Tough to say - a deep water start is possibly the most risk for this situation I'm sure we've all had someone flub a start and launch the handle. That's something that could easily be modeled using this handle and say a trick ski release. Set up a ski and a rope tension it and release the handle at the ski (in a tank of water) and see what happens. I don't know that the polypro bridle is stiff enough to actually move the handle out of the way under this sort of situation.