Why do you think/. is somehow different from every other pseudo-news site?/. exists to make money for its owners by selling advertising, it is no different than any other "media" source. The editors know that stories about Palin garner views ("eyeballs") and therefore advertising revenue for themselves./. long since stopped being some egalitarian effort to provide geek news a long time ago, if in fact it ever was.
While it's amusing to poke fun at fox, have you ever seen the AIAA daily briefing? The grammar is horrible, double words or missing words are common, and usually about once a week they get "their" and "there" wrong. And this is from a supposedly professional organization. Somehow proper English and grammar has become the exception rather than the rule.
And yes, I'm sure there's something wrong with my post as well, however I don't hold myself out to be a professional news or technical organization.
Wouldn't depend on whether the co-pilot is feeling co-operative, or not?
Not at all.
Pilots in the U.S. at least are allowed to carry guns with them after undergoing a background check (getting past this would probably be the only mildly difficult part). Contrary to popular movies, a bullet hole or two in the fuselage isn't going to cause rapid decompression, it will just make the outflow valve close down a bit.
Also, there is generally somewhere in the cockpit a crash axe which can be easily reached by the crew. Quite effective in caving in the other crew member's head
Finally, there are opportunities near take-off and landing where the pilot flying could sufficiently upset the aircraft and cause a crash in such a short period of time the pilot not flying would not have a chance to recover it, even if he were physically much stronger.
No protection from having a second pilot, even if they are not co-operative.
I am not a tax expert, however, I have heard that yes, you and your wife COULD do something similar, except the costs to get it going would greatly outweigh the benefits. Many of these tax "loopholes" have high fixed costs to get going, so they aren't useful for the kind of income most any household would have.
I wanna know what airport you're near that airplanes cross the outer marker at 30,000 ft. That's either one hell of a descent rate from the outer marker, or the outer marker is WAYYYYYY out there. Like 2 states over out there.
In the U.S., at least, the co-pilot (and also the number of flight attendants) are required by regulation. I'd be shocked if this wasn't the case in the U.K., and every other ICAO member country. He can propose all he wants, but the co-pilot position isn't going away. True, the pilots aren't doing much at cruise, but the workload is very intense at takeoff and landing, particularly in busy terminal areas. Heck, the U.S. is INCREASING the required qualifications for co-pilots as a result of a recent accident.
Not to mention, I doubt either Boeing or EADS are about to allow single-pilot operation of any of their airliners. The aircraft would literally have to be re-certified for single pilot operations. Many of the larger private business jets (Falcon, Gulfstream) are certified only for 2-pilot operations.
Except that, when ANY aircraft is in VMC, regardless of whether they are operating on an IFR or VFR flight plan, the pilot is primarily responsible to see and avoid other traffic, not ATC. Being IFR does not relieve you of your responsibility to watch out for other traffic.
Below 10,000 ft and more than 30nm from a "large" (Class B) airport, there is no requirement for aircraft to have an electrical system, much less a transponder. Primary radar, if it's working, and if the controller is displaying it, probably won't see a Piper Cub. I believe ATC may even turn off display of 1200 (VFR) squawk codes in heavily congested airspace, so ATC might not even see VFR traffic on their scopes.
The UAV pilots will have to be responsible and able to see and avoid other traffic, period. The only possible way around this is if they remain in restricted or otherwise positively controlled airspace anytime they are below 10,000 ft where transponders are required. Even this would be dubious at best as they would have the potential to descend through "normal" airspace in the event of engine failure.
I would also add to your first point that the UAV pilots will likely be required to hold a commercial certificate, and for a UAV powered by a turbojet engine, probably a type certificate as well. Actually, I'd like to see a type rating required for all UAV pilots, due to the special nature of the way they are flow.
This isn't the FAA building and deploying UAV's on any kind of scale. This is the FAA trying to figure out how to safely integrate UAV's into the national aerospace system (NAS). Personally, as a pilot, while I distrust the FAA to some extent, as the agency charged with ensuring safety of all operators in the NAS, they are the right agency to be performing this study.
