It’s not something that any pilot wants to think about, but deaths do occasionally happen in the sport, and it’s something that really does deserve our attention, as we can learn from the unfortunate mistakes of others to make flying much safer for ourselves. In this post we’ll look at the paramotor accident rate, how they happen, and how to reduce or stop them from happening. We’ll also look at some statistics, and find out how many deaths there are per year, and how likely you are to end up seriously injured or dead.
Due to our sport being unregulated, there’s no governing body logging incidents like you’d get with regulated aircraft, so when compiling the paramotor accident rate and death statistics you’ll never have completely accurate numbers. The USPPA and BHPA ask all pilots to report incidents via their websites, but there will obviously be lots that go unreported.
Let’s start by looking at some interesting data from a study of 383 paramotor incidents gathered over 17 years by the USPPA. Of these 383 incidents 23 people died, which works out to 1.35 paramotor deaths per year.
Before we go any further, it’s important to note that a massive 21.7% of these deaths were due to drowning! This is because of an unintentional landing on water. This is why I dedicated a whole post to flying safely over water, so check that out by clicking here if you ever plan on flying over, or even near to water.
This was the first, and only study of this kind in the literature, so it’s the best we have at this time. The majority of the incidents occurred in the USA, while 26 incidents occurred worldwide. The table below is taken from the study, and it shows what happened in each paramotor ING accident they studied.
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