "sexist", "discrimination", etc. are abused widely in Oz.

 

 

[Bruce Tuncks]

That's good news Bex. Just about everybody else is moving their production line to China, and I thought Jabiru were too. I bet very few other Australian companies are selling their own designed and manufactured stuff to China.

 

I completely agree with you about how we are far too soft for fear of being labelled racist, and we had the amazing story about Jihadists in Iraq collecting Australian welfare, they must have been the richest soldiers in that army.

 

 

[bexrbetter]

[

 

Just about everybody else is moving their production line to China, and I thought Jabiru were too.

No one would blame you for thinking Jabiru were going.

 

Not surprisingly I get a lot of inquiries over the years as to what's involved in setting up business here and the main theme is always the same, the Australian regulations and just how darn hard it is to actually run the business itself with the feeling of a constant battle of the Government working against them. I have never once been in discussion about workers wages being cheaper, it's just a non-issue.

 

This has been in my mind a long time before I arrived here by the way, goes all the way back to ADR27 (Oz design rules for cars) about 1973. I could not figure for the life of me why our pissy little country (on the automotive scale) would have it's own unique, and difficult, set of anti-pollution laws for cars. This immediately isolated us, GM, Ford and Chrysler Australia couldn't draw on their Parent companies technology such as Californian spec engines that were tougher and every car that was imported had to make special Australian models severely raising the retail price - hence why we got so many base model cars here in the 70's not to mention our awful ADR27 spec engines. Of course Holden gave up and ended up buying engines from Nissan for the VL Commodore and closing the foundry and engine factory at the time costing jobs. Talk about shooting ourselves in the foot, geez.

 

And of course we couldn't export engines or cars to America or Japan in a cost effective manner.

 

This isolated attitude still prevails and we haven't got many toes left.

 

 

[turboplanner]

ADR27? Those were the good old days.

 

Here we are now with this chart drawn to scale, starting in 1992 - we've reduced the carcinogenics by 97/98% since 1992. ADR 27 level scale would have been several computer screen sizes bigger than this, and we're still going.

 

EMISSION - GRAPH2.pdf

 

EMISSION - GRAPH2.pdf

 

EMISSION - GRAPH2.pdf

[Keith Page]

What is all this moaning (who has been asleep?) about Australian Goverment regulation.. I agree it is a pest and hinderance to production..

 

The big question I ask " What were all the highly paid company advisors/company executives/company leaches/company hanger ons etc. etc. doing while all these acts and regulations were being pasted by our useless politicians and to be made law?"

 

I know one thing for sure they were not looking after the people they supposed to, just themselves and the do gooders..

 

Not a lot of that rot would be law if they were awake...

 

While I am here,,,, toss all the *Safety regulations into the pile.. Saftey needed to clean up but not to the point of stupidity we must endurer now.

 

As I see the situation all the regulations were designed and enacted by people who have not a good grasp of the industry they are advising on, just some do gooder yelling.

 

Regards

 

KP.

 

 

[mothra]

KP, if I've learnt one thing by being here in B S central its this.:

 

The objective is not necessarily to do something about ( insert topic of the day) its to appear to be doing something about it.

 

Sad really

 

 

[Guest ozzie]

They announced last night that ADRs are on the way out and we are moving to world standards. Hence you will be able to buy a vehicle on line from a overseas dealer etc.

 

 

[bexrbetter]

Well said Keith, that it is allowed to happen makes it an even sadder state of affairs.

 

Also, and sadly, when a regulation is clearly ridiculous and not working, the Government won't repeal it because of our ridiculous high school maturity level Political system that sees the Opposition tearing them apart for the mistake and the media having a field day over it.

 

 

[Keith Page]

KP, if I've learnt one thing by being here in B S central its this.:The objective is not necessarily to do something about ( insert topic of the day) its to appear to be doing something about it.

Sad really

Hi mothra,

 

I have to imform you, I am involved in another organisation (nothing to do with aviation) and we are watching the law makers like hawks. The other point, look back at history and the previous history is a very good guide, to give us direction and what other hurdles which they can manufactured. We are continualy doing something about it.

 

If our organisation has some hurdles placed in our way of progress we have a leg to stand on as we have been out there keeping an eye on our great law makers who are supposed to make life easy and having a progressive outcome, not regressive.

 

Keep an eye on our great law makers they do not favor anyone in particular just themselves.

 

Regards

 

KP.

 

 

[DrZoos]

Wow KP , what the hell are you saying... That makes no sense at all

 

 

[Bruce Tuncks]

It's not the politicians who are the problem. It's the public and media and yes us too who ask the government to fix everything with more regulations. We need to start asking for less regulations not more, which is the point of this thread.

 

On the subject of politicians, the member for Mallee (I've not met him but have got a friendly response to a couple of emails) owns and flies a Brumby.

 

There may be one or two more like him, does anybody know of another?

 

 

[Guest ozzie]

Saw part of an interesting interview on the ABC last week discussing 'self regulation'. Our government is a self regulatory system. The discussion went along the lines that self regulation is open to corruption, and the forming of 'old boys' networks and law and rule making to suit only those in power. Also commented on how hard it is to correct the system. Sorta explained the problems of a certain self regulatory aviation group has had for the last decade or so.

 

I was just channel surfing at the time and just picked up the last few minutes or so. Love to have seen the whole program.

 

 

[Keith Page]

Bruce,

 

You are on to it.

 

The number of times when something goes wrong the fix is....... "A new rule is designed", never a big kick in the but and an education program for the culprit. The person who crosses up should be held accountable for their actions not a new rule.

 

The other scape goat is "Systems and processes" that gets a hammering also. The "System and process" gets the blame for the cross up.

 

Regards

 

KP.

 

 

[M61A1]

I have concerns about our new safety manager being ex-defence. It's not personal, but. I work as a civvy in a defence environment, the first response to even a small incident, is to create another layer of process and regulation. It's even got to the point where accidentally omitting a process ( whether actually necessary or not), will result in another step in the process, making it more difficult to follow the process that you had trouble following alread due it's unnecessary complexity.

 

Defence have a rather large budget, and in my experience, many ex- defence personnel struggle to deal with having to work within a tight budget. As a result, I can see recreational aviation becoming excessively burdened with processes and regulations that will mean the end of legal flying for many because it won't be affordable to comply.

 

I have recently read the latest Air Safety Digest ( a military publication), two articles stand out, one about an incident that could have turned into a separation breakdown but didn't, and another about a student who might have had a cold but didn't and was sent sent flying again. These are the sort of things being reported and acted upon as incidents, god help us if they get a glimpse of the unruly world of rec flying.