1/12: Canadian cigarette warnings

[MaggieL]

Originally posted by Undertoad

We can't ban general aviation without appearing to be too draconian. But we can force pilots to carry with them images of crash scenes. It's just common and fiscal sense to deter these people from making a choice that's inappropriate for society.

We may not be able to force these pilots not to fly, but if we just make them THINK about not flying, I'd consider such a program a success.

That sort of thing should be more a part of aviation training. I do recall a particularly gruesome film of a hand-prop starting job that went badly awry that was shown quite often back when more pilots actually *knew* how to hand-prop their aircraft. Of course the message ther wasn't "don't fly" but "don't do this hazardous thing the wrong way". I'm sure a lot of folks took home the message that "handpropping is *so* dangerous I don't ever want to try it".

Of course, general aviation has much more positive value for society than nicotine addiction does. The benefits of general aviation operations include aerial advertising, aerial surveying and map making, environmental surveys, agricultural application; business and personal transportation, emergency evacuations and rescue, fire spotting and fighting, law enforcement, medical transportation or emergency flights; news reporting, photography and video, traffic monitoring, on-demand air taxi, package delivery; personal transportation; pipeline and power line patrol. (And we certainly don't hear pilots wringing their hands in public about how difficult their plight is needing to give up flying but being unable to.)

Further: in 2000, NTSB reported 341 accidents that involved fatalities, for a total of 591 deaths, in thirty *million* hours of aircraft operation conducted by something like half a million non-airline pilots. . (For comparison, in 1999 NHTSA reported 37,140 fatal highway crashes, with a total of 41,717 deaths, with some 187,000,000 licenced drivers.) CDC says there are 47,000,000 adult smokers in the US, with 430,000 deaths a year attributable to smoking...one death in five.