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by KineticLensman 1698 days ago
Yes. This is why paragliding from hills is more dangerous than regular parachuting from a plane. Your paraglider canopy can collapse due to bad wind or unexpected updrafts at say 40 feet from the ground and you slam into the ground before it recovers. In contrast, when a parachute malfunctions on a freefall deployment, you are often higher than 2000ft, and there is plenty of time to deploy a reserve, fix twisted lines, etc.
2 comments
nikitaga 1698 days ago
What are you comparing, deaths per flight, per flight hour, per participant per year? Do you distinguish tourists, hobbyists, and competitors? What about injuries?

Credible and reliable data for such comparisons does not exist, unfortunately.

Paragliders who aren't idiots don't spend much time at 40ft AGL in weather conditions that can cause a collapse. And not every low altitude collapse is fatal. Spine compression injury is more likely, and they wear padding on their butt to minimize that (some even have airbags).

For better or worse, the main predictive risk factor in paragliding is personal attitude, and I suspect it's the same in parachuting.

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KineticLensman 1698 days ago
Anecdata I know, but I parachuted for two years and paraglided for a year (before airbags were a thing). I saw more injuries in paragliding and people I know broke hips, twisted ankles and bashed into dry-stone walls (head saved by a helmet, which was itself destroyed). The broken hip was a club instructor who was caught out landing.

In my parachuting experience I saw only one really bad accident: in an accuracy contest, a guy who was going to miss the target by a few feet, reached out with his feet and landed on the base of his spine. Stretchered away.

My own skydiving parachute malfunction occurred on opening at approx 2500 ft. The bastard main failed to emerge and I deployed my front-mounted reserve. The act of flipping onto my back unjammed the main and for a moment I had two canopies opening. The main won and I spent half a minute pulling in the reserve canopy so I could see where the fuck where I was going.

I didn't get the shakes until about ten minutes after landing. The jumpmaster confirmed the sequence of events and I got back on the horse and jumped again 40 minutes later.

YMMV

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cannabis_sam 1698 days ago
Beyond the risk level of ground take-off paragliding (and related activities), you have (in my subjective order of least to most risk) wingsuit fliers, base jumpers and then you of course have base jumping wingsuit fliers..

Yet, people still do it..

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