[Cherian]

I am a hang glider pilot in the US.

As the saying goes, “There are no bold and old pilots.” If flying and hang gliding teaches you anything, it is to take the right decisions within the framework of safety you have experience with. It’s a bit like knowing how to ride a bicycle, but you want to do a wheelie when it rains – not the right decision.

Circa 2022, the safety and community policing is strong enough to weed out non-safe pilots. I know pilots are as old as 80 years old and have been flying for 40+ years without incidents.

More here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pir3FAB4e3Q

[Ma8ee]

My father used to fly when I was little, but he quit. When I asked him about it he said he used to think that it was only the crazy ones that got killed. But then a few people he knew as careful and level headed died in accidents. My father's conclusion was that the sport is inherently dangerous, and he wanted to make sure that he was around while me and my siblings grow up, so he quit.

This must have been in the early eighties. Maybe the gliders and/or training become better. But still quite a few people died. Since then more people do paragliding, which to me seems to be inherently safer.

[samvher]

I'm not convinced that paragliding is inherently safer. The speeds are lower, and it's not "head-first". But at least a hang-glider is a solid device that can't randomly collapse (a common cause of paragliding accidents). From what I've seen in terms of safety stats, they are similar, with sailplanes being a bit safer (though my sense is that that depends on whether you fly sailplanes in the mountains or flatter areas, with mountains being significantly more dangerous).

[Cherian]

Gliders have become a lot more safe but logistically much more challenging to transport than PGs.

[spacemark]

As a former paraglider who's been eyeing sailplanes, I'd love to believe this - got any good links to data at hand?

[sails]

The video mentions the article. I wonder if the video host Tom's intro slide makes another interesting point - survivor bias. Statistically someone will make it through decades of bad decisions unscathed, and with generous self-appraisal will call it good decision making, when it actual fact they were just of the lucky. (survivor bias - shouldn't look at extremely successful companies for inspiration)

I'll watch the rest of the video, but wanted to thank you for sharing it, and sharing your perspective. I am by no means risk averse, and long to fly one day, but after a few years of one dangerous sport, and considering joining friends in paragliding, I looked into the safety aspect and it seemed too risky (coming from one deadly sport, I felt like I needed a break, not another)

[_dain_]

I don't know anything about hang gliding but, has there been a culture shift since this article was published in 1998? e.g. the things he describes like breaking a downtube on landing (or crashing as he says), is that considered not-normal now? What has changed in the past 24 years?

[whoopsie]

Some sites have great safety culture. Others don’t. (In Seattle, there are good examples of this.) accident reports still have higher license ratings more frequent than p1/p2, but that’s unadjusted for flight hours.