Here's something that made me cringe a while back. There was a pretty new guy with a fancy glow heli at our field & he was standing about 5 feet away from it & hovering it in front of him. he kept pushing it the wrong way & having a rough time with it. I couldn't watch because I just knew something bad was going to happen.

So maybe it's somewhat equivalent to a heli pilot standing near his hovering heli except any newbie heli pilot can hover a heli but it takes a decent amount of skill for a 3D pilot to hover next to him so I don't worry near as much.