About those Monster Trucks

I am a safety nut, even to the point that I am obsessed with things like liability and the damage that can be done if one person does something stupid one time.

Referring directly to the airshow (flying show) industry, I have been an airshow announcer since 1978 and a pilot since 1967. Our flying performers are all fine pilots, men and women, who are well-compensated for their work and have every intention of taking their checks home and spending them. They fly aerobatics, not "stunts." A "stunt" is something you see in a movie, like flying through a tunnel or through a highway billboard. Aerobatics are thought out and diagrammed in a formal shorthand called "Aresti". The Aresti system was designed by the aerobatic ace José Louis Aresti in 1961, it is a kind of short hand enabling people to write down an aerobatic maneuvres in the form of symbols that is simply and easy to read at a glance. It is a universal language and is essential.

Anyhow, I am talking SAFETY here. In planing an airshow, producers are required (and at every show, pilots sign a document which notes they agree) to remain at least 500 feet from spectators (non-participants), a distance which increases incrementally to 1,500 feet for high speed aircraft like jets. Regulations prohibit any aerobatics OVER spectators, and a minimum flyover altitude is also mandated. No aerobatic energy may be directed toward spectators. And it goes on; it is really quite thorough and a lot more complex than I care to discuss here.

SO HOWCUM:

Over the weekend of January 24-25, 2009, the promoter for the Motor Sports Monster Truck and Thrill Show in Wisconsin was killed when a truck accelerated and ran him down. This a week after a six-year-old boy lost his life at a monster truck event in Tacoma, Washington. If you want to go back in history there are accidents within the past 10 years which have cost life and/or limb. The question is WHY is anyone in harm's way when a truck is signaled to GO; why is anyone permitted to be anywhere near where a monster truck even MAY go if something goes awry? If something catches fire, why is anyone even CLOSE to it? Why can there be spectators at the OPPOSITE END of the venue, facing the trucks, when they perform?

I am amazed that anyone will insure any event that is so blatantly dangerous to spectators. Further I am surprised that some governmental agencies have not involved themselves in the regulation of monster truck events. And I can all but guarantee that if you go to a monster truck show and mention flying, not even aerobatic flying, you will find people who will say that they are afraid of flying... it's too dangerous. ?

Yes there have been airshow accidents; I have lost friends in them. But in no case in something like 45 years [I am not looking up the actual date, but I believe it's longer ago than that] has any non-participant, a spectator, suffered so much as a hangnail in any of those accidents. The airshow industry strives to be entertaining and exciting, but it also prides itself on being safe.

Performers agree to a certain amount of risk to themselves; spectators do not. This should be the same for monster truck shows. Let's see some producers and promoters have the guts to keep the trucks an appreciable distance from spectators, and to aim them somewhere that, if everything goes bad, no one gets so much as dirty.

The Rant is Ended. Frank

This will be IT for BPA (for a while)

I have spared you my rantings about bisphenol A (BPA), a chemical which occurs during the production of plastics. The principal concern has been with any minute TRACES of BPA which may be found in drinking bottles, especially in baby formula bottles. We all agree that anything which might endanger the health of an infant should be taken extremely seriously.

Since last I posted about this, there have been myriad opinions published on both sides of the BPA argument. Some are monographs from governments (plural) favoring both sides of the discussion, and some are from "private" or "independent" research groups, again favoring both sides of the discussion. In each case the published papers use terms like "we believe" and "consensus." To use the idea of BELIEF in this case stretches reality. A "belief" indicates an act of faith not necessarily based upon hard fact. And CONSENSUS means that a majority of involved parties voted one way or the other over the smaller voting group. "Consensus" is not science; it is sort of intellectual bullying. "More of us think X is true than people in your group, which thinks X is NOT true. So we win. Ha Ha."

I am still drinking out of BPA and non-BPA bottles. I agree that, as the FDA has stated, BPA in the tiny concentrations which may show up in drinking bottles is not dangerous to people who are not infants. HOWEVER if anyone wants bottles which are guaranteed BPA-free, we have bottle suppliers who guarantee no BPA. We can produce them either way. Your call.

Thanks for putting up with this. FKS