Why was someone who has seizures sky diving ?
dumb

Isn't there a little barometric device that automatically deploys your chute if you reach a certain altitude? Might not be standard issue. Losing consciousness, for all sort of reasons, can't be all that uncommon while skydiving.

As for why, I dunno. Some epileptics have seizures very, very rarely (like once every few years), and the medication works pretty well. I have epileptic friends who legally drive. You do need a doctor to say it's cool, though.

Of course, he may not even have epilepsy. Might be seizing for some other reason (like skydiving adrenaline awesomeness/mortal terror overload).

At least in Australia, all chutes are required by law to have this. It deploys your backup chute.

Chute is a wierd word...

chute chute chute.

....chute.

This was probably his first time. I had my first seizure at age 31 without any prior warning signs. Sometimes all it takes for the first one is the right set of sensory inputs to set the first one off. If he actually did have a known seizure condition then yeah - dumb - even if on medication.

Even though I'm on medication that controls the seizures very effectively, there are certain things I will now never do by choice; skydiving, scuba diving and flying a plane come to mind. There's no way to know if those particular things might push me past the limits my meds are known to control.

My assumption is that whenever possible you'd want the main chute to deploy because the emergency chute is just that: for emergencies.

Kind of like how it's better to use a full-sized tire instead of a compact spare (on your car, not as a parachute).

"(Christopher's) treating specialist wrote a letter specifically saying he was fit for skydiving," the Post quoted O'Neill as saying. "Obviously he wasn't. That was the end of his skydiving career."
Jones said he could not become a pilot because of his condition, but that he thought it had improved enough so that he could skydive.

"I'd been seizure-free for four years," the Post quoted him as saying. "I've always wanted to have the feeling of flight, so I just thought, considering I can't fly a plane due to my condition, I thought I'd give it a go."

Wow- he had a seizure disorder and he skydived anyway. You were right billpayer.

dumb

But on the other hand he made the internet's most boring judgment call: "X should not have done this thing that I never would have seen if X hadn't done it."

Most people know not to skydive at all with a medical condition; hence, most people don't do this; hence, very few videos exist of people doing this; hence, when someone does this and it goes bad, it will be interesting enough to make the sift.

I look forward to seeing billpayers carefully measured comments on fail-compilation videos.

I dunno, if he really, really wanted to skydive, went to his doctor and his doctor said it should be okay, I don't think there is anything wrong with that. If he thought the reward was worth the risk (which he did research) more power to him. Hell, he could seize walking up a flight of stairs or leaning on railing admiring a view and fall to his death. Sure, in this case, it didn't work out, but I admire him for trying.

This.

Way to let your (hypothetical) medical conditions define you, guys. Careful not to push any boundaries.

Uh huh. Have an excruciatingly painful grand mal seizure a few times, where you lose consciousness(thankfully) from lack of oxygen because you literally cannot draw breath, waking up not knowing who you are for an hour, then tell me you won't change your behavior and bucket list to avoid it (oh, and the death) in the future. Easy to say, harder to do.

A friend of mine lost consciousness while parachuting last summer. He says they synched the gear too tight, which cut off his circulation and he passed out. whether he mannaged to deploy his chute, or it opened on it's own, I'm not sure, he doesn't remember anything after that.
He regained consciousness a while after he hit a house and bounced to the ground.
He's lucky to be alive and is continuing to re-learn how to walk again.