When some other agency says they're going to start launching UAV's in the NAS, the FAA needs to have ammunition to enforce safety measures to ensure that the UAV's not pose an undue hazard to other aircraft and that the UAV operators respond accordingly to instructions from air traffic control.
I'd be very surprised that it was eradicated, because it hasn't been. Slavery still exits in many parts of the world, notably Africa, the Middle East and South Asia.. The fact that people have been taught (as was I) that it ended with the U.S. civil war is very disturbing. Not quite as disturbing is the fact that I was taught only that whites went into Africa and captured blacks for slaves. While this is no doubt true, leaving out the fact that many (most?) were simply purchased from other blacks who had enslaved them gives a very wrong impression of the scope and nature of slavery.
He was told "you are not looking after our FiberWAN network anymore, someone else is. Hand over the keys so that your successor can do their job". He used to be properly authorised because it was his job to look after the network.
"Mr Jones, you no longer fly this space shuttle. Hand the keys over to Bob the janitor. Bob, take 'er up!".
The correct and legal thing to do in that situation is hand over the keys to the shuttle and make sure you aren't anywhere near it when Bob tries to launch. You don't own the shuttle, NASA does. It's up to THEM, not you, to decide who flies it.
You may want to go to the press and try to get them interested in NASA allowing a janitor to fly it, but refusing to hand the keys to the janitor is insubordination at least, and if those are the ONLY keys, then it's a form of theft.
Quite seriously, I would call a city-wide WAN (particularly on the scale of SF) considerably more complex than flying the space shuttle. Even a highly competent network engineer might take months to map the whole thing out starting with nothing but a handful of router passwords.
This statement is laughable. You either have a vastly over-inflated opinion of network management, or absolutely no clue in life what's involved in flying something like the shuttle. Shuttle commanders aren't just pulled off the street you know. They are all highly accomplished military pilots, most if not all with flight test backgrounds, for a reason.
Being told "give Bob access" and "GTFO" very much count as mutually exclusive instructions.
Not at all. People get fired all the time, and that is exactly what happens when anyone in any profession, gets canned. I'd say being told "give Bob the keys" and "strap yourself in" are far more mutually exclusive.
How, exactly, are anonymized blood samples going to used to track down missing persons or solve cold cases, or do anything else that hinges on tying a person to that blood sample? That is assuming you believe the samples were actually anonymized, which there's no way to know for sure.
I'm not defending what was done, but the only real use I can see would be statistical evaluation. Possibly a good idea, but the implementation (doing it without consent) is clearly wrong.
Yes, because voluntary compliance works so well in the U.S.
We asked people to use a hands-free device when using cell phones while driving, that is truly a noncritical sacrifice, and the request was completely ignored. By the same token, while there are definitely more people using hands-free now with laws in place, even the law is widely ignored.
Asking Americans or even telling us with the force of law is pointless.
As someone else pointed out, you're far better off asking the cell carriers (or twisting their arms a bit) to shut off data services than trying to get millions of Americans to do anything that might inconvenience us in the least.
Some of those small companies (Blue Origin and Space/X off the top of my head) are already owned by billionaires. What can Boeing offer Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos?
What we should do is extend the Shuttle for a few years, and perhaps do an updated Saturn rocket (which despite urban legends to the contrary, we still have blueprints for at Rocketdyne).
Extending the shuttle gets more and more expensive every day as key support functions and hardware are eliminated.
And how many of the materials and processes involved in making the Saturn V rockets are now illegal in the U.S. and most of the rest of the world? Having the design is a much smaller part of the problem than you think.
Here's the problem; you've never registered for Facebook, but have your friends? Your family? How many pictures of you are on Facebook regardless of your non-participation? Did one of your friends post a picture taken that night you all got drunk and maybe did something you'd prefer you mother (or a potential employer) didn't hear about?
The problem is that your friends disregard for their privacy translates into their disregard for your privacy, and suddenly a "reasonable person" no longer has an expectation of privacy.
