Balloon Pilot Who Killed 16 in Texas on Drugs, Had Many DWIs

[jbrinker]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...-killed-16-was-on-drugs-and-had-five-dwi-raps

Just posting a link to the update on this case.
I'm not one to call for additional FAA oversight - but wow, how do we as pilots feel about this? Seems like carrying passengers for hire, one ought to at least be held to some standard? I was not aware that commercial balloon pilots have this little oversight.

Short for those who don't want to read the article:

- Was on 13 different drugs, at least 7 of which were disqualifying (Diazapam, Oxycodone and others - found in his system)
- Suffered from Diabetes, Fibrolyalga, Depression
- Had at least 5 (FIVE) prior DWIs
- Launched into questionable weather, and was advised by briefer that it didnt look good.
And probably more...

(Trying to find a link to the actual report)

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

I'm not going along with the argument that just because people don't follow rules, there shouldn't be any.

I think it is a question of trade offs. When you enact a regulation you often get some of the intended effect, like decreasing the number of drug impaired balloon pilots, but there are always the unintended and often unnoticed effects. In the case of government regulatory action, these are often things like decreasing the number of non drug addled balloon pilots, increased costs of balloon rides, etc.

In this country, with news headline driven knee jerk regulation, the value of the intended effects is often way over-valued and the unintended effects are way undervalued or outright ignored (essentially valued as 0)

So I would agree that the intended effect is not zero or valueless, but I think the balancing is usually so poorly considered that it is usually best to stay away from additional government regulation.