One of the big reasons I stopped riding.
-
Please take a moment and update your account profile. If you have an updated account profile with basic information on why you are on Air Warriors it will help other people respond to your posts. How do you update your profile you ask?
Go here:
Edit Account Details and Profile
New Initiatives from SECNAV
- Thread starter Recovering LSO
- Start date
One of the big reasons I stopped riding.
Really? That's all it took? We can get up in arms about the general attitude the Navy (or Marines) has toward motorcycles, but when the rubber meets the road, having to take a class every few years (which is actually really beneficial) and signing a couple peices of paper is not that big a deal. Small price to pay, IMO.
Brett
Who do you think is going to get f*cked with picking up the extra slack when the squadron is a man down? I'll give you a hint. It's the same guys that get stuck with duty on holidays, or when Little Johnny is playing the trumpet in the school concert.
[insert picture of the Single Officers Protection Association logo]
Not a proponent of extended maternity/paternity hiatus, but presumably that person's req would pop and you'd get a replacement - in a perfect world. If this does come to pass, I would imagine that a sufficient amount of lead time would be required when applying for such things. The problem is that you may very well spend a year or two getting someone trained up to do their job, then not benefit from that investment in your human capital. That may be a wash at the level of BUPERS, but at the squadron level, that hurts.
Brett
Brett
Having a kid, I understand the benefit that it provides for the family. The first few years of a child's life are very important developmentally. If a person is in a position to stay home with their kid, and they want to, it could benefit the kid significantly. I understand the flip side of that as well, which is the point you are trying to make. It's a big shit sandwich, and everyone takes a bit on both ends and meets somewhere in the middle. Right now, the family member misses many milestones in their kid's life, but on the occasion that they are able to get the time off, someone has to cover for them.
To add to this. . .I wonder what the cost (financially) will be to train the new person as well as re-train the person after being gone for three years. In an era of tightening budgets, this would be an interesting figure to see.
Alright...not to be the guy who says "Man, this colored drink is delicious..." but...
First off, none of this is policy yet. Did the last duty section you mustered have to blow into a breathalyzer? I didn't think so. Does your command own a breathalyzer? I also, didn't think so. Everybody cool out for a minute. Long story short, I'll believe it when I see it.
Motorcycle stuff...Well, do you guys really wonder why we're paying more attention to it? We killed or seriously injured more folks on motorcycles last year (by a large margin) than we did during flight mishaps or AGM's. From a former (just) Wing Safety Officer, I can tell you that the majority of those people were fucking up. The vast majority of the injuries and mishaps occurred to people riding under the table, riding without required safety equipment, shattering traffic laws (by that I mean riding a stand-up at 100...) or not complying with the current program. Don't want a top down solution? Then come up with a bottom up solution. The reason that we are hearing about this is because we (I say we as a collective "at the command level") have failed to execute the motorcycle program we have...so yeah, the top down solution is to make it harder to ride. Don't like it? Fix it. Stop guys you know who aren't current with training. Talk to people who you know who act like morons on motorcycles. Why? 1) Because its your f#$%ing job as an Officer and 2) Because there ass-clownery makes it harder for you to ride. You say we can't fix stupid? That's true...but commands sure as shit can say to the identified stupid "Stay off a motorcycle or go to NJP."
First off, none of this is policy yet. Did the last duty section you mustered have to blow into a breathalyzer? I didn't think so. Does your command own a breathalyzer? I also, didn't think so. Everybody cool out for a minute. Long story short, I'll believe it when I see it.
Motorcycle stuff...Well, do you guys really wonder why we're paying more attention to it? We killed or seriously injured more folks on motorcycles last year (by a large margin) than we did during flight mishaps or AGM's. From a former (just) Wing Safety Officer, I can tell you that the majority of those people were fucking up. The vast majority of the injuries and mishaps occurred to people riding under the table, riding without required safety equipment, shattering traffic laws (by that I mean riding a stand-up at 100...) or not complying with the current program. Don't want a top down solution? Then come up with a bottom up solution. The reason that we are hearing about this is because we (I say we as a collective "at the command level") have failed to execute the motorcycle program we have...so yeah, the top down solution is to make it harder to ride. Don't like it? Fix it. Stop guys you know who aren't current with training. Talk to people who you know who act like morons on motorcycles. Why? 1) Because its your f#$%ing job as an Officer and 2) Because there ass-clownery makes it harder for you to ride. You say we can't fix stupid? That's true...but commands sure as shit can say to the identified stupid "Stay off a motorcycle or go to NJP."
