Seggy already answered you. We already have safety rules in place. If you want to remove a level of safety (we're not talking about adding a new one here), then the burden of proof is on you to show that it will be AT LEAST as safe as the current regulation. Which you can't do. Hence, your argument is irrelevant.
Nope. See, you're making an assumption about current safety rules. You are assuming that the current restrictions/requirements of the 3rd class medical afford some undefined "level of safety" that is as good as it can get. Does the currrent 3rd class provide the optimal level of safety? I don't know. Maybe. As I stated earlier, I've been quite ambivalent about changing the 3rd class. But you don't know either. Predictably, we heard loud, sophomoric shouts about LOTS and LOTS of evidence (but no actual evidence). I wasn't really able to follow
@Seggy's statement because of how it was written, but I think he was trying to indicate that people have been diagnosed with previously undiagnosed medical conditions during their 3rd class medical exams. If that's what he was saying, well OK, that's probably correct. But so what? Having a medical condition does not necessarily make one a threat to aviation safety. Shouting nice and loud might mislead some people into believing that Seggy was providing an answer to my request. He was not. My requests were for evidence showing that a debilitated pilot has crashed into a Boeing, and for evidence showing that changing the current 3rd class restrictions would increase risk to aviation. Haven't seen that yet. Thunder is sometimes impressive, but it's lightening that gets the work done, hmm?
Do you really believe that society proceeds by NOT doing anything until that thing is proven as safe or safer than the status quo? If we did that, we would never make any changes or progress at all. We certainly wouldn't have cars. We would not have electricity in planes because it might short circuit and burn. We would be
less safe because the very act of
trying new safety methods
might be risky. "Really, you're going remove the cable between the yoke and the control surfaces and replace it with electronic signals?!!!? That sounds risky!! We already have a system that works! Any change could be dangerous!!!"
Understand that change and improvement always involve some unknowns and/or risks. Provide evidence. Be careful about assumptions.
As far as ALPA goes... I'm surprised they are wasting their time on this when they could be spending their considerable political clout on higher return efforts to improve safety quickly... like cargo pilot rest rules.
Me? I'm sort of biased toward fewer restrictions unless there is a very compelling reason to have restrictions. I think that basic bias is what has allowed the US to have the most robust aviation culture in the world.
