Arthur's Blog: Should You Avoid Bungee Jumping, Parasails, Roller Coasters & Zip Lines?

Press coverage of the London Olympics was so pervasive that it drew away attention from the fact that London's mayor, Boris Johnson, was stuck halfway across a zip line, in the course of a public relations effort relating to the Games. Luckily for him, he was eventually pulled to safety with a rope. Other unfortunate zip line riders have been rescued by daredevil zip line operators who have ventured out onto the line and pulled themselves hand by hand to the endangered passenger.

All over the world in vacation areas, various eager entrepreneurs in search of income have hung zip lines over deep natural gorges that bottom out far below. They join the operators of parasailing motorboats (found off the beaches of scores of tropical resorts), bungee jumps, and awesome roller coasters in recreational theme parks, all vying for the tourist dollar.

The theme park operators of the expensive-to-build roller coasters are presumably well-financed companies that have taken care to construct foolproof devices. One assumes that public officials are called in to confirm the safety of each roller coaster before they are permitted to operate. And yet, periodically, one reads of injuries from roller coaster accidents.

I suspect that the fly-by-night individuals who erect and operate zip lines, parasails and bungee-jumping platforms are subject to no such inspection. When did you hear of the Mexican government inspecting parasail operations off the shores of Puerto Vallarta? Can you really assume that the government of an African nation in which bungee-cords or zip lines are hung from high cliffs, has inspected those cords or their associated mechanisms? And yet a female tourist was killed earlier this year in Ecuador when she embarked on a zip line, and severe injuries have been sustained by persons jumping off a bungee cord.

Nothing could seem safer than parasailing, an activity offered off dozens of beaches in the Caribbean and Mexico. A motorboat tows a rope that pulls a young tourist strapped into a parasail high into the air, and then lazily carries that thrill-seeker along a circular route. But suppose the engine of the motorboat should fail -- and the boat stops. The tourist hanging from the parasail could very possibly plunge down into the waters, incurring grave injuries if not worse.

Read the statistics of accidents in each of these "extreme sports" and you'll be horrified. The mishaps in what is supposedly the safest of these activities caused four major cruiselines to cancel their offerings of shore-excursion parasailing in 2011. With respect to the others, it's clear to me that one cannot rely on the individuals who organize these sports in various vacation locations. The smart traveler passes them up.