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> Flying is a specialized skill, but once you learn it it’s not especially difficult and requires less sustained focus, reflexes and reaction time than driving.

by subhro 2y ago

> Flying is a specialized skill, but once you learn it it’s not especially difficult and requires less sustained focus, reflexes and reaction time than driving. Respectfully disagree (as a 40-something year old aerobatic pilot) with the less sustained focus part, not the specialized skill part.

filleduchaos 2y ago
I'm not a pilot, but I have a bit of a morbid fascination with aviation incidents, and I think I agree with both of you somewhat? The average flight deck is a hell of a lot more complicated than the average driver's seat in terms of things the operator needs to pay attention to, so I'd definitely say that flying requires more sustained focus. However, during routine flight (not counting taking off and landing, because I know those are very high workload periods?) pilots have a lot more time and space than drivers do to recover from a situation before it becomes a catastrophic failure, especially when it comes to danger to others outside the vehicle. So I'd also say that driving on average requires better reflexes and reaction times to prevent accidents. Take collisions for example; as GP alluded to, a driver's window to recognise and start responding to a developing problem is often mentioned in fractions of a second or a few whole seconds at best, because they can come out of practically nowhere. On the other hand, my impression of warning systems like TCAS and EGPWS is that the pilot has several seconds or more to start responding to the initial warning and still safely execute an avoidance/escape manoeuvre.
- mannykannot 2y ago
  Aviation contains a number of scenarios where pilots can (and do, not all that infrequently) slip from being in a safe situation to being in immediate danger without noticing the transition. Things like spatial disorientation and losing situational awareness (particularly in IMC), not taking into account a changing weather situation, not tracking fuel consumption, navigational errors... Technology is increasingly mitigating these risks, but as of now, they contribute to general aviation being significantly more risky, statistically, to its participants than driving, even when taking into account the prevalence of bad driving. On the other hand, it is considerably less dangerous to non-participants than driving is.
  - filleduchaos 2y ago
    > Aviation contains a number of scenarios where pilots can (and do, not all that infrequently) slip from being in a safe situation to being in immediate danger without noticing the transition. I am aware of this (and as I already said this is why piloting requires greater focus), but I don't see how that changes the fact that there actually is a transition that takes a heck of a lot longer than going from a completely safe (given all available information and proper operation) to a completely unsafe situation takes on the road.
    - mannykannot 2y ago
      "Focus" is a vague term; if it was supposed to encompass the sorts of scenario I wrote about, then I have provided some some specificity for third parties. Furthermore, I feel you did not fully comprehend what I was trying to say here, which is that there are certain scenarios where, if you have partially lost this "focus", you can suddenly find yourself in a situation where an immediate response of the correct kind (and one which is sometimes profoundly counter-intuitive, as in spatial disorientation) is required. The transition may have taken some time (not necessarily "a heck of a lot longer", though), but when this has occurred without the pilot being aware of the developing situation, then in practice it is no different than the sort of road situations you are thinking of. Note that this is not a claim that the cruise phase of a flight is just as prone to sudden surprises as any phase of driving; it is a explanation that equivalently startling scenarios, without any perceived transition period (and perception is what matters), can arise in the cruise phase of flight (and that's even if we exclude sudden equipment failure.)
      - filleduchaos 2y ago
        I'm not sure how focus is a vague term - I thought in this context it pretty clearly means a state of concentration/active attention. And I'd flip it and say that you don't understand what I'm trying to say, which is that while flying routinely you would have to lose focus in order to end up in a situation where you are blindsided by a signal and need to act on it immediately, while when you are driving routinely you can be doing everything completely right and be paying the utmost attention and still need to react near-instantaneously to prevent disaster on a routine basis. In fact, bringing up sudden equipment failure just sort of reinforces my point. The response to the vast majority of failures, even stuff as critical as an uncontained engine failure, is not to fast-twitch take some reflexive action, it's to work through a checklist (even memory items are still a checklist) to be sure you're actually taking the right action - and there are tolerances built into both internal and external systems to give pilots time to do that. Or to put it another way, flying prioritises a slower and more methodical approach to operation than driving does - prioritises conscious over unconscious decision-making. I think this article by a pilot (https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/1994/june/pilot/slow-hands https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/1994/june/pilot...) explains my point quite a bit better than I can.