No, it means a rich person is much more likely to get the correct sentence, for better or for worse. I read most of TFA so I may have missed it, but it didn't seem to say whether longer or shorter sentences were more likely. It did say that race wasn't a factor in the error, and implied that the errors were non-intentional.
Heck, I often use voice dialing even when I'm NOT driving. Far easier. Interesting that the studies comparing talking to a passenger vs. conversing on a cell are mixed, I don't think I'd classify it as "probably" safer, at best I'd say "possibly" safer. I think it would be quite revealing to see studies of things like listening to music vs. listening to the news vs talking on a cell. Might be a bit surprising.
No, my conversations are not more important than the lives of people around me. But then again, I have no trouble shifting my focus as necessary, even if it means asking the person I'm talking to to repeat themselves because I've shifted enough of my focus outside the vehicle that I'm no longer listening to them.
You misrepresent what I said. I did NOT say talking on the radio caused crashes, I said it is rarely listed as a contributing factor. I have never seen it listed as a primary factor.
And, it's been proven to me time and time again, that no, the tower is NOT looking at me, and may not be looking at the runway either. Safety is my responsibility, not the towers. Even says so in the regs.
Given that I'm straight, and I can't remember the last time I talked to female controller, I doubt I'll be hitting on the tower controller any time soon. Pity that, the few female controllers I've delt with have been excellent.
I'm not protesting at all. I'm just drawing a parallel between flying an aircraft and talking to ATC and talking with a bluetooth while driving.
Interestingly enough, another poster linked to a wikipedia article that agrees with the premise that handfreee is no more safe than holding a phone. However, it also says there are conflicting results on exactly how distracting a passenger is, and in fact talking to a passenger may be no more safe than talking on a bluetooth. Which says to me this may all be much ado about nothing.
I'd love to see actual research that backs up this claim. The claim may be correct, and I may be unique, but I don't feel any less distracted dealing with ATC when flying then I do when I'm talking on bluetooth while driving. Having seen no research one way or the other, it's difficult to say who's right here.
First, I'm NOT a "professional" pilot, by which I mean I do not get money for flying airplanes. I have commercial, instrument, and multi-engine ratings, I do not hold and do not want an instructor certificate.
The air carrier guys get almost constant recurrent training, or at least a part 121 ride every 6 months, but they also have two crew members up there so they can divy up the roles. The air carriers operate under the same rules I do, PLUS a bunch more. Not so private pilots. We merely have to pass a flight review given by a certificated instructor every two years. While this is more than your average driver's license renewal, the minimum is 1 hour of ground instruction and 1 hour in the air. Rarely does a flight review go beyond that.
I honestly think almost anyone can become a private pilot. An instrument rating, maybe not, because it's a TON more work, though even that is being reduced as GPS becomes commonplace.
I just don't see that having a conversation on bluetooth regarding your dinner plans tonight as being any different than having that same conversation with the person sitting next to you. At least when you're on bluetooth, you're not tempted to look over at the person you're talking to.
Well, while they are all related to landing the airplane, you are doing a lot of tasks.
On a typical VFR approach your concentration is outside the airplane. However, there are gear to be lowered, flaps to be lowered (in steps, not all at once), mixtures and propeller controls to be moved, throttles to be adjusted, and you ought to recheck all that once or twice before landing to make sure you haven't forgot something (like the landing gear!).
I don't think ATC telling me to make the first turn off "if able" is helping me land the airplane, neither actually, is them telling me I'm cleared to land, after all I don't need nor receive a clearance to land at a non-towered airport. It's a systematic safety check, so while it helps ensure I own the runway for the next couple of minutes, it doesn't really help me land the airplane.
True, all the things I'm doing are concentrated on flying the airplane, but it's splitting my attention several ways none the less.
You'd think that, but I highly suspect you'd be wrong.
