Originally Posted by
roundsounds
Safety is about education, not regulation! Look at what the FAA does in the way of educating people about hazards versus CASA producing more and more restrictive regulations.
FAA SAFETY
Roundsounds,
Exactly, but anything FAA is anathema to the aviation bureaucrats of Australia, and the longer I am around, the more I am forced to believe that too many Australians believe that more regulation is the answer to the meaning of life.
As the last head of the AHRC lamented:" People are still allowed to say what they like around the kitchen table".
FAA's recent actions in reinforcing the preference for education and training over compliance and enforcement only continues a trend of long standing.
If you look at long term "air safety outcomes" (in reality, successful risk management) you will find that Australia and US were level pegging in the 1960s.
From there, they have diverged, with US steadily improving almost every year, until, some years ago now, US became incontestably the "safest", aviationwise, in every category.Meantime, not much has changed in Australia, particularly favorable change based on successful risk management. Just minor "improvement" due to the implosion of a sector.
The point of divergence, of course, was the (then relatively new -- 1958) FAA deciding that education and training to prevent adverse events was far more likely to be a successful risk management strategy than prosecuting the survivors, if any.
The US outcomes are not the US bureaucracy's alone, but the outcome of widespread cooperation with US AOPA and Air Safety Foundation, NBAA, EAA, FSF and various similar bodies, something far less successful here, as the behavior ( despite occasional half-hearted protestations to the contrary) of the bureaucracy demonstrates their belief that all wisdom and knowledge resides in the halls of power.
How right Donald Horne was, when he wrote (and coined the phrase) The Lucky Country, it was not a compliment, more how we succeed, when we do succeed, in spite of ourselves, or in the case of aviation (not just GA) not succeed ---- aviation in Australia is a shadow of what it could and should have been, and fading day by day.
Tootle pip!!