Once upon a time there was some Air Force fighter jet sort of thing that had a couple of rudder control linkage elements which connected above the main structural beam running back to the tail. Space was tight and the connections had to be secured out of sight of the guy with the wrenches standing below.
They were designed so that it was just as easy to hook them up backwards as it was to do it correctly.
Not surprisingly...
One guy discovered that he was entering a parallel antimatter universe as he was rolling up to speed and was able to abort the takeoff.
The next guy wasn't so lucky.
The enlisted guy with the wrenches was - of course - devastated.
The sonsabitches with the brass charged him with dereliction of duty and otherwise degraded him to the point he put a bullet in his head. In my personal opinion there were folk that needed to be stood up in front of a wall and none of them were this poor maintenance crewman.
Yeah, I guess post overhaul and pre flight checks were missed but a goddam ten-year-old should have enough brains to figure out something along the lines of "Let's use left-hand threads on the port rod and right on the starboard!"
When I hear about the pedestrian killed by the drunk in the car I like to start asking questions like...
Was the driver's blood alcohol level a factor?
Did the pedestrian leap out from behind a lamp post into the left lane of the Interstate?
Would the pedestrian have gotten off with relatively minor injuries if it hadn't been for the overly phallic hood ornament which punched through his ribs and speared his heart?
I'm guessing you're not a big Nader fan but sometimes - yeah - you blame the car.
Lemme tell you how to design a plane...
First you make it clean, light, about one and a half times as strong as it needs to be to handle the stress that can be anticipating within its operating range, and as simple and cheap as possible.
Then you make it as safe and idiot proof as possible.
(And damn near everything you do is a tradeoff.)
Take a look at:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aerotowrelease/
Carabiner / Speed Link
Top of the stack currently - stowed in the Miscellaneous set.
The little thing in the middle can rip your glider apart with well over a third of its strength in reserve. Call it a dozen Gs for some of your heavier pilots.
The huge piece o' crap surrounding it can rip six or seven gliders apart simultaneously - that's certifiably insane.
The carabiner has an auto locking gate. We have absolutely zero use for a locking gate. It only makes the glider more dangerous - in two ways. It makes it harder to separate from the glider in an emergency and it can damage the bridle of the parachute of those pilots who have adapted the bizarre practice of configuring the carabiner backwards.
The carabiner weighs over three and a third times what the speed link does and is obviously a whole lot stickier moving through the air than is its counterpart.
Ignoring, for the moment, the key issue that the speed link greatly discourages one from getting into the harness before it's connected to the glider - Which one of these chunks of hardware do you think an aircraft designer not in need of a padded cell would select for the purpose?
This IS an engineering improvement.
Brian HAS developed a failsafe harness concept but it ain't retrofittable. What I've got isn't as idiot proof but anyone using a carabiner can easily and cheaply adapt it.
With respect to written checklists - I don't/won't use one. I suspect my reason is behind the reason the culture as a whole doesn't and won't.
The gliders are so simple that they're either together or they're not and the sorts of things I'm notoriously good at missing (helmet buckled?) are insignificant little annoyances. There's only one really good way to kill yourself with a missed preflight item and the launch dolly, the Aussie method, and the lift glider until you feel the tug trick all take care of that.
And the speed link compels the Aussie method and you tend to be very aware of the status of the connection 'cause - unlike the carabiner - it takes a little time and effort.
Our two respective foci - design and TTPs - are not mutually exclusive. I'm just trying to make the TTPs simpler, shorter, and less critical.
And...
If you don't think you'll get significantly better performance with the Dacron suspension webbing - use it because it's UV resistant and thus safer.
If you don't think the speed link will make you significantly safer - use it because you'll get better performance.
Come to think of it - that's probably how I should be selling this concept. Don't bother mentioning safety at all.