A day in the life…
Well, as I’ve witnessed when watchin Mike in his job, it takes a lot of putting up with rules and regulations to experience that freedom up there!
Of course, in an increasingly complex world, rules, laws and regulations are inevitable. Especially in aviation mistakes may have serious consequences, and most rules have a really good reason to be in place. But so often I think, if there only was a law for courtesy and common sense, we could probably drop 95% of the legal code. So, as much as I like to complain about the going overboard of bureaucracy, I have to say this here too: Damn you, stupid people out there! You’re both the reason and the excuse for people wanting to rule my everyday life down to the smallest detail!
It’s like bureaucrats and the stupid people are a tag team. One person makes a mistake that would have been avoidable by either sticking to already existing rules or using common sense. Somebody gets hurt. That incident is then used for the rules to be tightened. Soon somebody stupid enough causes another accident, despite the rules and safety procedures. The rules are changed again, every loophole closed and every eventuality taken care of. –> Repeat until infinity. Every rise in the level of safety soon results in a rise in the level of stupidity, cancelling out at least part of the increased safety. Hm, maybe I’ve found a new law of nature here! 🙂
Sure thing. I myself never thought of flying as “pure freedom”, as many people say – but of course, it’s only my opinion. For me, flying is much more about doing a complex task and dominating such a cool machine. But of course, there are the moments of child-like joy… specially when you fly a light piston-prop over a non-controlled area. Cows beware!
Nice strip, stef! By the way, the law you mentioned, it actually exists… the people that do statistics even have a name for it: risk compensation. It’s pretty much the reason why we have inifnite amounts of rules, regulations and procedures, yet people still manage to cause accidents. It’s kind of sad, but oh well.
“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure aboutthe universe.” Albert Enistein
Sometimes I just think that we shouldn’t legislate against something that will only kill the person doing the activity – and let Darwin take care of the rest.
The law is often formulated like this:
The equivalent reaction to providing an idiot-proof solution seems to be that of universe producing a bigger idiot.
im not a pilot but i can say with all the forms and logs you have to fill in you dont really get the freedom that you think of in this little cartoon..gosh getting my pilots liscence seems not really what id be wanting after all that, i guess ill stick to the virtual simming world
Chuck is showing improvement: https://www.chickenwingscomics.com/?p=689
@Darren: if you tend to choose real flying you will get rid of at least part of the paperwork that everyone else has got to do on earth in all sorts of offices 🙂 Besides you are not obligated to obtain an ATPL, you may fly in your freetime with a small glider/Cessna or similar -> not that much paperwork but still fun…. if it’s not below 80 knots to quote a celebrity 😀
Thanks for the “Great Ride”!!
wow, this must be a first for Chuck! 😉 hehe
That’s the first time I’ve stumbled across the Piper’s tail number “N36V”.
I was driving on an ice-road the other day, and came across a sign that read, “Fishing on constructed roadway is prohibited”. Of course, you know that the sign went up because someone did just that…
Hey, if you build an Airdrome Airplanes replica World War I airplane, you may have been out to motor, air speed indicator, RPM indicator and be able to fly all over the US since last year space, avoiding on the wedding cakes of course!
Sorry, that was supposed to have read “…, you may have a fuel gauge, altimeter, air speed indicator, RPM indicator and be able to fly all over the US CLASS ‘G’ airspace,”
I was trying to use Dragon Speak instead of typing!