I continue to be impressed with the ability of LSA designers to meet the strange and arbitrary weight limit for the category and still carry a reasonable amount of fuel. At the same time, I am hearing more and more questions about the crashworthiness of the airplanes and whether the manufacturer of such a flyweight machine can incorporate some degree of protection against a quick, unplanned stop for those who fly in them.
The argument “we build them to fly, not to crash” was rendered moot 50 years ago because of the simple reality that designers know very we’ll that their airplanes will crash and they have an obligation to avoid putting something in the airplane that makes the effect of the crash worse.