I met the artist who drew that panel. Marcus Hamilton. Helluva nice guy!

That's so unrealistic, sliding down the railing in that unstable forward facing manner.
And when he actually gets to the banister, I think the sudden turn will be for the worse, if you know what I mean.
After all, balls in motion tend to stay in motion until acted upon by another force, and nobody wants that.

>Implying that the banister is not the whole railing-plus-upright-supports structure.

Well, yes, that's the normal usage as I understand it from listening to various carpentry shows, but I guess there could be others that include the railing and the upright supports as a single unit collectively called the banister, too. Mostly I heard the term applied mostly to the upright support posts, while the hand rail, which people might actually slide on, was separately called the railing.

In any event, I don't foresee too many problems until he reaches the bottom post, unless he falls off due to what I assume is a more unstable forward facing posture.

Roger Bannister was the first person to break the 4-minute mile.

And you'll notice he was upright when he did it, while nobody was railing against him.

Yeah, I'd have to say my understanding of what a banister was doesn't jive with most definitions I can now find in various on-line dictionaries. Weird I recall some carpentry shows where they were quite emphatic about the railing not being the banister. Oh well.