index  Safety in hang gliding*
*(including highly flexible gliders using various amounts of tethering to suspend the payload or pilot; hence we consider the slightly-gliding parachute up through various types of paragliders to the mono-material rigid hang glider.)

Data, notes, send suggestions are received:   safety@hanggliderhistory.com

  • Types of data

    • Opinions, interpretations, and impressions have values. Authority has its spectrum of value.  However, it is possible for a person to contradict his or her own connection with raw data and experience. It is possible for less-than-divine authority to make statements that could be proven fully or partially false.  However, if an authority figure recommends one to refrain from flying a particular craft at a particular time and place, then taking that recommendation into careful consideration could be a good bet for a beginning hang glider student. Risk management could well include checking with various authorities.
       

    • Statistical studies and analyses:  These come a a wide variety of qualities from unsound to high quality sound.  Lessons from the poor end may help others to sharpen higher quality works. Definition of parameters and assumptions are part of this space. Defining what is included and excluded make a difference in results. 
       

    • Methodically collected facts: Raw points. Description of method of fact collection is invited. Such raw fact collection usually is not easy. Facts come in a variety of characters. E.g., it can be a fact that an accident was described in a newspaper; but that described accident might not have actually taken place in the material world. 
       

    • Funding and costing studies?   What foundations might support a study?  What is the cost to know? Where is knowledge stored?  What are the access-to-information challenges as regards safety in hang gliding?  What are the priorities?
       

    • Question forming?  Forming questions whose answers would be valuable is a dynamic process. Help form questions:  safety@hanggliderhistory.com
Rough draft questions received and massaged a bit--seeded from notes by Don, Brett, Rickmas, and Kendo (Tony A.)  on or near April 1, 2010:
  1. What statistics are already published about HG and PG safety matters?  Is there yet a meta-review by an expert statistician over each statistical study? Reference?
  2. How reliable are already published statistics about HG and PG safety matters?
  3. What factors in studies can be controlled?   What does it mean to control a factor?
  4. What factors or parameters cannot be controlled?   What does it mean "cannot be controlled."
  5. What is a comprehensive list of parameters that might be considered in statistical studies for safety in hang gliding?
  6. What are the impressions by each person who is caring about safety matters? What is the background of that impression?  [This involves the cautions about authority, but impressions is one source of potential value.]
  7. The statistics are unreliable and too muddled by factors that cannot be controlled for - pilot behavior, chosen atmospheric conditions etc.
  8. What would "safety rate" mean?   Such key phrase would need careful definition. Send in proposals and rationale.
  9. Is flying safe? "What is meant by "safe."    Is flying a hang glider safe? Is flying an almost-fully-flexible glider with no rigid coupling between pilot and wing safe?  Would rigid framing in  ram-air-inflated glider wings that have no rigid coupling between pilot and wing increase safety?  Will the Paramontante hang glider attain what kind of safety record? 
  10. What is the safety record for each model of commercially-made hang glider (*above top note)?
  11. Are the risks of flying a certain hang glider (*above top note) well described by sellers?
  12. Is flying a sailplane safer than flying a hang glider?
  13. Ranking hang gliders (from fully limp and tethered with no rigid coupling between pilot and wing to fully rigid with pilot-in-wing (PIW) configuration) for safety?
  14. Are non-regulated hang glider flights more or less safe than regulated flights?
  15. Are non-rated hang glider pilots more or less safe than rated pilots?
  16. Are club or association member pilots safer than pilots who have no club or association membership?
  17. Administration of hang glider safety?
  18. Legal space concerning hang glider safety?
  19. Definitions within administrative and regulator efforts?
  20. Definitions within mechanics, design, function, and application?
  21. What guides exist? How sound are the guide points? What tests were made to found the points?
  22. How much was the pilot depending on some guide immediately or remotely?
  23. Was there radio contact with another person during the immediate events?
  24. Do accident report forms need what changes?
  25. How costly is it to find facts on accidents?
  26. Every situation has its regulation sphere. What was the character of the regulation sphere in a particular incident?
  27. Non-fatal injury costs to an activity?  Lives are changed by nerve damage and capability changes.
  28. What cautions are instructed while flying in the "reserve height" for paragliders?
  29. How effective are SIV courses in bringing safety to paragliding?
  30. How to get a full report from each club's safety officer and historian?
  31. Per chosen parameter, how much non-fatal injury has been occurring in hang gliding?

