VFR Into IMC Through the Lens of Behavioral Economics

Decision-making can be the difference between life and death in all types of aviation, but in general aviation (GA), where most of the flying is conducted as single-pilot operations, the decision-making of one individual becomes fundamentally important. It is critical to consider, first, why pilots make bad decisions that can ultimately lead to weather-related aviation accidents or incidents; and second, whether a better understanding of weather-related decision-making can inform regulations that will improve decision-making and consequently reduce the frequency of pilot-error accidents. Behavioral economics (BE) aims to better understand individual decision-making to model decision-making pathways. As individual decision-making is central to aviation safety, better modeling of decision-making pathways should be a central aim not just for pilots, but also for aviation regulators, such as the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) in Australia. While there has been little analysis of pilot decision-making using BE, we argue that BE, with its focus on predictive models of individual decision-making, provides a rich framework to understand pilot decision-making and inform more targeted regulation. This argument is in four parts. The first part identifies that there is an ongoing safety issue with visual flight rules (VFR) pilots flying into instrument meteorological conditions (IMC). The second part introduces some of the core concepts of BE, such as the rejection of perfect rationality and the reliance upon certain behavioral biases in decision-making. We argue that VFR into IMC is an appropriate context in which to apply BE as there is an identifiable measure of a pilot’s welfare and concerns around paternalism fall short when dealing with protecting the welfare of those likely to be impacted by a pilot’s decision-making, such as passengers and aircraft owners. The third part reviews the existing research applying behavioral models of decision-making in respect of VFR into IMC and identifies three behavioral biases that—among others—can lead to poor decision-making: (i) environmental literacy, (ii) overconfidence, and (iii) prospect theory. The final part briefly introduces some potential avenues for BE to inform regulatory reform, including better education of pilots and regulators in respect of the psychological factors to which pilots may fall victim, as well as more directed training for pilots to address the environmental literacy concerns identified in this part. We conclude that the regulatory environment should be reformulated to adequately account for predictable behavioral biases

Driver Licences, Diversionary Programs and Transport Justice for First Nations Peoples in Australia

In Australia, one significant cause of the imprisonment and disadvantage of First Nations people relates to transport injustice. First Nations people face obstacles in becoming lawful road users, particularly in relation to acquiring driver licences, with driving unlicensed a common pathway into the criminal justice system. This paper identifies that while some programs focus on increasing driver licensing for First Nations people, there are significant limitations in terms of coverage and access. Further, very few diversionary or support programs proactively address the intersection between First Nations people’s driver licensing and the criminal justice system. Nevertheless, it is argued that scope does exist within some state and territory criminal justice programs to enhance transport justice by assisting First Nations people to secure driver licensing. This paper highlights the need for accessible, available and culturally safe driver licencing support programs in First Nations communities led by First Nations people

We’re All Infected: Legal Personhood, Bare Life and The Walking Dead

This article argues that greater theoretical attention should be paid to the figure of the zombie in the fields of law, cultural studies and philosophy. Using The Walking Dead as a point of critical departure concepts of legal personhood are interrogated in relation to permanent vegetative states, bare life and the notion of the third person. Ultimately, the paper recommends a rejection of personhood; instead favouring a legal and philosophical engagement with humanity and embodiment. Personhood, it is suggested, creates a barrier in law allowing individuals in certain contexts (and in certain embodied states) to be rendered non-persons and thus outside the scope of legal rights. An approach that rejects personhood in favour of embodiment would allow individuals to enjoy their rights without being subject to such discrimination. It is also suggested that the concept of the human, itself complicated by the figure of the zombie, allows for legal engagement with a greater number of putative rights claimants including admixed embryos, cyborgs and the zombie

Grounding legal ethics learning in social scientific studies of lawyers at work

Legal ethics education, in Australia and elsewhere, has emphasised normative accounts of lawyers' professional responsibility. In the alternative we suggest legal ethical education should be informed by social scientific studies of lawyers' work. We argue that these studies reveal that legal practice is permeated with opportunities for choice, despite the rules and contextual factors that influence lawyersv practice decisions. We suggest that teaching that is designed to encourage students to come to terms with both the frequency and the situational complexity of ethical decision making, in the many discretionary spaces that inhabit the lawyer' s role, may result in qualitatively better learning outcomes in legal ethics education

Strategy-speak: What's to learn from war games?

The images of the United States military mobilising in the aftermath of World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks have a strange resonance for me. The familiarity does not have to do with suffering and loss, nor with a passion for vengeance and angry retribution. This I am relieved about. Rather, what resonates is the cold logic of expected victory through overwhelming numbers and technological superiority. This is a logic that for the last ten years has been repeated in teenage bedrooms and university computer labs across the country. It is the basic premise underlying the genre of computer strategy games

The Buribunks, post-truth and a tentative cartography of informational existence

This chapter attempts to work towards tentative cartography of informational existence. ‘Information existence’ refers to the relation, connection and possible truth of the lived human and their record in the archive. Drawing upon Carl Schmitt’s The Buribunks, this chapter presents a preliminary account of information existence in the digital, its relation to truth and its potential teleology. In The Buribunks, the future of humanity described by Schmitt is of individuals continuously publishing their personal diaries motivated by a narcissistic desire to set the narrative of the self for the future. The Buribunks appear to inhabit a ‘post-post-truth world’; where possibilities for misrepresentation, misinterpretation and falsification of information about an individual were possible and need to be guarded against through the discipline and the institutional arrangements of Buribunkdom. The Buribunks provide a cypher through which to consider informational existence in the digital. Foremost, the Buribunks desire total correspondence. They dream the mega-archive, a complete repository of information that corresponds with and coheres to the ‘truth’ of an individual’s life

'The History of the Haste-Wagons': The Motor Car Act 1909 (Vic), Emergent Technology and the Call for Law

Free tor read at publisher's site. This article is concerned with the relationship between emergent technology and the legal response to it. The focus is on the making of the Motor Car Act 1909 (Vic). It is shown that notwithstanding popular anxieties regarding the new ‘motors’, the Act did not reflect those concerns through speed limits and restrictions. Instead, the Act established a regulatory scheme that was largely pro-motoring. This dissociation between the community’s concerns and the legislation is explained through emphasising other factors influencing the Act. In particular, it is suggested that the notion of progress through technology (legislating for the future) and the ideal of the regulative state (law as technology) went to the essence of the Act. The article concludes by suggesting that these factors are not just historical and particular to the motor vehicle, but can be identified in other legal responses to technological change