Safety and Regulations
Research done by FootFlyer.com estimates that the activity is slightly safer (per event) than riding motorcycles and more dangerous than riding in cars. The most likely cause of serious injury is body contact with a spinning propeller. The next most likely cause of injury is flying into something other than the landing zone. Some pilots carry a reserve parachute designed to open in as little as 50 ft (15 m). The most likely cause of fatality is drowning.
The lack of established design criteria for these aircraft led the British Air Accidents Investigation Branch to conclude in 2007 that "Only when precise reserve factors have been established for individual harness/wing combinations carrying realistic suspended masses, at load factors appropriate to the manoeuvres to be carried out, can these aircraft be considered to be structurally safe"
Read more about this topic: Powered Paragliding
Famous quotes containing the words safety and, safety and/or regulations:
“The Declaration [of Independence] was not a protest against government, but against the excess of government. It prescribed the proper role of government, to secure the rights of individuals and to effect their safety and happiness. In modern society, no individual can do this alone. So government is not a necessary evil but a necessary good.”
—Gerald R. Ford (b. 1913)
“An evident principle ... is the principle of justice to all peoples and nationalities, and their right to live on equal terms of liberty and safety with one another, whether they be strong or weak.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
“If the veil were withdrawn from the sanctuary of domestic life, and man could look upon the fear, the loathing, the detestations which his tyranny and reckless gratification of self has caused to take the place of confiding love, which placed a woman in his power, he would shudder at the hideous wrong of the present regulations of the domestic abode.”
—Lydia Jane Pierson, U.S. women’s rights activist and corresponding editor of The Woman’s Advocate. The Woman’s Advocate, represented in The Lily, pp. 117-8 (1855-1858 or 1860)