Why collect data about flying incidents?
So that the community can better learn from other people's mistakes, especially the mistakes relevant to them.
How?
Data is collected through Google Forms, stored in Google Sheets, and displayed using Google Data Studio. Pilots or spectators can submit data about an incident that they experienced or saw. It is completely voluntary.
What?
An interactive database of flight incidents is available for people to look at and sort.
Who is behind the project?
Passionate pilots who want data to be available to all for learning purposes
What's the goal?
To provide one single place for pilots to be able to look at the lessons that their peers have learned and shared. In addition to this, a place where incidents can be learned from objectively and without names attached, without a lengthy comment thread.
Why should a pilot care and why should they fill it out?
Pilots should care about submitting data because their lessons can be learned from by the world, rather than 10-100 friends.
Pilots should want to fill out as much data as possible in order to help their friends learn as much as possible.
Pilots should submit data in order to show landowners and other entities that many accidents are very preventable.
Why do you need my email address?
Email addresses are collected for two reasons. Primarily in order to check back with the user in the event of data needing to be edited for typos or inconsistencies. The secondary reason is to reach out and email a yearly report of the previous years data.
Will the data filled out on this site be shared with other flying federations/ organizations?
As of May 2022, there is no explicit plan to do so, other than what is readily available on the analytics page. If organizations want to collaborate, then they can send an email to recreationriskdata@gmail.com
How can we be sure the information is valid?
As of right now, we can really only just plain trust that people submitting the data are doing so with good intent. There's no way to verify that Pat Smith has a pilot license number 12345 and has been verified by their government ID. We don't want to implement such a system.
How do I plan on getting the information from various federations in order to prevent overlap?
Hopefully various federations and organizations want to collaborate
Will the data be sold?
The point of this whole project is to make the data more easily available for more people to learn from. Being able to access the dashboard should be free.
If a more in-depth report is needed by a for-profit entity, then that will be charged for. No email addresses will be attached.
Things to be wary about
If submitting data about an accident, being as detailed as possible helps the community at large learn. Even though email addresses are not displayed, with enough filtering and background knowledge it is possible for somebody to figure out which piece of data is about who. For example, there is only one known fatality in Nevada. If the data is sorted by fatalities in Nevada, all data attached to that incident will be presented. None of the fields are mandatory, so fill them out as you feel appropriate in order to maintain a comfortable level of anonymity with regards to your incident.
Legal stuff
If you have anything ongoing with an insurance company, court, police, or other entity that can subpoena or otherwise ask for data, do not submit any data to this website. It can and will be used against you. The best course of action would be to wait until all proceedings are over and all cases closed and there is no possibility of the data being used against you.