Yeah, that’s what the PhD Army guys told me. I suspect that you can go a bit higher if you learn to “pull” your feet at the last instant for a cat-like landing (e.g., the Parquer crowd), or if you don’t drop to flat, but you couldn’t count on those from an average paratrooper on an average drop.
I’ve jumped from 15 feet (not on my unicycle) and landed safely… My feet kinda hurt, but I was okay.
yeah, i have a done a lot of 12 and 13 footers (rolling out of course) and no problems so far. i will certainly be more careful in the future though. jumping off something is nowhere near as fun as uniing.
also, get well soon dan
I guess the tests were done on guys with a few extra lbs of kit and I would have thought the average soldier to be quite heavy what with the muscle and all. Roughly how fast would they hit the ground from a parachute drop?
Maybe a lighter person has a bit more height before ankle breakage? Still I’d hate to tell my kids in years to come that I can’t play with them properly cuz I jumped off a building for the Hell of it and broke something bad 
Oops! Nearly forgot why I posted- Get well soon Dan! Take it easy.
The operative word seems to be “average soldier.” Their iterest is to to keep the breakage rate acceptable, so what they meant was that drops from 14 feet have an unacceptably high breakage rate. I don’t know how they jump with kit. If I were trying to minimize ankle breakage I’d get the kit off the soldier by hanging it by a rope so that it hit first. Anyhow, this is all way off topic. Get well soon, Dan!
I’m intrigued as to how they did this… theoretically, by measuring forces etcetera, or more along the lines of “excuse me, would you mind jumping off this edge to see if your ankles break or not?”…?
Phil
I’d do that if they paid me well.
There was a guy once who jumped off of a building to commit suicide, but then sued Nike because the shoes helped him survive. No, I’m serious. Seriously.
Does no-one actually read properly theses days? i interpret that he fell off the uni, which was 14ft high, not doing an actual 14ft drop like most of the people who posted are thinking…heal well dan!
quote:
Originally posted by cyberbellum
The Army’s human factors research group once told me that 14 feet is the height where you are almost certain to break either your feet or ankles from a drop.
I beg to differ, Army human factors research group!
http://www.le-parkour.com/cyril.mpeg
http://www.le-parkour.com/davidbelle.avi
I’m not saying that 14 feet isn’t a big fall, I’m just pointing out that if landed correctly, people can jump off very big things.
Get well soon, Dan!
I thought he fell off his 14 foot uni doing a 14 foot drop
If you peered into the rock climbing community, especially the world class guys, you’d see a stack of folk who have pretty much mastered falling off practice boulders from really staggering heights.
The problem is (and I’m living prrof of it) that you can’t do this indefinately; eventually your disks start crumbling from so much shock loading. You might not feel it for years, but eventually you will and you won’t like it.
Per uniing, unless I’m dropping onto soft dirt of grass, I try never to drop so far that my back starts flaring up. Anything beyond about 5 feet onto pavement and I suspect you’re back will eventually pay the Piper. I’m sure plently of people will disagree, but I’ll wager they’re all under 35 with no sports injuries (yet).
JL
Dan fell off a 14ft (4.27 meters) tall unicycle…technically his feet were probably about 11.5 ft off the ground. Dan and Jeff stayed with me this past weekend on their way west. Dan was in good spirits and not experiencing as much pain as he expected. He said something about quiting unicycling/filming and going into bathroom design…you’d be surprised how many “wheelchair accessible” bathrooms really aren’t!
Dan’s new cruiser…
thanx for the clarification
just one more question
u say ‘fell off’
was this a UPD or just a badly landed planned-dismount?
UPD.
That’s actually the first time I have ever seen Dan Heaton’s face. I had no idea what he looked like, you can just never see it in Universe 2!
so you havent seen universe 1 then robbie? 
Sadly, no. However when he gets the DVD version of Universe 1 sorted out… I’m getting it!