I can't relate to that as a pilot - but I can relate to that as a driver. I drive very long distances at all hours quite frequently. Sometimes for days, 12-16 hours a day. As such, I drill myself on mundane things like "the car in front of me just lost control" or "I let my attention wander and now two wheels are on the shoulder" or "my windshield just shattered" (it could happen, I once had a bird strike in a car
), for example.Now of course, none of those have ever actually happened. But I can recall three emergencies, all at highway speeds, where I needed to stop - stat. Once, a truck (an 18 wheeler) pulled out in front of me from an onramp. It had just come out of a truck wash and was spraying hot water everywhere - directly on to my windshield, in -20°C air. I was blinded, instantly, my windshield covered in ice. I was only able to safely pull over by looking out the passenger window for the guardrail. In another case, a coolant hose fell off, spraying hot coolant directly onto my exhaust manifold, while I was in the left lane of four. This filled the cabin with glycol steam in less than a second, again, blinding me, instantly. I had to roll down the window and drive with my head out there like Ace Ventura. In the third case, I got more or less t-boned on the 401 by a truck twice my size that had lost control, on an inch of packed snow. It hit me hard enough to shatter the driver's window, render the driver's door inoperable, and lift my two left tires off the asphalt.
In each and every case, I was able to make the situation safe. Either I'm good or I'm lucky, I don't know. Maybe it's because I practice it or chair drive it, or perhaps because my vanity plates are a testament to the fact that I lived where others did not, so they remind me every time I get behind the wheel. Or, I'm just lucky. But my point is this - while I drill myself on "emergencies" while driving, none of those drills were a real reflection of the few real emergencies I've actually had to deal with in a car.
Each and every time, there was no warning. I do think you're right when you preach simply to not panic, follow a set of drilled procedures (in this specific case of mine, pulling the car over safely and quickly in heavy traffic while blind or heavily disoriented), and trust that since you can't plan for everything, plan for the most likely things. That training/planning/practice/drill will serve you well elsewhere.
My apologies for taking some time to reach my point; upon further reflection, I think I agree with you. I do credit my self-imposed "training" for, at the very least, allaying my tendency to panic in the situations described above. But every time I go out and "train" for anything like this, I clearly know of it, long before it happens. There is no instructor to make it a surprise, and yet, I have in my admittedly subjective and biased judgement, learned, somehow, something that I at the very least attribute my lack of serious injury to.
Yes, I think I agree with you.