 Send terms to:  safety@hanggliderhistory.com
Growing collection:  Safety keywords
Miscellaneous remarks:
  1. A relatively sound automobile with a relatively sound and prepared driver can be demolished by the movement of a floor carpet onto the accelerator pedal.   After the crash and death, one can begin to play a blame game. What is the history of floor carpets? The creeping position of the carpet was not noticed by the driver. Car makers and dealers may not have been aware of the potential effects of creeping positions of floor carpets. The driver could have practiced what to do in case the car seems stuck at speed when speed is not wanted.  Etc.     Give a certain commercially made hang glider to a certain would-be aeronaut and the world of possibility is huge.
     
  2. Accidents can be a spur to mechanical invention and new design.  Accidents could be a source of meditation for would-be aeronauts and for experienced pilots.  For each known accident, what are the lesson gifts?
     
  3. How much hang gliding safety information is not known?
     
  4. "I envision that one day that each hang gliding incident's positive-lesson gifts become easily accessible to new intrepid aeronaut."   JpF   The Internet may make this vision come true.
Accident records?  What accidents are in the literature? What descriptions and accident analyses are available? References? What is missing from the record?  What studies have been done to estimate how much data is missing from the record?

 
Some starter links:                   Send in links: safety@hanggliderhistory.com
April 1, 2010
High Brett,
Your invitational questions are strong starters; with Don's, Rickmas', Kendo's (T.A.), and others' inputs, I opened a folder to have files that may collect and grow some safety text. Perhaps we can get 100 masters degree students around the world to each tackle a distinct question. Maybe some foundation funds could sponsor some quality studies. We might move to help form questions, bring to table a comprehensive list of parameters with perhaps some ranking, and more.
 
http://www.energykitesystems.net/HangGliderHistory/SafetyData/index.html  [This page]

On the front page bottom is a start of links.
Without prejudice I posted a first link:
 http://www.dhv.de/typo/News_Details_English.715.0.html?&cHash=7aec9458ed&tx_ttnews[backPid]=3&tx_ttnews[tt_news]=1835 

Near-ground wind-field helicities have handedness, variation in sizes, and durations. Tunneling and worming helicities often do not give evidence on ground tells. A pilot coupled to a keep-my-shape wing via a hold to a rigid part of the airframe will face some helicities with a time-opportunity quite different from a pilot who is far-away loosely coupled to a wing that may wrap by meeting a surprising helicity. My conjectural impression that teases me to know much more is that many pilots very well may not have the wrap and collapse risk adequately available for their risk management plan.

Control capability during facing windfield helicities in near-ground flight is a variable that may affect injury stats per glider, per site, or per __________. I sense that Rickmas is studying just what "near-ground" means for certain craft. I have thoughts about quick morphing of well-framed hang glider wing sails for a dumping of severe handedness of a faced torquing helicity; having such could be better than having a fully flexible wing miserably twisted-wrapped-collapsed-tangled-falling.                   JoeF

April 1, 2010     T.A. states that "reserve height" for paragliding is a common concept in paragliding.
http://tinyurl.com/ReservedHeightParagliding  gives one forum link.

April 1, 2010 
Thanks Joe,
I can only say your impressions mirror my own and in the absence of reliable statistics impression are all we have to go on.

There are stats available that show a significant safety advantage for sailplanes - and others that do not--[and] possibly even an advantage to HGs. Overall the stats seem to support sailplanes. But again it's not possible to compare hours of participation and real member numbers. Also there's reason to believe that up to 50% of HG and PG accidents are unreported. Every sailplane accident is reported - but far more result in death.

I think my personal experience of the sailplane operation on Oahu in Hawaii may at least give some impression of the potential difference. It may or may not be a representative case. I'd be surprised if it was purely coincidental, but I'll simply relate my experience and let you draw what conclusions you might.

At Dillingham on Oahu they have up to 4 gliders doing tourists operations all day, every day for over 40 years. The gliders are towed to 1000 ft and released into the ridge lift to soar the cliffs that span the north shore. They only recently had one non-fatal accident I know of, but there may have been others prior to my arrival. During the same time HGs had one fatality per year for 20 years at Makapuu alone. At the time I lived on Oahu, Makapuu was flown by HGs on average about 2 or 3 times a month.

I'm aware of a considerable number of non-fatal HG and PG accidents on the Island, but certainly not all. I know both HGs as PGs tended to avoid the Dillingham site but there was a HG towing operation for a short time with no incidents I'm aware of. On the one occasion a PG pilot I knew attempted to fly there, against my advice, he took a collapse and broke his cervical spine.

http://tinyurl.com/MakapuuHGhistory