Posted
3/17/2010 06:14:00 PM
by Douglas
And speaking of airplanes and beaches, there's this little jewel from
Hilton Head.The kit-built single-engine plane was gliding quietly as it came down for an emergency landing on a beach. Pharmaceutical salesman Robert Gary Jones, listening to his iPod while jogging, likely never saw or heard it before the aircraft hit him from behind and killed him.
"There's no noise," aviation expert Mary Schiavo, a former inspector general for the National Transportation Safety Board, said of the Monday evening accident. "So the jogger, with his ear buds in, and the plane without an engine, you're basically a stealth aircraft. Who would expect to look up?"
I've never really understood the headphone phenomenon. Why people have to be listening to something at all times just doesn't make sense to me, but here's a perfect example of a time when you need to pull your head out of your ass. While it's true, he probably wouldn't have heard it coming even if he weren't listening to his ipod, but it just goes to show why you need to be aware of your surrounds, wherever you are. Why? Because you might get clipped by a fucking plane, that's why.