Emily Mack
Hurtling downward through the sky with a tangled parachute sounds like the start to a head-rushing nightmare. And it’s exactly what happened to paraglider Kevin Philipp. His recent brush with death, all caught on camera, is now going viral.
Videos by Rare
A Death-Defying Moment
Scored to appropriately action-packed music, watch the drama unfold in the video above. It looks like a Mission Impossible outtake.
Apparently, Kevin Philipp’s glider lines became entangled mid-jump, causing him to start plummeting full force. After failing to straighten them out, Philip was able to activate his rescue parachute — just about moments before hitting the ground. He’s a very lucky paraglider.
Philipp posted the Go-Pro footage online with a detailed caption. “Acro paragliding trick in strong turbulence went wrong,” he wrote. “Break line got stuck. Falling into the lines and wing made the rescue parachute throw quite hard. The falling speed increased a lot due to the twisting wing.” The acceleration is definitely noticeable in the video. Estimated that he had just second left before his imminent demise, Philip wrote: “This was not the day to die!”
In the end, he made firm contact with a tree. But lived to tell the tale.
Is Paragliding Safe?
Though various reports present different figures, a cross-sectional study from 2015 found the mortality rate of paragliding to be 7/100,000, or, 0.00007%. So that’s pretty safe, as far as extreme sports go. The authors analyzed paragliding accidents, internationally, which occurred between 2004 and 2011. 18 paragliders lost their lives and 64 others were injured.
