Paramotorists soar across remote Peru desert to collect threatened plants

A mere milliseconds more or less and on top of both legs broken I could have ended up literally with knee torn off from leg (amputation or complete knee replacement), or hitting a massive stone with my head or neck at speed where even good helmet just wouldn't cut it.

Don't get me wrong - those are amazing sports and experiencing flying on your own is a sensation that makes life (also) worth living. But safe it isn't, basically all senior paragliders I've talked to have stories of broken wrists, legs, nasty scars along the spine etc. But nobody likes to talk about it, which then may give you wrong impression on safety. And those are people that you can still meet out there. I've seen people being taken by choppers straight from launching zones after messing up something, or disappearing into thick forest canopy.

Suffice to say, with 2 small kids I gave up on this sport for good after what happened. I'll stick to rock climbing, hiking, skiing, ski touring, diving, touch of alpinism and maybe will pick up some surfing variant like kite or wind ones. That is, if all heals well which is still an open question for next few months. And maybe it won't and I'll have to abandon half of those.

Paramotoring is even more dangerous than this from what I've heard. For commute its insane to even suggest it, death or paralysis would be pretty common news in urban areas.

There are better commentaries on what happened out there so I won’t rehash but quite a lot went wrong with that flight to cause that crash while the pilot wasn’t fully engaged, including pre-flight mistakes and poor judgement.

Base jumping is NOT in the same category as the other two. It is riskier by one or two (or more) orders of magnitude, depending on how you count.

> I.e. it is far too dangerous an activity to be doing regularly.

That is not how risk works in paramotoring / paragliding / hang gliding. Doing it regularly means you're more "current" – less likely to make bad decisions, due to regularly exercising pilot skills. This more than offsets the increased risk from increased number of flights.

Paramotoring, like paragliding and hang gliding, can be extremely safe – with proper skills, weather conditions, and equipment. Accidents usually happen when people decide to go beyond safe conditions, e.g. fly in too thermic / too windy conditions.

Something to keep in mind is that paramotors are the easiest way to fly. And the easiest option always attracts the kind of people who look to expend the minimum amount of effort to get what they want. This attitude, predictably, results in more accidents – for this particular subgroup, not for all paramotor pilots.

In these sports, the pilots rely on their self discipline to stay safe. This is the real reason why these sports can never go mainstream – the actual skills are easy to learn, but the discipline is not.

Paramotors frequently fly in less turbulent conditions, but they seem to love flying low (for youtube anyway). This means there is no chance of recovery in the event of a collapsed wing, and there is no chance of throwing a reserve.

I would say that base jumping is even more dangerous than it all by virtue of the fact that most paragliders "last chance, everything else has completely failed, emergency option" is basically what base jumpers are doing on purpose.

That said. All these sports are very dangerous. People die doing all of them.

Edit: just went and watched the Anthony Vella incident. I'm not a paramotor pilot, but the end result there was very predictable as a paraglider pilot. He was trying to see how fast he could go, and doing it at a low altitude (close to the one thing that can hurt you. The ground). He had intentionally lowered his angle of attack for maximum speed using the speedbar/trim, it sounds like he then slightly eased on the throttle, which would have swung him back relative to the wing, lowering the angle of attack further. If your angle of attack is too low, your wing WILL collapse. His wing collapses. His wing had almost completely recovered, but it happened to recover in a nose down attitude, where it flew him directly into the ground. If he had been at a safe altitude would have been completely fine, minus a sprained sphincter.