A paraglider saves himself with ‘1 second’ before impact: ‘This was not the day to die!’ A paraglider plummeting to near-certain doom after a chute malfunction rescued himself in the nick of time — and caught the whole thing on video. Kevin Phillip says the “acro paragliding trick in strong turbulence went wrong.   “Break line got stuck.” Phillip went on to explain that the way he was falling made it difficult to use the rescue parachute, which he had to open manually. He said that by the time he managed to save himself, he only had “about 1 second” left to spare before it would have been too late. Phillip then explained that this was an unusual incident and that normally acro paragliding is a safe sport due to its high altitude and multiple rescue parachutes. In this particular case, he had fallen into his lines and wing. The wing also twisted, which made him fall faster.