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RV Safety Record

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The 2018 safety record for RVs
The safety record for RV accidents is very good and it looks like it?s getting better. The NTSB rates the RV safety record as similar to GA. That?s very good because the safety record for all experimentals is about 2.5 times worse than GA.
In 2008, There were 36 RV accidents with six involving a fatality. In the year from June 2011 through May, 2012, there were 32 total accidents with 10 being fatal. In 2018, there were 24 total accidents with 7 involving a fatality. See the data below:
Brian Moentenich
Accident # Injury RV Type Accident Description
1 N 6 Cabin fire during takeoff
2 N 7A Engine lost power during takeoff for undetermined reasons
3 N 7A Engine lost power during takeoff for undetermined reasons
4 N 8 Loss of control during landing
5 N 6 Stall during landing
6 N 6 Left wing tip hit ground during landing
7 N 9A Loss of control during an attempted go-around
8 N 7A Loss of control during landing due to a flat nose wheel
9 N 6 Loss of control (wing hit runway) during an attempted go-around
10 N 7 Engine lost power for undetermined reasons
11 N 8 Engine lost power for undetermined reasons
12 N 7A Loss of power due to water in fuel tank6s
13 N 6 Collision with terrain after aborted landing with strong, gusty winds
(23 knots gusting to 32)
14 N 4 Left main gear collapsed upon landing
15 N 6A Right wing tip hit ground during landing/nosegear collapse
16 N 7A Nose gear collapsed after a hard landing
17 N 4 Engine lost power during takeoff for undetermined reasons

1 F 12 Engine lost power during takeoff for undetermined reasons
2 F 6 Collision with terrain for unknown reasons (it was in Norway)
3 F 8 Collision with terrain during a night airshoww
4 F 4 Low altitude maneuvering
5 F 6A Loss of power during takeoff resulting in a stall/spin
6 F 6A Stall/spin during landing when turning from downwindn to base
6 F 12 Loss of control during cruise (most likely over stressing stabilator
which had a crack in the aft spar)



17 Non-Fatal RV accident conclusions in 2018
Six (25%) involved engine power loss
Six accidents involved loss of control during landing (all but one were tail draggers)
one involved a an in-cockpit fire fire
One involved a stall during a go-around
10 Fatal accident conclusions in 2018
Only one involved low altitude maneuvering
8% (2) involved low-altitude stall/spin
8% (2) involved loss of engine power
8% (2) involved a loss of control for undetermined reasons
4% (1) no information was provided (it crashed in Norway)

Brian Moentenich
 
Accidents or incidents on the decrease is good news. Even more so as, as usual, the stats are what they are and mostly incomplete. And almost meaningless.
How about having relations to the number of RVs flying, the amount of hours flown, or even better the number of movements.i.e. take-offs?

Thanks nevertheless, let’s keep those engines alive ;)
 
Accidents or incidents on the decrease is good news. Even more so as, as usual, the stats are what they are and mostly incomplete. And almost meaningless.
How about having relations to the number of RVs flying, the amount of hours flown, or even better the number of movements.i.e. take-offs?

Thanks nevertheless, let?s keep those engines alive ;)

Kitplanes has an excellent article digging into some of those type of questions: https://www.kitplanes.com/homebuilt-accidents-focus-on-vans/
 
Let's not wait for the crash to improve . . .

Brian, thanks for taking the time to collect and post this update.

During my engineer career I saw more than a dozen corporate safety improvement programs lasting 2-3 years. All but one measured and hammered on the same things. But, the last one stood out. They measured and attacked near misses like they were an event. The consultants had statistics on the order of 20x the number of near misses for any particular outcome for each actual recordable injury. In practice, it worked pretty well and precipitated reasonable actions as opposed to management mandated ones - -OK I was management, but you know the other management, mine.

I used the same mindset in the build, and used as many validation and verification tests I could reasonably think of to ensure the hidden failure modes were revealed on the ground.

The disperse nature of our product does not easily facilitate collection of failure, or near miss, data to collectively/definitively address the core issues in advance of the NTSB report. The near miss system for FAA seems to be based on this concept.

Could EAA serve as a collection house for this information? Is that appropriate function of EAA?
 
During my engineer career I saw more than a dozen corporate safety improvement programs lasting 2-3 years. All but one measured and hammered on the same things. But, the last one stood out. They measured and attacked near misses like they were an event. The consultants had statistics on the order of 20x the number of near misses for any particular outcome for each actual recordable injury.

...
The disperse nature of our product does not easily facilitate collection of failure, or near miss, data to collectively/definitively address the core issues in advance of the NTSB report. The near miss system for FAA seems to be based on this concept.

Could EAA serve as a collection house for this information? Is that appropriate function of EAA?

It seems to me the right place to attack this problem would be at Dynon/Garmin level: I have no trouble observing bad piloting days in my logs.:rolleyes: Terrain proximity and loss of power are even more obvious.

The new models have a path to teh internetz and could "phone home" with little technical difficulty. The main issue to address would be privacy. Perhaps a public data format, anonymized and voluntarily submitted to a public database with explicit permission of the owner. Many folks already do this with their engine data.
 
Apparently Cirrus Aircraft is considering something similar. AvWeb did a poll on it here:


And see the comments on the system here (scroll down to "Poll: Do You Favor Cirrus-style Real Time Monitoring"):


Yup, predictable range or reactions.

I don't think anonymizing while preserving the important bits should be that hard in this case. Terrain proximity, dangerous AOA margins and so forth can all be extracted without need for GPS coordinates or aircraft ID. Perhaps with an open-source script so it can be audited what gets phoned home. Legally worrisome stuff is already blasted in real time via ADSB Out. The same "off" switch would apply to both for the extremely-privacy-minded folks.
 
The new models have a path to teh internetz and could "phone home" with little technical difficulty. The main issue to address would be privacy. Perhaps a public data format, anonymized and voluntarily submitted to a public database with explicit permission of the owner. Many folks already do this with their engine data.

FOQA for homebuilts! Count me out...
 
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