Wisdom and the School of Hard Knocks

Like many people who work inn hazardous environments, pilots are motivated to learn from others or risk the awful consequences of learning on their own. One of my favorite aviation maxims is from aviation supporter Eleanor Roosevelt: "Learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t live long enough to make them all yourself."

The love of my life tends to be a little stubborn and a classic Type-A personality. This can be a dangerous combination when coupled with a tendency to wait until the last minute to leave someplace then spend the trip speeding and weaving in and out of traffic to "make up time". She'd become agitated during rush hour and hate every minute of the ride, often complaining to me about it on the phone when calling to say she'd be on the way home.

I used to be exactly this same way until a Florida oak tree gave me a lesson in setting priorities. In the spring of 1993 I’d begun a week of active duty with the Naval Reserves. After leaving home, I took a narrow two-lane black top back road to the base NAS Whiting Field, Milton , FL. The road was posted at 40MPH, but I took it since no police were ever there and I could do 70. “Saves time, doncha’ know”. There were no shoulders on it and it was lined with thick Florida forest a couple feet off either side of the road. Long story short and a classic "chain of events", I ended up losing control of my car and driving straight into a two-foot wide Florida oak tree doing about 40 (after leaving over 150 feet of skid marks on the road). The results are in the accompanying photo; a totaled car and a busted foot. It could have been much worse but I'd learned to always wear my seat-belt from previous auto-related indiscretions during my impetuous youth.

Today, and in full knowledge of my wife's proclivities, I wished her "Safe driving, Sweetie" but knew she'd probably ignore me as usual. I'd burned her CDs of audio books and both classical and soft jazz music in hopes she'd relax, enjoy the ride and use a little more caution in her driving. She'd declined to appreciate those methods and continued to use the hustle and bustle method of leaving at the last minute to depart for work. Today she paid a dear price for those habits. It wasn't a car accident. She tripped over a concrete border along the sidewalk in front of our home and severely dislocated her right elbow in the process. See X-Ray below.

The two bones of the forearm, the Ulna and the Radius, attach to the bottom of the upper arm, the Humerus, to form the elbow joint. She hit the ground so hard with her right hand to catch her, both forearm bones were driven a couple of inches out of their sockets and past the Humerus. The pain, she told me, was the most extreme she'd ever felt. I expedited her to the Emergency Room in rush hour traffic, but it took over half an hour. She had to endure over an hour's worth of extreme pain before the meds kicked in. A terrible price to pay for such a simple mistake.

Those concrete borders have been in place since the first year we moved here in 1998. She's gone past them at least once every day for 10 years to fetch the newspaper or leave the house and often a couple times a day. Not one accident. Not one spill until today.

There is a common fallacy which lulls people into thinking their behavior is safe; they do something risky several times, even hundreds or thousands, without a problem and conclude, falsely, that their behavior is safe. As this rather graphic industrial safety video demonstrates, a moment's inattention or a sequence of small errors can have catastrophic results: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAnAaFgjiiA

My wife's fall today could easily have been much, much worse. It could also just as easily have happened during a collision with a cement truck while weaving in and out of traffic hurrying to work or home. As mentioned in the Stephen Coonts' article, "Philosophy of Luck", from the previous blog entry dated 15MAR09, we often create our own luck by our day-to-day conduct. I've learned from both my own mistakes and the mistakes of others. This is one thing that has kept me alive in driving, flying and other potentially hazardous activities.

Each of us has to decide for ourselves if we are going to become students who learn primarily from the mistakes of others or if we insist upon learning everything on our own at the School of Hard Knocks. After a few personally painful experiences, I’d rather learn from the mistakes of others. It's less painful.

The Philosophy of Luck

By Stephen Coonts
(From “Approach” Magazine, July- August 1995)

My father, a naval officer in World War II, used to tell me. “You make your own luck.” I think, in one sense, he was right. That is the kernel of truth Lt. Col. Haldane states in “The Intruders”: “The thing we call luck is merely professionalism and attention to detail; it’s your awareness of everything that is going on around you; it’s how well you know and understand your airplane and your own limitations. Luck is the sum total of your abilities as an aviator. If you think your luck is running low, you’d better get busy and make some more. Work harder. Pay more attention. Study your NATOPS (Air Force-1, the flight manual) more. Do better preflights.”

That’s partly true. You’ll certainly minimize your problems, but there’s a limit to how much luck you can make. In “The Intruders”, Jake wrestles with the whole concept of luck. People tell him he is lucky to have so narrowly escaped disaster, yet he feels unlucky that he got so close to the edge. Luck is a banana peel, a slippery proposition. Are we unlucky because we had an accident, or lucky that it wasn’t worse? Clearly, the perspective from which we view an event has a huge effect on its psychological import to us. This is the point that one of the characters in “The Intruders” makes to Jake referring to investments: “There’s no such thing as bad news. Whether an event is good or bad depends on where you’ve got your money.”

For example, statisticians might tell us there is a probability that the fleet will experience one cold cat shot (cold cat shot – an unsuccessful attempt at launching an aircraft from an aircraft carrier) this year. We all breathe a sigh of relief – only one. Yet the pilot it happens to will come face-to-face with absolute catastrophe, a disaster of the first order of magnitude. One cold cat shot a year in the fleet is a statistic, but one cold cat shot happening to you is a major event in your life – perhaps the major event – a crisis you may not survive.

I never thought much of the old saw, “I’d rather be lucky than good.” I think the good are lucky. Not the morally good, but the professionally good. There is just no substitute for sound, thorough preparation to avoid or cope with foreseeable misfortune. People who drive straddling the center line can get around a few curves, but sooner or later, they’re going to meet a Kenworth coming the other way. That’s not predictable, it’s inevitable.