Tom you realize you don’t know what you talking about? Paragliders fly much faster and farther than you think. In fact some of these guys often fly 300-500km in paragliders.
Also the safety record of “these idiots” as you call them is in fact better than gliders. There are many more paraglider pilots and paraglider flights than sailplanes, with lower fatality rate. Sure they get injured much more often, but most of their accidents are survivable. We lost more glider pilots in Nevada than paraglider pilots. They certainly carry a lot of water with them, and can easily land on any dirt road and walk. And since many of them are younger and in better shape than many of us, they can walk out 20+ miles to the nearest road. They fly with 2M ham radios which reaches far more than “few miles” I believe further than our hand held radios, and can also use ham relays and other technologies. And most of them fly with trackers.
Perhaps non soaring pilots can make judgments on anyone who chose to fly light aircrafts without engines in the middle of nowhere, but not us.

Ramy