Boris Badenov
Fortis Leader
Using your logic, why even paint lines on the road if people are going to get in accidents anyways?
Er, that seems to be your logic as well, since you're willing to permit the holocaust of innocent children by reckless, dangerous, evil low time pilots just to satisfy your personal, greedy, unnecessary desire to fly.
Murdoughnut said:It's about reducing unnecessary risk. The economy isn't going to bottom out if homebuilders have to take their a/c out to the country.
And it's going to bottom out if student pilots can't buzz around urban centers? I, ahem, think you might have overestimated your importance to the economy there, Ptolemy.
While I don't agree with your sarcastic suggestion of limiting student pilots to non-congested areas, I wouldn't say that the idea is absurd by any means.
I'm really more concerned about the under-30 drivers. They're a fricking plague on the roads. Yet nothing is being done. Why am I so concerned? Because I'm not under 30 anymore.
When you get in your car and drive on the road, you assume a certain degree of risk. You shouldn't have to assume any risk sitting in your bed at night.
Wow, now that's the sort of gratuitous, meaningless, emotive, effeminate hand-wringing that makes the internet so awesome. You can still get hit by a meteor or a jet engine, burned alive by a careless neighbor with a spaceheater, or just have a heart-attack all in the safety and comfort of your sanctum the bed. Life is risk, and sooner or later we're all going to die. You're quite right of course that the purpose of (many) laws is to mitigate that risk while attempting to balance the freedoms of the citizens.
My point is simply that you're in favor of limiting this freedom because you don't have a personal interest in it and therefore consider it expendable, not because you've done a sober analysis and determined that it's extremely hazardous to the public at large. Open manhole covers are a greater threat to the populace than homebuilt aircraft (by orders of magnitude, I'd wager), as are cases of people getting drunk and drowning their dumb asses, but no one seems to be leading the charge to institute a crash program to increase manhole-cover safety or outlaw booze within 50 feet of water.
Aircraft accidents are exciting because people are all still basically dirt-worshipping savages at heart, and they're not really sure these damn things should fly at all, and they're for damn sure scared to death of them, deep down, no matter what they say. So they get insanely disproportionate coverage. This does not equate to anything even remotely resembling a "public threat".
"So what?", say you. "Me, why, I'm not getting near one of those things no matter what anybody says, so I'd rather not have them flying over me either." The problem is that if we think in this selfish, egotistical manner about everyone else's freedoms, sooner or later someone's going to have a bright idea or two about something you DO care about.
One of the most ass-backwards things in the world is that its ten times easier to make a law than to repeal one.