Well, I guess I'm a deplorable heretic. I think the AMA's time has passed. They're reactionary, and slow at that.

In a decision that shut down a large and popular PA flying site, we've got a PA court declaring size and speed of models are a risk to people on the ground. Yet HQ solution is to sit around and wait on a third party (JPO) to fix a problem (safety culture / compliance culture) that JPO should never have let develop in the first place.

In another shining example, we have a major city (Orlando) passing a pretty restrictive ordnance despite AMA's involvement. People can spin it all they like, but the reality is legislators are finding ample justification to take action, they're passing laws and ordnances, and the AMA's ability to influence is proving much more limited than they've led us to believe.

PA club lost in part due to inability to counter the neighbors claims that crashes occurred often. Two years ago (or more) I offered to help AMA EVP develop a data collection system that would have provided data to disprove those claims - not just in PA, but anywhere. I'm not talking just injuries, that's called lagging data. I was talking leading indicators like crashes off field grounds, near misses w/ buildings / people, focused first on the highest risk activities (speed and weight for example). But the AMA EVP said something along the lines that "we're pretty smart people" and declined the help. And now where are they? Losing in Orlando and losing in PA to be sure -- and I suspect it's only going to get worse. Absence of data was a factor in PA, and I can't think it would not have helped in Orlando. I know of at least one other major city working on Orlando-like ordnances. There will be more.

AMA does not see that while they can say they're safe, what we believe to be true only goes so far. It's much more powerful to present hard data. Two years ago they had the opportunity to build such a system so they could PROVE they were safe, but the all knowing and all wise AMA EVP decided against it.