I fly small airplanes regularly, which means it's just me, I don't have a copilot to handle the radios. I do the most communicating with air traffic control during the most critical aspects of flight, which is takeoff and landing. While approaching the airport, I not only have to listen for radio calls for me, but also for aircraft around me to maintain situational awareness and ensure the controller hasn't just cleared someone onto the runway I'm about to land on. Often I'm not cleared to land until I'm on short final and starting the power and pitch adjustments to flare. I must acknowledge that clearance with a radio transmission. I'll often receive basic taxi instructions (asking where I'm going on the airport, giving me a ground control frequency) during rollout.
Pilots every day talk to ATC at the same time they are performing critical tasks in the airplane. "Dropping the airplane to fly the radio" is rarely cited as a contributing factor to a crash. Not to say it never is, but it is rare. Pilots receive NO training on how to split their attention between the airplane and the radio... while we are admonished to always fly the airplane first, failure to acknowledge a landing clearance has the potential to have the FAA start enforcement action against you, so it's not optional.
I don't think the big danger in driving while holding a cell phone is because you're talking, I think it's because you've just taken a hand away from controlling the vehicle. Or you've got your neck in some weird position trying to hold it between your ear and shoulder. Sure, it takes some brain cells to carry on a conversation, and that DOES reduce safety somewhat, same as singing along with the radio or carrying on a conversation with a passenger. But I can walk and chew gum at the same time, I can land an airplane and talk to ATC at the same time, and I can drive and talk to someone at the same time, regardless if they're sitting next to me or I have a bluetooth in my ear.
Driving inspectors aren't checked nearly as closely as FAA Designated Examiners. The guy I took my IFR checkride with got his DE yanked a couple years after my IFR ride. The FAA called me with some questions about my checkride, and I found out later he was playing fast and loose with some paperwork.
The checkride was honest, and the CFI's I talked to all thought his checkrides were fair - it didn't seem to be a matter of passing unqualified pilots or flunking qualified pilots, just paperwork issues.
As long as you still have to go to an FAA D.E. for the checkrides (which I doubt will ever change), there's really no comparison between drivers license tests and flight tests.
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And yet, there's already over a 1,000 comments.
Why do you think /. is somehow different from every other pseudo-news site? /. exists to make money for its owners by selling advertising, it is no different than any other "media" source. The editors know that stories about Palin garner views ("eyeballs") and therefore advertising revenue for themselves. /. long since stopped being some egalitarian effort to provide geek news a long time ago, if in fact it ever was.
It isn't about news, it's about revenue.
While it's amusing to poke fun at fox, have you ever seen the AIAA daily briefing? The grammar is horrible, double words or missing words are common, and usually about once a week they get "their" and "there" wrong. And this is from a supposedly professional organization. Somehow proper English and grammar has become the exception rather than the rule.
And yes, I'm sure there's something wrong with my post as well, however I don't hold myself out to be a professional news or technical organization.
Wouldn't depend on whether the co-pilot is feeling co-operative, or not?
Not at all.
Pilots in the U.S. at least are allowed to carry guns with them after undergoing a background check (getting past this would probably be the only mildly difficult part). Contrary to popular movies, a bullet hole or two in the fuselage isn't going to cause rapid decompression, it will just make the outflow valve close down a bit.
Also, there is generally somewhere in the cockpit a crash axe which can be easily reached by the crew. Quite effective in caving in the other crew member's head
Finally, there are opportunities near take-off and landing where the pilot flying could sufficiently upset the aircraft and cause a crash in such a short period of time the pilot not flying would not have a chance to recover it, even if he were physically much stronger.
No protection from having a second pilot, even if they are not co-operative.
I am not a tax expert, however, I have heard that yes, you and your wife COULD do something similar, except the costs to get it going would greatly outweigh the benefits. Many of these tax "loopholes" have high fixed costs to get going, so they aren't useful for the kind of income most any household would have.
I wanna know what airport you're near that airplanes cross the outer marker at 30,000 ft. That's either one hell of a descent rate from the outer marker, or the outer marker is WAYYYYYY out there. Like 2 states over out there.
