A bit of wheelspin pulling out of a damp T-junction resulted in the red 'good skills' light coming on for about the same amount of time.

Isn't this type of in car monitoring working its way into the private motoring. Some insurance companies already have an app you can run on your mobile - data is measured by the phones accelerometer and gps to present a profile of your driving style. Theory being if you are a safe driver it could lower your premiums. I think it wont be long until the insurance companies mandate the fitting of black box recorders - useful for assessing general risk and accident situations. Must admit I think there's already too much technology in cars. If you ever get the opportunity to drive a 1960 car then do it so much fun.

As this new and helpful feature arrived after I left, may I ask what exactly happens when one causes a red light? Is it like and ASBO that "customers" can display proudly on the office wall or are there actually sancions involved.

I think I know what my reatio to this would be.

Yes, 3 strikes and you loose your flying pay.
4 and you pay back FRI :E

No I think they just bring it to your attention so you can self moderate. Maybee they need to say "do it again and you will be taken off the deployment list":p

Or maybe, Tom, they take away your MT Diver's Permit so that you have to be given an MT driver to to take you wherever you need to go. Tough love, eh? :{

Two parts to that:

Firstly. You don't become another accident statistic because you can't be trusted to drive to the safe and legal limits.

Secondly. MT gets overloaded and starts being unable to meet the tasks. It gets so bad that some cocky Exec raises it in front of OC Eng or the Staish to try and score cheap points over OC Logs. MTO is summoned to Staishes office and there produces detailed stats of all station personnel who have had their MT license revoked and why. Staish knows what Duty of Care means and subsequently tells his Execs that the problem is theirs for not gripping their people and he backs the actions of the MTO.
In the end, nobody wins, some people will never learn a lesson, but less people are dead or injured.

CH, sorry I didn't make it clear, but I wasn't being serious, I was joking with Tom. Your points are quite right, though.

Why?



.

CM,

Where I work, there is roughly a 20% tolerance margin. If you are outside of this, then a snotagram follows with the details through the Stn Cdr to your line manager. I think, if 3 of these are received, you are banned from MT for 3 months and may well lose your car pass too. Very serious breaches such as the one above, or doing 70mph outside a school 20mph zone are treated more sternly.

Good answer, PA, thank you. I guess that seems pretty reasonable on balance.

Hey, that could be a new box on the good old annual appraisal form. I must suggest it to the powers that aren't! :E

Surely the point of installing a costly system like this is to publicise it to modify driving behaviour? But as its existence comes as a surprise to many of those being monitored it seems in fact to be being used as a weaselly gotcha.

BEags,
Cos if you were driving more than 12 hrs they made you stop over!!

No the truth is that I was working on a UOR and had to get some 2* signatures on the RTS before they went home.

I became a supporter of the system to some extent. As soon as I knew they were interrogating the system I slowed down. so it did have the desired effect.

Now I do think they should have publicised the fact rather than let us find out by defaulting.

Reference:

"....You don't become another accident statistic because you can't be trusted to drive to the safe and legal limits...."

While not condoning illegal driving, I should point out (hopefully an obvious point) that it is perfectly possible to become an accident statistic without personally doing anything wrong/illegal/unsafe - as was my own case when someone crossed the center of the road and hit my vehicle head on, they were only 2.5 times over the legal alcohol limit for driving.

Ultimately, the only way to ensure you never become a road accident statistic is to never go anywhere near a road.

If the RAF (MOD?) is serious about improving road safety then a comprehensive, long term and sustained campaign is required, akin to that for flight safety, not just the installation of technology in MT vehicles. After all, if RAF personnel are driving irresponsibly they are just as likely to have an accident/injury/fatality in their own vehicle. So is the current approach really about duty of care, or more about reducing the MOD bill for accidents? It's alright for you to have an accident in your own car, but not an MOD one...

It's also possible to exceed those (purely arbitrary) limits by, amongst other things, braking suddenly to avoid some numbnuts who suddenly walks, or swerves their bicycle, into your path.

If one treats people like idiots expect to get a healthy dose of scorn in return.

And as for the 'tick test' to allow one to drive in a foreign country... probably deserves a thread to itself.

Ahhh ... I spy a cunning plan afoot here Gentlemen :suspect:

If you add all this technology together ... I reckon there's a plan by the Airships to deploy all the future Air Traffic Control Officers, that Shawbury keeps turning out, as RAF MT Fleet Controllers :}

See what can be done ...

http://i1004.photobucket.com/albums/...ps051728aa.jpg

Image Credit : Eric Fischer, Mapbox

Perhaps you might even get a "Precision Approach" if the M1 gets clamped by fog :eek:

The pilot can't have known that map would be created, else the they would have gone to greater lengths to draw a c0ck 'n' balls.

WW :D:D:D:D

WW, Some years ago I was told such a story by a particular perpetrator, by then a Group Captain and my Station Commander. As a young pilot he was a Valley QFI tasked to carry out the weather check, in his Hunter. He drew a huge "wedding tackle" in persistent con-trails, which was visible for many miles against a bright blue sky.

The station received a number of complaints and eventually launched a four-ship formation to cross it out!

Done to death. Regular training, awareness, courses, reminders. However, people believe it won't happen to them and switch off. The likes of Flight Safety also take the higher priority and everything else becomes background noise. The commute is something stn MT and local plod will regularly cooperate over in an attempt to improve things for all. Playing devil's advocate here, but if you have been trained and passed a test to drive your own car why should you think the RAF should accept responsibility for your actions in your own time?

Quite right. But the MoD can do nothing to influence those other drivers. They can do more to ensure that the people they have a Duty of Care for are driving safe and legal vehicles in a safe and legal manner. I said this was a reasonable idea poorly executed. I'm sure the near misses in aircraft would be far less if there were no other aircraft up there.