His instructor told him wrong. Soy beans tend to wad up in the gear. It’s not the optimal crop to land in.
Roads work just fine in an emergency if you can see the wires crossing it. landing speeds tend to be similar to highway speeds so it’s easy to “merge” into traffic. You can cross-control a plane to fudge the approach to help the merge process.
Cars outweigh small planes and are structurally much stronger.
Can’t speak about planes since I only flew Hueys in the Army. In flight school our mapboards that we carried had to have written in large print, ALL ROADS HAVE WIRES. Power lines will flat out mess up a helicopter. We did practice emergency landings all the time, both with power recovery and to the ground autorotations. Of course helicopters have the advantage of lower airspeeds. Can have a zero(for all practical purposes) horizontal and vertical airspeed when touching down during an autorotation. As for the 8:1 glide ratio the other pilots are talking about, our was about 1:1 and since we were seldom over 500 above ground level we didn’t have long glide distances. Any time there was an instructor pilot in the other seat on anything but an actual mission you could bet they’d roll the throttle sometime during the flight.
I’m not sure there exists an “optimal crop” - from experience, hay will also get caught up in the gear so presumably wheat would also. Corn I’ve already covered. You’re right about soybeans getting into the gear (also experience, not my bad that time, I just helped the clean up). Pretty much anything other than mowed turf has issues.
Anything that won’t kill you or anybody else is optimal. Don’t worry about limiting damage to the plane, just worry about yourself. I was taught “If you decide you have to land your airplane off-airport, just tell yourself that the insurance company owns it now, not you”.
Yep - when I had to land in a field due to bad weather I basically considered the airplane a write-off and just concentrated on getting the flesh and blood through the experience. The fact that afterward there wasn’t any damage to the airplane was a bonus.
That said - given a choice between a cornfield and hayfield, assuming all other factors are equal, the hayfield is your better option. But usually you don’t get the luxury of that much choice.
I am the only one that thought of the plane that landed in a road, ruptured a fuel tank, and caused a huge fireball?
Only minor injuries on the ground.
Anything’s better than an orchard, I suppose. 
I first read this as “always walk with a lamp,” and I thought for a second that they had been unable to remove it for some reason.
Depends on your options. If you can land in a dense forest with trees with soft, bendy branches up top, well, I know a guy who did that and just climbed down. If you do have to hit trunks, try to aim between them, so they’ll tear the wings off evenly and not impact the cabin.
Only if you’re looking for an honest man.
I do have friends who landed in treetops and were uninjured.
There are times an orchard is the lesser evil - ElvisL1ves covered some of that. You can spend endless hours discussing emergency landings and increasingly hair-raising scenarios.
My instructor on emergency night landings in the sparsely developed area of Canada where there are almost no visual references:
“Set up for your best glide speed wait until you are about 100 ft above the ground, then turn on your landing light. If you like what you see, go ahead and land.”
“And if you don’t like what you see?”
“Turn off your landing light.”
Glide ratios can vary quite substantially in light aircraft, btw. I flew aircraft at both extremes - a slick Mooney with long wings that would glide almost as well as a training glider, and my Grumman AA1, which had the glide characteristics of a homesick brick.
Let me ask a dumb question, do light planes have airbags? Is this feature practical for aircraft?
None that I have ever flown have had airbags. A couple have had parachutes, but no airbags.
There are airbags for aircraft - they’re in the seatbelts and look like extra padding unless they deploy. But I’ve never seen one in small aircraft.
ive heard years ago that one reason that our national highway system is laid out the way it is I
s so that they can take off and land planes if we were invaded in the 50s/60s
any truth to that ?
There is one company Amsafe that makes an airbag but I don’t know how practical it is.
https://www.amsafe.com/seatbelt-airbag-system/
Many of the high stall speed aircraft are starting to come with full aircraft parachutes but on a slow stall aircraft it would probably be heavy and of less value unless you had a structural failure and it would restrict your ability to try and land in a safe place like in the OP.
Really practicing emergency landings more is what would improve safety the most for the typical pilot.
yes that’s true but you don’t want to flip a plane. Especially a low wing. Best to open the door(s) before impact so they don’t jam shut. There’s no way to break through the windshield in a timely manner as it’s plastic that’s screwed in.
In a previous lifetime a flight instructor told me that the biggest risk when landing in (on?) dense treetops was getting out of the plane without falling to the ground. No clue as to the veracity of his claim though.
Everyone I’ve know who landed in a treetop successfully said they stayed in the cockpit and waited for the local rescue guys to get them out - it can be a long way down. People have been hurt or killed trying to get themselves down. Even if the plane isn’t stable, your chances are still better riding the wreck down to the ground, with cockpit structures around you to take some of the impact, than plopping to the ground bare.
I was in CAP for a few years. My brother was in for about 10-15. That’s good advice I suppose if you are found and your ELT is working.
When looking for a plane and some newbe asked what color the plane is/was, the answer was green with snowflakes painted on it.
Or your cellphone.
Of course, each situation is different. If you’re in a treetop and there’s no other human around for 500 miles then yes, you might need to get yourself down. Even then, thoughtful planning is probably going to be better than a half-panicked dash out of the cockpit.