by subhro 2y ago

filleduchaos 2y ago

I'm not a pilot, but I have a bit of a morbid fascination with aviation incidents, and I think I agree with both of you somewhat? The average flight deck is a hell of a lot more complicated than the average driver's seat in terms of things the operator needs to pay attention to, so I'd definitely say that flying requires more sustained focus. However, during routine flight (not counting taking off and landing, because I know those are very high workload periods?) pilots have a lot more time and space than drivers do to recover from a situation before it becomes a catastrophic failure, especially when it comes to danger to others outside the vehicle. So I'd also say that driving on average requires better reflexes and reaction times to prevent accidents. Take collisions for example; as GP alluded to, a driver's window to recognise and start responding to a developing problem is often mentioned in fractions of a second or a few whole seconds at best, because they can come out of practically nowhere. On the other hand, my impression of warning systems like TCAS and EGPWS is that the pilot has several seconds or more to start responding to the initial warning and still safely execute an avoidance/escape manoeuvre.

mannykannot 2y ago
Aviation contains a number of scenarios where pilots can (and do, not all that infrequently) slip from being in a safe situation to being in immediate danger without noticing the transition. Things like spatial disorientation and losing situational awareness (particularly in IMC), not taking into account a changing weather situation, not tracking fuel consumption, navigational errors... Technology is increasingly mitigating these risks, but as of now, they contribute to general aviation being significantly more risky, statistically, to its participants than driving, even when taking into account the prevalence of bad driving. On the other hand, it is considerably less dangerous to non-participants than driving is.
- filleduchaos 2y ago
  > Aviation contains a number of scenarios where pilots can (and do, not all that infrequently) slip from being in a safe situation to being in immediate danger without noticing the transition. I am aware of this (and as I already said this is why piloting requires greater focus), but I don't see how that changes the fact that there actually is a transition that takes a heck of a lot longer than going from a completely safe (given all available information and proper operation) to a completely unsafe situation takes on the road.
  - mannykannot 2y ago
    "Focus" is a vague term; if it was supposed to encompass the sorts of scenario I wrote about, then I have provided some some specificity for third parties. Furthermore, I feel you did not fully comprehend what I was trying to say here, which is that there are certain scenarios where, if you have partially lost this "focus", you can suddenly find yourself in a situation where an immediate response of the correct kind (and one which is sometimes profoundly counter-intuitive, as in spatial disorientation) is required. The transition may have taken some time (not necessarily "a heck of a lot longer", though), but when this has occurred without the pilot being aware of the developing situation, then in practice it is no different than the sort of road situations you are thinking of. Note that this is not a claim that the cruise phase of a flight is just as prone to sudden surprises as any phase of driving; it is a explanation that equivalently startling scenarios, without any perceived transition period (and perception is what matters), can arise in the cruise phase of flight (and that's even if we exclude sudden equipment failure.)
    - filleduchaos 2y ago
      I'm not sure how focus is a vague term - I thought in this context it pretty clearly means a state of concentration/active attention. And I'd flip it and say that you don't understand what I'm trying to say, which is that while flying routinely you would have to lose focus in order to end up in a situation where you are blindsided by a signal and need to act on it immediately, while when you are driving routinely you can be doing everything completely right and be paying the utmost attention and still need to react near-instantaneously to prevent disaster on a routine basis. In fact, bringing up sudden equipment failure just sort of reinforces my point. The response to the vast majority of failures, even stuff as critical as an uncontained engine failure, is not to fast-twitch take some reflexive action, it's to work through a checklist (even memory items are still a checklist) to be sure you're actually taking the right action - and there are tolerances built into both internal and external systems to give pilots time to do that. Or to put it another way, flying prioritises a slower and more methodical approach to operation than driving does - prioritises conscious over unconscious decision-making. I think this article by a pilot (https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/1994/june/pilot/slow-hands https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/1994/june/pilot...) explains my point quite a bit better than I can.