Most of you are aware that I am building a global database of paragliding accidents.
Since paragliding started racking up casualties at the end of the 1980s, I have found more than 1,700 fatalities over 42 years.
I am also building a data base on hang gliding, which is significantly more difficult because hang gliding goes back to the 1880s.
Over these 138 years, I have found about 900 fatalities in hang gliding but I am certain there have been many more.
If you are making a comparison between soaring parachuting and hang gliding, you have to start from zero in 1986.
By that year, there had been at least 546 hang gliding fatalities.
The first hang gliding death of 1986 was #547, that of Manuel DaRosa, an elderly gentleman of King City, California who wished to try the sport and apparently stalled off a 500-foot hill, breaking his neck in the crash.
The first paragliding fatality was likely in the Alps, specifically in Switzerland or Germany, in 1986, date uncertain.
Bringing these forward from 1986, we have incomplete fatality totals of:
Paragliding: 1,712
Hang gliding: 317
These numbers are accurate in the sense that they are the minimum verified numbers in my database.
It is too early in my research to draw solid conclusions from these numbers.
However, it is clear that more than half of the soaring parachutists died following a collapse of their canopy.
Hang glider pilots almost always die from pilot error, defined as a mistake made during flight.
This is a factor that can be addressed, meaning that by studying accidents, hang glider pilots can reduce their casualty rate by not making the same mistakes others have made.
Unfortunately, this is not the case for paragliding, regardless how insistant the USHPA and other national orginizations may claim to the contrary.
Paragliders collapse in normal atmospheric conditions (turbulence), seemingly at random, and kill their pilots regardless of skill level.
There is nothing to be done. With nothing to maintain the shape of the fabric airfoil in turbulence, paragliding is gambling.
I would think that to claim otherwise places any hybrid free-flight organization at great legal risk.
Hang gliding, on the other hand, presents a skill to be honed.
The risk presented to the pilot on an aircraft that cannot lose its shape in turbulence and fall out of the sky is much different than the risk a gambler faces on a parachute.
This blog topic will follow accidents in hang gliding and focus on possible pilot eror.
Please comment on Other Dangerous Sports accidents here: http://ushawks.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=1842&sid=d8b7a2397c0cf476f814ee52f02e7852
A common theme on hang gliding accidents is not to speculate on what went wrong for the sake of the family or the pilot or the sport.
However, when I am flying a hang glider, I am constantly speculating on what could go wrong, exclusively for my sake.
When a hang glider pilot cracks up, he offers us a gift - the gift of insight.
What acutally happened is always accompanied by what might have happened if something was done differently.
So please feel free to speculate here on what may have caused the accident.
At its core, accident analysis is all about you, the pilot, and your survival.