Last tuesday, a 17 year old Dutch teenager died while bungee jumping in Northern Spain. She jumped before her harness had been properly attached, and crashed into the river that ran more than 100 feet below her. The fall killed her instantly.
The infuriating thing about this story is this: The Belgian company that had organized the trip to Spain sub-contracted the bungee jumping activity to a Spanish company who did not have a permit to carry out that particular activity in that particular place.
The really sad/facepalming thing about this story is that the instructor was getting the girl ready to jump, and said to her, in broken English: “No jump. It’s important. No jump.”
The girl apparently understood “Now jump!” – So she did.
:smack:
(Incidentally, if you are going to organize some inherently dangerous activity with people who do not speak your own language… You better make sure to put somebody in charge who can speak whatever lingua franca you will be using correctly :mad:)
Link to a couple of other English-language articles:
This wasn’t your standard bungee jump was it though? Where you plunge straight down? Rather I remember it being one of those where you swing like a pendulum under a bridge which always seemed sorta crazy.
Of course, of course… of course it’s a tragedy when a young person dies. It’s terrible! Of course.
But maybe…
Maybe, if people voluntarily throw themselves off bridges, and once in a while something goes wrong resulting in splat, it’s not that weird? Maybe it’s a little bit their own fault?
No, of course I shouldn’t think that. Of course not. It tragic. But maybe…
Yeah. And I’m usually not that cynical. Unlike you lot.
They offered bungee jumping from one of the ski lift / gondola things that way off the ground. At one point they would stop for people that wanted to do like a 200 footer. Further along they would stop for people that wanted to do like a 400 footer.
They had it designed so you would get pretty close to the ground for maximum thrill.
Bad part is rope for 400 foot jump used for 200 foot jump was just a bit too much of a thrill…or at least one that could not be repeated.
The Englishman (or woman) who, circa 1250 AD, started the language on the path to using “do” + “not” as the standard negation syntax, rather than the simpler “no[t]” of most Indo-European languages.