This was fun. Well put. That damn aerial clip made me say "HOOOOLLLYYYY SHIT" out loud in the middle of the office. So that's nice. Always good to hear stuff like this. It's an opportunity to do a mini self-audit while you're listening that you're still making good decisions.
your description made me tear up, i have always wanted to pursue this sport ever since a little child. I have been taking the time and steps to get properly familiar and couldn't be more excited about this next journey in my life. One love!
In my opinion tandem base jumping is just a bad idea in general. The general public has no idea hiw difficult or risky base jumping, even jumping static lines, is.
I know this is an obvious joke but I do have 1 serious question. Was Annelise's slightly over rotated exit meant to sell the illusion of a first jump ..or did she make a mistake and recover?
Great video. I really respect you putting yourself on the chopping block by making it. I agree 100% with your point about kids being just as stoked with something else. That's kinda been my view of it as well. But this is just another one of these things that no one can do anything about. As awesome as it would be, I doubt any of the Tandem Masters that are jumping with kids will watch this and think to themselves 'he's right, I won't do that anymore' Now people are running businesses from Tandems and it's getting more and more popular. It's another element of the Double Edged sword within BASE. We all have the freedom to do whatever we want with no repercussions. But thats also what makes it so dangerous. Unfortunately I think it's just a matter of time before there is a Tandem fatality. People die every year due to some complications from Static Lines so it will happen. Hopefully it doesn't happen with a kid.
Not sure what accidents you heard about, I know about 2 off-headings that happened in Europe and were hidden/covered. It happen with passengers who are also skydivers. It ended pretty bad for both passengers, since they took the hit (they were able to recover), but almost nothing happened to the instructor. In general tandem BASE from a cliff is not a good idea, not to mention with kids.
Nice one dude. I think it's a big step too far to be offering tandem base to anyone under 18, and honestly I think it's kinda weird to imagine a rational adult wanting to experience a tandem base jump, but that I wouldn't oppose so hard. As you say, a kid can have just as epic an experience with games and other types of adventure activities where splatting into a cliff isn't a possibility.
Well said. Thanks for the thoughts. I think you are right when you say that kid tandem base ends up being more for the greater enjoyment of the parent and/or the instructor rather than the kid. How can they not enjoy it more when it goes right, since they have a better grasp of the risks, or have a financial and reputational incentive. I speak as a jumper and a parent, so I understand the temptation to give your kid a one-of-a-kind experience and to do something that no one has ever done before. But, like you said, the severity of the risk (i.e., possibly death) is not worth it. Base jumpers generally have strong inclinations to be the first to do something new and get away with it. I think just as much blame should be on the parents in these situations since they are primarily the ones responsible for their child, not the rest of society. Granted the instructor bears responsibility as well since they usually know the risks better than anyone and are the ones presenting themselves as the professional. Parents should do a better job understanding the risks they expose their children to, especially when it comes to things on the extreme ends of the spectrum, like base jumping.
You nailed this David, thanks for speaking out about this all… I have been speaking to several people this past week regarding this issue.. and a question I posed was is an single tandem base instructor a parent also?. Don’t get me wrong I am ‘pro tandem base’ in the correct setting.. but as a BASE JUMP Instructor/mentor, and a father would I take my own kid for a tandem BASE jump at 4-5 or even at 10 ?? Fuck no… it’s mindblowingly irresponsible… we can never justify a bfl listing with a child ever
Sounds like modern narcissistic parenting. We have a legally defined limit for adulthood and consent based activities. People mature at different rates hence a legal limit. 5 is definitely not cool. Thanks for the video. You just said what most of us are thanking 🤔
100%. There is absolutely no good reason to base with a kid. If the parents are *really* that keen to get their kids up into the air for a thrill, I'm sure a normal tandem from a plane would blow their kids little minds just as much while having MUCH less risk.
And yet we have standards in the skydive industries around the world regarding that too… if we can’t take 5 year olds skydiving, that should certainly set a level that we shouldn’t be pushing with tandem BASE.
David. I've been out of the sport for a few years, so I don't really have a horse in the race, but I agree in your analysis. Thanks for sharing your well-formed opinion and analysis. Fly safe, jump safer.
