Never had my P8 compass fail in a certain aeroplane
I've had 3 compass failures on long trips: one when I climbed to 10,000' and noticed a warm trickly sensation down my leg which turned out to be compass oil: one where the thing just stuck solid and my daughter produced her iPhone with a compass rose app on it and we continued to San Diego with that: and one recently where the bezel with the datum on it rotated round and round in tune with the engine vibrations - I flew 2000' miles with it like that (and an iPad).
My point is that all this steam technology has far higher failure rates, and a much greater ability to produce perplexing data, than
modern GPS equipment. Actually I'm in favour of mandating the affixing of velcro to the front of the traditional instruments in UK GA aircraft and sticking an iPad (running Skydemon at this moment in time) there instead.
However, there is another point not yet mentioned.
Situational awareness is not a natural gift for all humans - setting aside supposed differences between the sexes, I'm sure we all know of car drivers who have never mastered the technology of maps and cannot tell you if Brighton is North or South of London. To them, GPS is a gift. Doubtless there are PPL's like that as well, people probably not helped by the arcane PPL training with it's perplexing abstract concepts.
There might be scope for a bit of research on how people acquire situational awareness and how the use, or not, of technology affects that. As an example, I suspect many PPL's take a very long time to gain awareness of the position of other traffic from listening to radio exchanges. I know I did.
I'm convinced that focussing on situational awareness in PPL training using all the technology available would have a significant effect on the infringement statistics. Of course modern moving map GPS should be the primary tool, but the underlying issue of whether the pilot can easily form a mental map of his surroundings from the information available seems to be more important to me. Not everyone can do that easily, even when presented with a large colour moving map and a magenta line. Such people could be identified (easily, IMHO) and given specialist training in mental imagery.
Just a thought.