do you mean that you don't look behind you before slamming the brakes, particularly on a scheduled stop ?

[ If you spend your time doing an extended, quality scan of the area below you, you're going to see anyone who is there. If they wave off, you're going to see that too.

You're a pilot, correct? You know the techniques for an effective traffic scan, slice the sky up into sections and scan one section at a time. The reason is that without that methodology, people scan too fast and too much area at once, and tend to miss things.

It's like approaching a traffic hazard at 60mph - and then turning around and staring out the back window in case someone is tailgating you before you try to stop.

Video shows a tracking dive that gets messy, then he tracks off. Then he's clearly looking around. Then he barrel rolls. .

I might have seen the same video (not publicly linked). On the one I saw, the guy has an uninterrupted period of 10 seconds where his head (as evidenced by the camera) is facing generally down and forward, before he glances to both sides, followed by just under 2 seconds spent doing a barrel roll, before facing down again and having a very near miss with someone who had just pulled slightly ahead and a fair bit lower than him.

The question is, would 2 extra seconds of looking forward and down have helped him spot the conflict and reduce the risk? Or that after 10 seconds of not seeing any potential conflict, 2 more wouldn't have mattered?

The video can be used as a good example of what you can fail to see while of doing a barrel roll. (Yet was the guy below stupid presumably not to roll? Or should he have stupidly done a roll, just because someone above might be stupid and not see his waveoff, perhaps due to stupidly doing a roll? It's messy.)

It seems sensible to me to take responsibility for avoiding both scenarios rather than trusting someone else to take care of half your risk for you.

No, that's what the wave-off is for.

Again, if everyone remained focused down and out while tracking, looking for the low man and giving the right of way, the wave-off is enough.

If you spend your time doing an extended, quality scan of the area below you, you're going to see anyone who is there. If they wave off, you're going to see that too.

You're a pilot, correct? You know the techniques for an effective traffic scan, slice the sky up into sections and scan one section at a time. The reason is that without that methodology, people scan too fast and too much area at once, and tend to miss things.

This is the same. You need to spend all of your track scannig the area where you are going if you want it to be effective. We're only talking about 5 or 6 seconds here, so you can see that a quality scan of any area will take the entire time. Trying to split that up between belly, and back tracking, or even looking up and down, will just reduce the effectiveness of the scan.

So at the moment we don't really have an effective way to deal with spearation in larger groups.

I'll take my risks under canopy and stay away from the bigways!

Your point #2 is probably a huge one.

Most of the dirt dives I hear involve nothing more than "break at x,000feet".

Not much in the way of "what if's" being covered.

So at the moment we don't really have an effective way to deal with spearation in larger groups.

I still have problems with this dumping blindly and hoping the person above is doing their job properly.

>do you mean that you don't look behind you before slamming the brakes

Sure I do - a glance to check if someone is behind me, as long as I have time. But I'm not going to take my eyes off what is in front of me - because that's where I'm going, that's where the hazards are, and that's where my responsibility lies.

And since the low person has right of way, it makes sense to be looking for him/her rather than in the opposite direction.

If you 100% trust the person above you (who should not be there in the first place).

You always have the option of not jumping with people you don't trust.