maxm said...
I thought that too at first japie. Then I realised that no... they have a parachute that they can pull at any time and that'll get them safely to ground, same as sky diving. It only gets high risk when they fly close to the ground or other objects - and presumably they wouldn't start off trying that kind of thing.
The parachute is only going to work if you are 500 feet or more off the ground.
Any lower than that and it becomes increasingly useless.
By 200 feet above the ground, you might as well throw out a marshmallow to land on. It will be just as effective.
The real buzz from the fly suits comes from blasting along close to obstacles and amazing all the onlookers. Sort of like kiters doing the big jump with the twisty turny things that makes everyone go "ooOOOOOOoooooh' (they think)
, so for the most fun part of the flight (fall) the parachute is no use at all and just excess baggage.
When kiters stuff up they make a big splash.
When suit flyers stuff up, they make a big splash.
They do have that in common.
The problem with all the high adrenalin sports is that the adrenalin rush can seriously affect your judgement. This can result in the situation where safety margins are cut to the point where the inevitable crash that you're heading towards is not apparent until after the point where it becomes unavoidable.
In other words, too late to do anything about it.
I'm not saying that it should be banned or anything like it. Each to his/her own.
It is people like this that got us airliners, space shuttles, and numerous other intrinsically unsafe devices which have now been perfected into highly useful and acceptably safe equipment.