100% agree. 5 year old should be playing in the woods or with Lego. They can find out later if they want to go base-jumping. It's not a choice you can make rationnally so young. Love you dude !
It's great to see actual open dialogue here. Like it or not Tandem BASE is here, and dialogue is a better tool than abuse and memes. Just to point out two things: - I have actually travelled to the bridge to train Tandem BASE. It is not high enough to train object avoidance IMO, but I have subsequently trained it over many jumps at higher altitude. Not ALL instructors operate the way you described. I don't believe any tandem skydive passengers understand the risks there either and, maybe this is off topic, but I don't think tandem skydiving would have the chance to evolve if it were invented today. I think the same problems would plague it as we're seeing with Tandem BASE today. Just to offer a counter argument and to open a dialogue there... :) This is a different topic of course to whether children can make a choice to take a risk though - the whole point of your video. To be clear, I agree with you. I feel very uncomfortable even taking children on tandem skydives. I feel differently with adults who've been properly and honestly informed. IMO there are many difficult to control variables in Tandem BASE and without proper regulation (which would be very difficult to create and enforce, but perhaps not impossible), the risks dramatically increase. I also believe that with the right approach, training, passenger preparation and selection it can be done sustainably from the right solid object. But not globally, by anyone, without any regulation. Thanks again for the honest conversation and taking a serious, constructive attitude 🙌
You bring up two aspects, an ethical one and a technical one: 1) The ethical aspect is the proper information of the passenger. I believe that if they were fully aware of all the variables, most “civilians” would not want to participate to a tandem base, and that right now they only do because they believe that if a professional with a legal structure offers it, it may be as safe as a rollercoaster ride. Now, hypothetically, if the passenger had a full understanding of the variables and was still willing to do it, I wouldn’t see any issue. But for financial reasons it’s not in the interest of the Tandem Instructor to inform the passenger about all the variables. A simple answer to that would be an independent organization making a video that would inform correctly passengers and that would be mandatory to watch before purchasing a jump. As much as none of us want regulation, it is unavoidable the moment we bring non jumpers into the sport. 2) The technical aspect: if, as you mentioned, the bridge isn’t high enough to train object avoidance, then there’s no possible object avoidance on solid objects that are lower than the bridge… and this includes the entire region where those problematic jumps happened. As much as I don’t like tandem base, I don’t think it’s gonna disappear because there’s too much money involved. So I won’t fight against it but I’d at least like to see professional defining together some limits to make it sustainable. Same goes for base schools, which I’m part of. We will evolve when we start admitting that we could all potentially be part of the problem, and start finding solutions to limit the negative impact of the professionalization of basejumping.
@@davidlaffarguebasejump I think we agree mostly there buddy. I would only say the Perrine isn't suitable for object avoidance due to the landing area location, and that doesn't generalise to all objects of the same height. It's possible that other exits of the same height would be suitable, each one needs to be judged on an individual basis (one of the challenges of regulation). The first point though was to question whether you also disagree with Tandem skydiving? since it's also true that no participants there understand the risk either. This isn't an argument for tandem BASE, just genuinely curious what your thoughts are. I've been asked by my employer to take 12 year old children and I didn't like it. I'm against taking children on either activity.
@@airborneben9699 "I would only say the Perrine isn't suitable for object avoidance due to the landing area location" I never been to Perrine but I've of course seen many videos. Why is the landing area a problem to practice object avoidance ? If you jump from the other side it's gonna be like 20m more far to it, and in static line the altitude might be the same or higher than a jumper with delay from the usual side. What am I missing ? I'm gonna answer the question you asked: - skydiving tandem has a fatality rate of 1/500k - it has been 3000k tandem basejumps ever done Maths are pretty simple here, for now we can only guess that the fatality rate of tandem basejump is probably less than 1/3000, we would need at least 1M jumps to know is this rate is less than the skydive one. The participant probably don't understand the risks, but the professional TI knows them, in the tandem basejumping none of the 2 knows the risks because the actual sample is too small to be able to know if it's very high (more than 1/3000 is very high) or very low (less than 1M). A little example, with 1/3000 a kid has 20000+ chances of dying than riding a horse (at least in France).
