http://www.planeandpilotmag.com/article/flying-gliders-makes-safer-pilots/#.WFqUp1yHOOY

Why Flying Gliders Makes Safer Pilots

Soaring gets more people involved in flying and turns out pilots with
outstanding stick-and-rudder skills.

The NTSB and the FAA are taking increasing notice of the category of stupid
pilot tricks called departure from controlled flight, or loss of control, a type
of accident that more often than not has fatal results. While the safety of
light aircraft flying has gotten markedly better over the past couple of
decades, one kind of accident, loss of control, has stubbornly persisted. For
the FAA, cutting down on loss of control accidents is job one, as it knows that
doing that will greatly cut down on accidents overall, and fatal accidents, in
particular.

One of the things Lilienthal learned fatally was that weight-shift control
wasn’t always entirely adequate, something our modern hang gliders learned again
painfully. The Wright brothers built gliders to test their evolving control
system and to learn how to fly. They learned how to fly their glider before they
were confident enough to build a bigger version to carry an engine.

In my view, powered flight is just a noisy offshoot of glider development.

One of our Experimental Soaring Association members, Mike Sandlin, came out of
hang gliding and has been building what he calls “air chairs.” His aircraft are
ultralight aluminum structures with cloth covering. They’re designed to be built
with what he refers to as “garage technology.” Cartop-able, they can be flown
from hang glider sites. They have a seat, aerodynamic controls, a wheel to take
off and land on, and can be launched by several methods. Mike has made his
designs available on the Internet in a noncommercial way, and people are
building and flying them all around the world.

Which is why learning to fly in gliders makes so much sense. Mastering basic
stick-and-rudder knowledge and skills is at the very heart of glider training. A
training flight in a glider, especially in calm air, lets the student really
hear, see and feel exactly how the stick and rudder affect the aircraft.