Franz Reichelt: Riding the Coattails of Failure
Inventors killed by their own inventions.
One of my favourite Wikipedia articles is the list of inventors killed by their own inventions, which features a colourful variety of inventors who have perpetrated the ultimate in engineering failure.
Mike Hughes was an Oklahoma-born, California-livin', professional daredevil. His homemade rocket blew up at its February 2020 launch and he was ejected from it, falling to his death. It was an interesting story because the fundraising campaign was (satirically) marketed as a mechanism to finance a trip to space, in order to prove the Earth is flat. Unfortunately a lot of articles still depicted him as a Flat EartherTM, even though his publicist tried to explain the situation. Mike was no dummy (maybe not the most pragmatic career choice, though).
Now, Franz Reichelt, was a dummy. Franz was an Austrian-born, Paris-livin', professional tailor, and parachute enthusiast. He combined his passions to make a wearable parachute for aviators who have to bail out of their planes (very convenient, honestly, I'd buy one). It kinda sorta worked a few times from the roof of his five-story apartment on dummies, but he never got anything wearable to work in any repeatable way.
In February 1912 (108 years before Rocket Mike), Franz got permission from Parisian authorities to test his device from the Eiffel Tower on the condition that he use a dummy. With no intention of using a dummy, he gathered a bunch of reporters to come see his invention, which he still hadn't gotten working (he blamed short drop distances).
His inventor rival/peer, Gaston Hervieu, tried to convince him not to do it, and brought up technical issues that Franz had no real answers for. A guard, who had seen previous unsuccessful dummy attempts, also tried to stop him, but Franz threw a little tantrum, and the matter was "resolved." He went up to the top, strapped up, said, "À bientôt!" and fell 57 feet to his immediate death.
In conclusion, you should probably try to stay on the ground when you can. And don't invent things, but if you do, find a tailor or daredevil to test them first.