If we can't get compliance with the existing program, how will we get compliance with a more rigorous program? Unless the goal is just to enable punishment after mishaps. "Well, sailor, you were one week delinquent on your semi-annual motorcycle safety refresher, see you at mast after you get out of the hospital!"
The USN/USMC are rife with rules already, without creating new ones. How about we just enforce the ones we already have?
Ummm, for the career sabbatical stuff, the reserves regularly deal with bringing people back from civilian life, mobilizing them, spending money retraining them... (minus the Tricare part during their time when they're not in uniform) and, for that matter, tactical coincidental med downs on the eve of deployment. Just throwing that out there.
Yes to all. No argument. I'll tell you though, that the ability to punish already exists. CO's, for some reason, don't use it. It's a puzzle. I've seen numerous times where a rider will have a near-fatal mishap, be in clear violation of nearly all the requirements of the rider program, and still be cared for on the Navy's dime, paid benefits and not be taken to NJP. Why? Who the hell knows. Maybe because it would be more work than just allowing the benefits to keep on coming. The bottom line though is that until we make the cost of non-compliance higher than the cost of compliance, we will have a significant percentage of people who, shocker, don't comply.
Again though, the bottom line is that unless squadrons and Wings etc...fix their shit...we will continue to get a "solution" by more rules because that is what up-echelon commands do.
I had more responsibility and freedom as an unwinged Ensign at Advanced than I did as a winged JG in the fleet. Maybe the TRACOMs mindset of cranking out production pushed alot of the bullshit to the back burner, but we waste more time on stupid chickenshit than we do on actual training. Been to a safety stand down lately? I'll save you 8 hours and sum it up for you: don't drink and drive, don't rape your colleagues, and don't get arrested for being a drunk asshole. That kind of shit actually gets pretty insulting to the 99% of us who it doesn't affect after a while.
I'm married with no kids. I take a bunch of hits already on the "well, you don't have kids so this dets not that big a deal for you" side; if I were single, I'd definitely be even more pissed off. Oh, you mean I just have to get my wife knocked up and I get a year off with bennies? Sign me up. Retarded. We ask enough of the people in the Navy. Asking more of the ones who've already sacrificed a family so the ones who didn't can spend more time with theirs is a pile of horseshit.
This kind of shit reeks of yes men at the top not wanting to upset the apple cart.
I'm proud of my time in the canoe club, and I don't mind deploying or doing my mission, but chicken shit like this isn't the Navy I thought I was joining.
Yes, along with two other issues. I'm considering getting a track bike, but after dealing with the pain of doing stupid classes and endless paperwork I'll no longer be riding on the road. Of course, the two other bigger reasons would be 1) Witnessing three fatalities on the roads around Austin one spring afternoon, and 2) Putting a 500hp V10 2 seat roadster in the garage.
And the classes may be beneficial for new riders, but I've learned nothing in the classes that I've taken. And yes, I approached them with an open mind.
In my anecdotal experience, it IS a problem that may never get quantified to anyone's satisfaction. In my last command, I made a habit of walking the spaces and talking to Sailors when I could and in doing so, I overheard some very interesting conversations about their after-hours activities. Keep in mind none of it was illegal or violating any SOP/SORM, etc. But lots of these guys regularly drank heavily into the wee hours before reporting to work and those who were not on duty were working on aircraft. Taking that knowledge with me on deployment as OIC, I implemented a 12-hour bottle to wrench, 12-hour bottle to watch, and 2000 last drink last night in port policy on top of OPNAV restrictions for pilots and aircrew. It was HIGHLY UNPOPULAR to say the least, but I got out in front of it by talking about the why even before our first port and explaining that I did not want to put any member of the det in a position where they might be called on to unexpectedly prep a bird for a SAR launch a few hours after a long night of liberty because we were not manned well enough to split into 3 duty sections. Extrapolate that mentality to a smaller Navy with a higher OPTEMPO with a shrinking budget and it's not hard to see that each individual Sailor shoulders an increasing share of the burden to keep ships at sea and aircraft airborne. To say nothing of their own safety. Sometimes you have to be the bad guy as the boss. If I had to guess, I would say that the breathalyzers in practice will serve more as a deterrent to the type of activity I described and will lend itself to individual COs having a tool for their own management of the problem. What I think was missing in the SECNAV's push was leadership's (his own included) responsibility to own and manage a very difficult effort and help Sailors understand the why.
BTW, anyone who remembers me from my wild child days (many of them documented) should feel free to call me out for sitting on a soap box saddle riding my high horse up to my ivory tower.