I'm with Rat**** here.
The glibness of 'those who have and those who will' makes for an easy and oft repeated throwaway line......but it does NOT stand up to logical scrutiny.
There are plenty of pilots who never have, and have retired from flying, never having done.....ergo the failure of the popular fallacy.
Granted that human error can/does occur (ref. inthefluffystuff). That's why we use INhuman checklists. When was the last time you saw an RPT land gear-up from pilot error?
If GA private/single pilots (like me) adhere, as RS suggests, to RIGID and REPEATED checklists (be they mental or written), this sort of insurance-inflating, reputation-damaging and media-fodder incidence CAN be much reduced if not avoided entirely.
It's a sad fact (and one that I'm becoming increasingly aware of) that a number of GA pilots are slack/lazy/arrogant in the belief that THEY (who, MOI?) are beyond making errors.......These are the ones who indeed are careless enough to make mistakes.
"Red leader to Gold Leader.......STAY ON TARGET"..............