You can report hang gliding and paragliding incidents (accidents)
on-line and they go into an actual database (unlike at the USHPA) if you have
registered with CIVL (i.e., have a CIVL ID). CIVL ID's are free and most
competition pilots have them.

Brian Harris CIVL Competition Coordinator at <<civl_comps>>
writes:

Login to the WPRS is at
http://civlrankings.fai.org/FL.aspx?a=307&. If someone has an ID but has not
yet registered his email login go here:
http://civlrankings.fai.org/FL.aspx?a=308& , anyone without an ID can also
register one there. If comp organisers/pilots need a paper version of the form
for example to take details for submitting later then they can download one here
http://www.fai.org/hang_gliding/system/files/incident_form.doc.

We know that the USHPA incident reporting system is a failure
because so few people (if any) use it. I wanted to know what CIVL was going to
do to make this system successful. Brian answers the questions I ask him below:

What happens to these reports?

Currently the paragliding data is being extracted and passed to the Paragliding
Competitions Safety Task Force who are currently looking at it. The information
may also be made available to the HG Subcommittee or Safety Subcommittee chairs
for analysis.

Do they go into a database?

Yes, they are stored in the WPRS database.

Is that database searchable?

Not directly at present, but queries exist to extract the data into a
spreadsheet.

Is it public? Who gets to use it?

There is no read access to the public. But any pilot with a CIVL ID can file an
incident report. While we are mainly interested in what happens in competitions,
there is no reason why a pilot cannot file a report on a free flying incident

How much participation is there in this incident reporting system?

Too early to say. Incident reports are being filed and also we have organisers
declaring (by email when they send in results) whether they had any incidents in
their competition. We are currently trying to drive it forward by appealing to
Organisers and NACs to require the meet/safety director to get the pilot to file
the incident himself, preferably with the help of witnesses and the meet
director, or a witness, team leader or meet/safety director can file the report
on behalf of the pilot concerned.

Is it open in redacted form?

Not at present , this needs to be discussed. Once we have sufficient data then
we may start to publish redacted incidents on the website on a regular basis.

How does CIVL plan to make it successful?

Difficult one. Stage 1 is to maximise publicity that the database is up and
running, and to encourage as many pilots and organisers to report incidents that
occur in competitions. There has been much discussion within CIVL and elsewhere,
about the need to have incident data to analyse, together with additional
information, in order to determine the multiplicity of causes behind incidents,
and to identify measures to improve safety in competitions. Some NACs run
incident/accident reporting schemes that have had a varying degree of response.

I assume that Oz Report readers see the obvious problem here. Many
reasons not to file a report and no incentives to do so. So they are reduced to
appealing.

Without an open searchable redacted database, what's the point? Without
incentives for pilots and organizers to file reports, the database will be
empty. For example, notice that the video of the collision between the hang
glider and the kiteboarder was quickly pulled (although Billie kept a picture).