In the U.S., at least, the co-pilot (and also the number of flight attendants) are required by regulation. I'd be shocked if this wasn't the case in the U.K., and every other ICAO member country. He can propose all he wants, but the co-pilot position isn't going away. True, the pilots aren't doing much at cruise, but the workload is very intense at takeoff and landing, particularly in busy terminal areas. Heck, the U.S. is INCREASING the required qualifications for co-pilots as a result of a recent accident.
Not to mention, I doubt either Boeing or EADS are about to allow single-pilot operation of any of their airliners. The aircraft would literally have to be re-certified for single pilot operations. Many of the larger private business jets (Falcon, Gulfstream) are certified only for 2-pilot operations.
Short answer: Never. Gonna. Happen.
Except that, when ANY aircraft is in VMC, regardless of whether they are operating on an IFR or VFR flight plan, the pilot is primarily responsible to see and avoid other traffic, not ATC. Being IFR does not relieve you of your responsibility to watch out for other traffic.
Below 10,000 ft and more than 30nm from a "large" (Class B) airport, there is no requirement for aircraft to have an electrical system, much less a transponder. Primary radar, if it's working, and if the controller is displaying it, probably won't see a Piper Cub. I believe ATC may even turn off display of 1200 (VFR) squawk codes in heavily congested airspace, so ATC might not even see VFR traffic on their scopes.
The UAV pilots will have to be responsible and able to see and avoid other traffic, period. The only possible way around this is if they remain in restricted or otherwise positively controlled airspace anytime they are below 10,000 ft where transponders are required. Even this would be dubious at best as they would have the potential to descend through "normal" airspace in the event of engine failure.
I would also add to your first point that the UAV pilots will likely be required to hold a commercial certificate, and for a UAV powered by a turbojet engine, probably a type certificate as well. Actually, I'd like to see a type rating required for all UAV pilots, due to the special nature of the way they are flow.
This isn't the FAA building and deploying UAV's on any kind of scale. This is the FAA trying to figure out how to safely integrate UAV's into the national aerospace system (NAS). Personally, as a pilot, while I distrust the FAA to some extent, as the agency charged with ensuring safety of all operators in the NAS, they are the right agency to be performing this study.
When some other agency says they're going to start launching UAV's in the NAS, the FAA needs to have ammunition to enforce safety measures to ensure that the UAV's not pose an undue hazard to other aircraft and that the UAV operators respond accordingly to instructions from air traffic control.
And so is your writing style. So stop posting to /.
I'd be very surprised that it was eradicated, because it hasn't been. Slavery still exits in many parts of the world, notably Africa, the Middle East and South Asia.. The fact that people have been taught (as was I) that it ended with the U.S. civil war is very disturbing. Not quite as disturbing is the fact that I was taught only that whites went into Africa and captured blacks for slaves. While this is no doubt true, leaving out the fact that many (most?) were simply purchased from other blacks who had enslaved them gives a very wrong impression of the scope and nature of slavery.
He was told "you are not looking after our FiberWAN network anymore, someone else is. Hand over the keys so that your successor can do their job". He used to be properly authorised because it was his job to look after the network.
"Mr Jones, you no longer fly this space shuttle. Hand the keys over to Bob the janitor. Bob, take 'er up!".
The correct and legal thing to do in that situation is hand over the keys to the shuttle and make sure you aren't anywhere near it when Bob tries to launch. You don't own the shuttle, NASA does. It's up to THEM, not you, to decide who flies it.
You may want to go to the press and try to get them interested in NASA allowing a janitor to fly it, but refusing to hand the keys to the janitor is insubordination at least, and if those are the ONLY keys, then it's a form of theft.
Quite seriously, I would call a city-wide WAN (particularly on the scale of SF) considerably more complex than
flying the space shuttle. Even a highly competent network engineer might take months to map the whole thing out starting
with nothing but a handful of router passwords.
This statement is laughable. You either have a vastly over-inflated opinion of network management, or absolutely no clue in life what's involved in flying something like the shuttle. Shuttle commanders aren't just pulled off the street you know. They are all highly accomplished military pilots, most if not all with flight test backgrounds, for a reason.
Being told "give Bob access" and "GTFO" very much count as mutually exclusive instructions.
