Ouch. Nice move for Americans to fly in France where healthcare is affordable. If you did this in the US as a tourist you'd likely be broke for the rest of your life.

Make sure to go back to your home country as fast as possible, and then just ignore the bills. They'll have a very difficult time collecting on a debt in a foreign country. Don't come back to the US as a tourist after that.

This reminds me of college, where sometimes the police would come looking for students who were foreign nationals, because they had gotten credit cards and then racked up huge balances buying stuff, but didn't bother paying the bill. When the creditors tried to have them served, it turned out they had already graduated and left the country. Good luck getting some guy in Indonesia to pay off his US credit card balance. What were these creditors thinking?

> Make sure to go back to your home country as fast as possible, and then just ignore the bills. They'll have a very difficult time collecting on a debt in a foreign country. Don't come back to the US as a tourist after that.

Actually if you have a credit card, you might have a travel insurance as well. So no need to ignore the bills. And in France it's not like in US where the first thing they ask you is the name of your insurance company, even if you're bleeding to death.

>And in France it's not like in US where the first thing they ask you is the name of your insurance company, even if you're bleeding to death.

I was talking about a scenario where a tourist to the US goes to a US hospital and racks up a lot of medical bills.

Sure, but it goes both ways, a tourists NEEDS an health insurance to travel to US. I'm pretty sure it's necessary even for those who benefit from the VISA waver program.

A post-mortem from a base jumper? Those can't be common...

As someone who participates in a reasonably-dangerous / reasonably-uncommon hobby, that discussion really resonates with me. So much in there to contemplate.

Thank you!

At the end of that article, the jumper who survived impact says: For those who want to be the next Graham Dickinson, cut no corners.

Graham Dickinson died in January.

There's a blog entry that addresses that aspect:

http://topgunbase.ws/experience_doesnt_mean_shit/

>> Inexperience kills our new pilots.

>> Complacency kills our high-time pilots.

You could shorten that to: jumping off rocks without a parachute kills. Father of two engaging in this? Moron.

If you're young, you have no dependents and you feel like life probably isn't worth living then go for it, otherwise better not to pretend that you are a bird, you aren't. Birds have lots of options, wingsuit flyers (all terminology and pretense to the contrary) are not flying as much as they are falling and gravity has no mercy.

I don't understand your comment. They are all wearing parachutes.

Well, ok strike that. Make it 'pretending to fly close approaches to solid objects without much in terms of alternates when things go pear shaped'.

There is a fairly good reason why proximity wingsuit flyers tend to have a limited life span.

Whether or not you wear a parachute is not very important once you impact a tree or a mountain at high speed.

It's definitely a super-dangerous sport, but I know a few guys who have been doing this for a long, long time and understand the risks and keep their egos in check. They have a plan and they have outs. When done right, you are diving hard at the terrain to stay attached to the line, so if anything goes wrong you relax and separate. Some of these people have kids. None of them are morons :)