Apologies for a similar posting in other fora, but I think the "French Lesson" is of vital evidence to us, literally a matter of life-and-death. It needs to be distributed as widely as possible.
The IMC rating in the UK, like the Instrument Rating in the USA, has democratised the life-saving skill of being able to fly and land on instruments safely.
There is evidence from France which suggests that our fatal accident rate COULD DOUBLE with the loss of the IMC rating.
This report was commissioned by the french ministry of transport, and was published in April:
http://lesrapports.ladocumentationfr...00415/0000.pdf
It shows that
GA in France has twice the number of fatalities than either the UK, or the US (4.2 fatalities per 100,000 hours, versus 2.0 in the UK, and a similar level in the US)
Why?
Part of the reason is because both we and our American cousins have a large proportion of private pilots trained to fly on instruments, while the French PPL is almost strictly a visual flyer with no training or access to the safety of IFR when the weather turns bad.
So they have a far higher proportion of VMC to IMC related accidents: both loss of control and "classic" CFIT.
The sort of accidents which led to the introduction of the IMC rating in the UK by wise people, and there are plenty amongst the pilot population and their passengers (no doubt some reading this forum) who owe their lives to the IMC rating.
The report makes several recommendations, amongst which, relevant to this discussion, are the need for an accessible IR for private pilots in France; an IMC rating if you will.
Amongst interesting points in the report, is the fact that 80% of Accidents are due to "Human Factors". Furthermore when human factors were studied in depth, an analysis of 60 such accidents in france found that:
"The great majority (43 out of 60, with 98 fatalities) took place in unfavourable weather, underlining the problems with lack of training, over-confidence, poor decision-making and pre-flight preparation.
All areas which are dealt-with by the IMC rating.
It would be worth one of our representative bodies going to the expense of formally translating the "French Lesson".