Not at all. People get fired all the time, and that is exactly what happens when anyone in any profession, gets canned. I'd say being told "give Bob the keys" and "strap yourself in" are far more mutually exclusive.
Because the TFA certainly doesn't.
How, exactly, are anonymized blood samples going to used to track down missing persons or solve cold cases, or do anything else that hinges on tying a person to that blood sample? That is assuming you believe the samples were actually anonymized, which there's no way to know for sure.
I'm not defending what was done, but the only real use I can see would be statistical evaluation. Possibly a good idea, but the implementation (doing it without consent) is clearly wrong.
Yes, because voluntary compliance works so well in the U.S.
We asked people to use a hands-free device when using cell phones while driving, that is truly a noncritical sacrifice, and the request was completely ignored. By the same token, while there are definitely more people using hands-free now with laws in place, even the law is widely ignored.
Asking Americans or even telling us with the force of law is pointless.
As someone else pointed out, you're far better off asking the cell carriers (or twisting their arms a bit) to shut off data services than trying to get millions of Americans to do anything that might inconvenience us in the least.
Some of those small companies (Blue Origin and Space/X off the top of my head) are already owned by billionaires. What can Boeing offer Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos?
What we should do is extend the Shuttle for a few years, and perhaps do an updated Saturn rocket (which despite urban legends to the contrary, we still have blueprints for at Rocketdyne).
Extending the shuttle gets more and more expensive every day as key support functions and hardware are eliminated.
And how many of the materials and processes involved in making the Saturn V rockets are now illegal in the U.S. and most of the rest of the world? Having the design is a much smaller part of the problem than you think.
Here's the problem; you've never registered for Facebook, but have your friends? Your family? How many pictures of you are on Facebook regardless of your non-participation? Did one of your friends post a picture taken that night you all got drunk and maybe did something you'd prefer you mother (or a potential employer) didn't hear about?
The problem is that your friends disregard for their privacy translates into their disregard for your privacy, and suddenly a "reasonable person" no longer has an expectation of privacy.
Facebook may already know you, like it or nor.
After all the unrelated pork-barrel is added? Thousands of pages, I'm sure.
No, it means a rich person is much more likely to get the correct sentence, for better or for worse. I read most of TFA so I may have missed it, but it didn't seem to say whether longer or shorter sentences were more likely. It did say that race wasn't a factor in the error, and implied that the errors were non-intentional.
Heck, I often use voice dialing even when I'm NOT driving. Far easier. Interesting that the studies comparing talking to a passenger vs. conversing on a cell are mixed, I don't think I'd classify it as "probably" safer, at best I'd say "possibly" safer. I think it would be quite revealing to see studies of things like listening to music vs. listening to the news vs talking on a cell. Might be a bit surprising.
No, my conversations are not more important than the lives of people around me. But then again, I have no trouble shifting my focus as necessary, even if it means asking the person I'm talking to to repeat themselves because I've shifted enough of my focus outside the vehicle that I'm no longer listening to them.
You misrepresent what I said. I did NOT say talking on the radio caused crashes, I said it is rarely listed as a contributing factor. I have never seen it listed as a primary factor.
And, it's been proven to me time and time again, that no, the tower is NOT looking at me, and may not be looking at the runway either. Safety is my responsibility, not the towers. Even says so in the regs.
Given that I'm straight, and I can't remember the last time I talked to female controller, I doubt I'll be hitting on the tower controller any time soon. Pity that, the few female controllers I've delt with have been excellent.
I'm not protesting at all. I'm just drawing a parallel between flying an aircraft and talking to ATC and talking with a bluetooth while driving.
Interestingly enough, another poster linked to a wikipedia article that agrees with the premise that handfreee is no more safe than holding a phone. However, it also says there are conflicting results on exactly how distracting a passenger is, and in fact talking to a passenger may be no more safe than talking on a bluetooth. Which says to me this may all be much ado about nothing.
I'd love to see actual research that backs up this claim. The claim may be correct, and I may be unique, but I don't feel any less distracted dealing with ATC when flying then I do when I'm talking on bluetooth while driving. Having seen no research one way or the other, it's difficult to say who's right here.
