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In an effort to understand why the attrition rate in paragliding is essentially unchanged over 15 years, this blog explores the supposed duty or obligation of hang glider pilots to warn people who fly or plan to fly paragliders about the danger of canopy collapse.
Does this obligation exist? I think we can all agree that every death, regardless of wing type, is a black mark on freeflight. But people who choose to fly paragliders assume an additional and unreasonable risk that others in freeflight do not - that of sudden canopy collapse in ground or thermal turbulence during landing approach or low flight over mountainous terrain, often resulting in an agonizing death.
Today a 34-year-old man flying a paraglider encountered turbulence at 20 meters while landing below Mt. Archer in Australia and fell to the ground. His legs absorbed some of the force of impact as they both broke, then his skull shattered. These are typical injuries of falling from such heights.
This was the 1,465th paragliding fatality I have recorded in my extensive research on freeflight accidents. More than half of these were the result of collapse in turbulence below effective emergency reserve deployment altitude. Surely, it would seem, anyone would agree that there have been way, way, way too many fatalities in paragliding since the attrition curve began rising in the late 1990s.
So far in 2016, I know of 24 paragliding fatalities.
1 drowning
7 collisions
1 collapse in turbulence during take off
4 collapses in turbulence on landing approach
9 collapses in turbulence above terrain
2 falls from harness
1 locked-in spiral dive
Of course, the most active season for paragliding attrition is yet to begin - the Northern Hemispheric summer.
If we include the previous 12 months (May 16, 2015 to May 15, 2016), we come up with a total of
1 malfunction (brake lock, etc)
1 midair
1 result of aerobatics
2 towing accidents
3 drownings
17 collisions (trees, powerlines, etc)
5 collapse in turbulence during take off
14 collapses in turbulence on landing approach
44 collapses in turbulence above terrain
7 falls from harness
7 locked-in spiral dives
9 unknowns
There are certainly many more.
So again, I ask, do hang glider pilots have an obligation to point out the problem of collapse to their paragliding friends?
My experience has been that people who paraglide are in universal denial of the risk and choose to attack those who bring up the problem.
They present extensive rationalizations and invariably bring up hang gliding attrition in their defense, as if hang gliding has anything to do with the deficiencies of paragliders.
But if you have a friend who paraglides, have you discussed this with him?
Did you feel an obligation and what was the result?
Or do you feel it is better, on a personal and practical level, to avoid discussing the subject altogether?
