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More on Highways Into Runways

A few things came in after my Slate column on planes landing on roads.

Reader Craig advises on a crowdsourced, Google Map-driven application he has started called Emergency Runways, which informs pilots of potential landing spots. He notes he’s in conversation with some GPS companies to put “vetted” runways into systems, so pilots could press something like a “nearest” button in the event of a forced landing.

And on a stranger, more grim note, a jogger was killed on the beach in South Carolina by a plane making an emergency landing (the pilot’s window was covered in oil).

“There’s no noise,” said aviation expert Mary Schiavo, a former inspector general for the National Transportation Safety Board. “So the jogger, with his ear buds in, and the plane without an engine, you’re basically a stealth aircraft. Who would expect to look up?”

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This entry was posted on Sunday, March 21st, 2010 at 8:33 am and is filed under Etc.. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

One Response to “More on Highways Into Runways”

  1. Paul Johnson Says:
    March 21st, 2010 at 2:02 pm

    I think it would be much better if this system used OpenStreetMap.org, so this information becomes part of the global consciousness, instead of property of just one corporation.

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Traffic Tom Vanderbilt

How We Drive is the companion blog to Tom Vanderbilt’s New York Times bestselling book, Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us), published by Alfred A. Knopf in the U.S. and Canada, Penguin in the U.K, and in languages other than English by a number of other fine publishers worldwide.

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