First, I'm NOT a "professional" pilot, by which I mean I do not get money for flying airplanes. I have commercial, instrument, and multi-engine ratings, I do not hold and do not want an instructor certificate.
The air carrier guys get almost constant recurrent training, or at least a part 121 ride every 6 months, but they also have two crew members up there so they can divy up the roles. The air carriers operate under the same rules I do, PLUS a bunch more. Not so private pilots. We merely have to pass a flight review given by a certificated instructor every two years. While this is more than your average driver's license renewal, the minimum is 1 hour of ground instruction and 1 hour in the air. Rarely does a flight review go beyond that.
I honestly think almost anyone can become a private pilot. An instrument rating, maybe not, because it's a TON more work, though even that is being reduced as GPS becomes commonplace.
I just don't see that having a conversation on bluetooth regarding your dinner plans tonight as being any different than having that same conversation with the person sitting next to you. At least when you're on bluetooth, you're not tempted to look over at the person you're talking to.
Well, while they are all related to landing the airplane, you are doing a lot of tasks.
On a typical VFR approach your concentration is outside the airplane. However, there are gear to be lowered, flaps to be lowered (in steps, not all at once), mixtures and propeller controls to be moved, throttles to be adjusted, and you ought to recheck all that once or twice before landing to make sure you haven't forgot something (like the landing gear!).
I don't think ATC telling me to make the first turn off "if able" is helping me land the airplane, neither actually, is them telling me I'm cleared to land, after all I don't need nor receive a clearance to land at a non-towered airport. It's a systematic safety check, so while it helps ensure I own the runway for the next couple of minutes, it doesn't really help me land the airplane.
True, all the things I'm doing are concentrated on flying the airplane, but it's splitting my attention several ways none the less.
You'd think that, but I highly suspect you'd be wrong.
I fly small airplanes regularly, which means it's just me, I don't have a copilot to handle the radios. I do the most communicating with air traffic control during the most critical aspects of flight, which is takeoff and landing. While approaching the airport, I not only have to listen for radio calls for me, but also for aircraft around me to maintain situational awareness and ensure the controller hasn't just cleared someone onto the runway I'm about to land on. Often I'm not cleared to land until I'm on short final and starting the power and pitch adjustments to flare. I must acknowledge that clearance with a radio transmission. I'll often receive basic taxi instructions (asking where I'm going on the airport, giving me a ground control frequency) during rollout.
Pilots every day talk to ATC at the same time they are performing critical tasks in the airplane. "Dropping the airplane to fly the radio" is rarely cited as a contributing factor to a crash. Not to say it never is, but it is rare. Pilots receive NO training on how to split their attention between the airplane and the radio ... while we are admonished to always fly the airplane first, failure to acknowledge a landing clearance has the potential to have the FAA start enforcement action against you, so it's not optional.
I don't think the big danger in driving while holding a cell phone is because you're talking, I think it's because you've just taken a hand away from controlling the vehicle. Or you've got your neck in some weird position trying to hold it between your ear and shoulder. Sure, it takes some brain cells to carry on a conversation, and that DOES reduce safety somewhat, same as singing along with the radio or carrying on a conversation with a passenger. But I can walk and chew gum at the same time, I can land an airplane and talk to ATC at the same time, and I can drive and talk to someone at the same time, regardless if they're sitting next to me or I have a bluetooth in my ear.
Driving inspectors aren't checked nearly as closely as FAA Designated Examiners. The guy I took my IFR checkride with got his DE yanked a couple years after my IFR ride. The FAA called me with some questions about my checkride, and I found out later he was playing fast and loose with some paperwork.
The checkride was honest, and the CFI's I talked to all thought his checkrides were fair - it didn't seem to be a matter of passing unqualified pilots or flunking qualified pilots, just paperwork issues.
As long as you still have to go to an FAA D.E. for the checkrides (which I doubt will ever change), there's really no comparison between drivers license tests and flight tests.