future of kitesurfing

[centfla]

mis-post continued...

In the last threemonths, there have been more kitesurfing deaths around the world than skydiving deaths. And I am confident that there are far more skydivers than kitesurfers.
with so many deaths recently, it can only be a matter of time before a number of things happen:

Law suits agains manufacturers force them to discontinue kite products. (probably only a US problem)

Lawmakers regulate or ban kitesurfing, throwing it into the underground such as Street Luge exists..

[BLOWN AWAY]

And it's up to us to make sure that doesn't happen......

In NZ people are very tolerant of kitesurfers.. they love us and i'm quite keen on keeping it that way.....

It'd be great to have kitesurfing as a mainstream sport where every walk of life is kiting..... not just crazy people who wanna kill themsleves... and take people with them....

BLOWN AWAY

[Mr Jo Macdonald]

Avoiding stormy weather will mean missing out on some windy days but kiting for life, the rest of my life

[Wolfgang]

Looks like an increasing number of severe accidents in the past weeks. Maybe the number of kitesurfers worldwide has reached a critical mass which makes more and more of such accidents happen, especially facing the fact that when you look around at the beaches you will notice that only a minority is really concerned about safety. A reason might be that we tend to forget quickly and we are not really interested in learning from the mistakes of others... Think of automobiles and motocycles and guess how many drivers would use a helmet resp. a safety belt if it wasn't required by law - it also shows this side of human character...

[Nico]

Looks like we are heading fast towards legislation to get control over kiting incidents:
_ Kiting permit (licence)

_ wear a helmet

_ restricted areas

_ .....

Seems like we are asking for it with our reckless and deadly behavior.
Nico

[EdDy_DiFfUsIvItY]

most sports have a regulatory body, kiting does not have a well enough enforced body in order to minimise risk and accidents. We could control this, we must get organised before local council does it for us.

perhaps if local govmnt is lobbied to give us funds / resources, we could take control, also we could set up a IKO type thing and force membership thus taking the power as opposed to giving up.

many good words but I know someone would have to pay my salary.

Membership subscription ?
European money ?

anyone got the time to save outr sport ?

[sq225917]

if you think it needs tieing up with all the red tape that goes with legislation and something like the faa or caa as paragliding has then i fear for the sport.

simple answer. be more proactive on the beach and take the time to spoil your great session out by helping someone.

or buy a private beach.
i'm all for making sure everyone has a fair level of competence and good level of safety.

i do have a sneaking suspiscion that a lot of 'dicks ' are taking the sport up at the minute, i'm sure this situation will correct itself soon once they hurt themselves or loose expensive kit

[Mr Jo Macdonald]

Simon, I agree there are a lot of idiots around but there are also a lot of very hot kiters who have very bad safety habits.
Here for example hardly no one uses a leash, most people lanch overpowered about 10-20m away from rienforced concrete huts and bathing establishments, walk the kite back up the beach about 10m upwind of fences with steel or cement poles and barbed wire and kite upwind of packed tourist beaches in summer in onshore wind with only a snap shackle keeping the kite away from the beach.
We have been very very lucky until Sunday, hopefully people will start to think about what they're doing more now but honestly I doubt it.
If you look at the weather map I posted, there were people out kiting today at 12.00, the beach they launched from is reduced to a few meters with the above obstacles litterally at the water's edge.
Maybe they think they can get lofted over the obstacles?
Personally I'm staying home, for the others I really don't know, I sincerely hope their luck holds.
Jo

[threetreeptr]

Does anyone know if paragliding went through similar growing pains in its early days? I am sure we will one day have a database of statistics for kiting similar to the ones here for paragliding...
http://www.ushga.org/article32.asp

[Stefan]

There's no reason to make giant leaps about the future of kiting. Kiting is relatively new and the level of "general" safety awareness is low. As time passes people will share more and more info and because of this lessons will improve, equipment will improve, and the entry level kiters base of knowledge will improve. This will make the sport safer. People will make better decisions. And there will always be knuckleheads too.....it's called "natural selection"...Cheers

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: stefan on 2002-11-26 17:32 ]</font>