Man in hang glider fails to strap in properly, hangs by his hands for dear life

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/12/08/man-in-hang-glider-fails-to-st.html

Just a heads-up, Carla posted this a little bit ago.

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Deja%20Vu%2C%20Groundhog%20Day%20-%20Jack%20O'Neil%2C%20Stargate%20SG-1

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Tonight on “Its the mind we discuss the phenomenon of Deja Vu”

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where does the blame truly lie-- with the “man in hang glider” or with the instructor?

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Absolutely with the instructor and anybody else helping with preparation for the flight.

And BTW for any prospective passengers: if this happens on takeoff, let go immediately. The only exception would be a cliff launch, but that seems unlikely for a tourist flight.

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You would think he would have learned to check the safety straps after the first time this happened. Or was this the third time?

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I guess you are talking about the repeat post, but safety culture has this conflict with human behavior. They check something 100 times in a row and for some reason the brain is convinced it will never go wrong, and fills in the result of the check, without the check happening. A year ago a king air took in Melbourne with its rudder trim hard over to the left, and killed the pilot and passengers. Its the easiest thing to check, but t he pilot was complacent.

I think the last time this video was posted I posted about a hang glider accident I saw where the harness popped out of the hang point at a couple of hundred feet. The pilot had forgotten to install that one critical bolt.

Every industry has examples of drivers and pilots who get lax about check lists and cause an incident.

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Interesting, considering that preflight checklists were invented for pilots as an improvement over just remembering what to check, when planes got so complex that they started failing regularly for things which easily could have been checked but were skipped.

Another tool to combat this is the “point and call” technique employed by Japanese railways. Apparently linking the check to a physical action makes it harder to forget or gloss over.

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“THAT WAS THE MOST HEART-POUNDING EXPERIENCE I EVER HAD IN MY LIFE!!!”

“I want my money back right now.”

That’s true, complacency kills…

This experience would make me a millionaire. Because I would sue the bejesus out of that instructor.

Well he was hanging on and gliding, what do you expect from something called ‘hang gliding’?

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If that was a true friend they would have unstrapped to support their ‘friend’ emotionally. I’m with you soon to be dead friend, I’m with you.

Seems like the BB editorial content management system needs a version of the Discourse redundant content warning.

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I’m curious… Do this guy now own Switzerland?

Twice in a row?
Now that’s just careless.

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Less lucky. https://files.catbox.moe/leezzp.mp4

If I’m the plaintiff’s lawyer, I’m looking for negligence from a wide array of parties. The deeper the pocket, the more I’m interested in giving them the opportunity to “contribute” to my fee:

  • instructor
  • flight school
  • airfield
  • event sponsor
  • manufacturer of the entire glider
  • manufacturer of each and every subcomponent and individual part, tool, consumable, packaging, etc.
  • instructions and checklists publishers
  • the instructor’s trainer
  • the instructor’s licensing board
  • each and every level of government involved with any pertinent regulation of operations and materials
  • the fondue truck that sold the instructor lunch
  • the watering hole he went to the night before
  • and, hand in hand, the insurers of all of the above

Probably left a few out. Still… defenders get onto your knees.

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Wait, is it the same guy? Maybe it’s just the same instructor…