Originally Posted by
43Inches
These sort of collisions are going to happen occasionally for various reasons. Having a good visual scan especially in the area around airfields will help, as with radio and apt procedures, but it will still happen when things align the wrong way. You can mandate costly transponders with ACAS fitted which will also possibly reduce the rate, but not stop it entirely. Lets face it, we spend billions on road safety and the road toll continues to rise steadily year on year with population, which shows the return on spent defenses has a very small effect on collision fatality rates. People just find somewhere else to collide or just not follow the rules, you can't bubble wrap the whole world. We have to remember this is no different to a high speed road collision with similar results, how they got to the position where they co-existed in the same space at the same time, we may never really know. Also radio is not some panacea that will fix this, a good proportion of mid air collisions in the USA occur in Controlled airspace, within visual range of the tower with both aircraft radio equipped.
PS I'll just clarify I mean the extra billions spent on road safety in the last 30 years or so. Obviously policing actions vs drunks and other illegal driving has had a marked decrease in fatalities back in the 70s and 80s and continuing. But the continued push for zero road toll is ultimately ridiculously costly and unattainable. Things like the installation of median strip barriers everywhere and ridiculously low speeds on open roads. Just costly with very little impact on the overall toll.
The onus has ended up on the vehicle manufacturers. Airbags, auto emergency braking, stability control etc.
What are aircraft manufacturers doing? CAPS, airbags in seatbelts, ADSB-In. It’s all happening, just not overly fast.