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Increasing numbers of wingsuit jumpers are dying (2016)
- crispytx 9y agoWingsuit pilot & programmer here. The reason Wingsuit BASE Jumpers keep dying is that you shouldn't jump your wingsuit off a @#$%ing mountain. Please stick to the planes and the helicopters that you're used to.
- altotrees 9y agoYeah. I remember reading about Dean Potter dying at Yosemite. For someone who had taken calculated risks his whole climbing career, it just seemed like such a reckless and dangerous way to go. Sad.
- King-Aaron 9y agoI also imagine - not that I know much about the sport - that the uptake in popularity has both increased the number of people attempting the sport (likely without adequate skill), as well as people performing more risky manoeuvres in order to garner attention to themselves?
- rhcom2 9y agoIsn't that not BASE jumping then?
- joelrunyon 9y agoBuildings Antennae Span Earth You can pilot a wingsuit from a plane or much higher, but most of the people that die wingsuit flying are proximity flying - which has way smaller margin for error and higher mortality rate.
- kevin_thibedeau 9y agoIts safer than regular base jumping provided you don't try to strafe tree and hilltops and cliffsides. These jumpers are trying to do ever riskier stunts all for the clicks.
- c0nducktr 9y agoI don't think it's all for the clicks, if it's like any other dangerous sport/hobby. It's for the rush you get doing it. The feel of being right on the edge. It's an addictive feeling, and it can trick you, because you know it's dangerous but you're always come out of it fine, great even, until you don't.
- benjaminRRR 9y agoThis is a very good point. Unlike other sports - when you push you can be hurt badly, but ultimately learn from your mistake, proximity wingsuit is one-mistake-one-kill.
- ehnto 9y agoThat's how motorcycle accidents were explained to me. It is perfectly fine until it isn't, because there is so little room for error that it can only be fine or a crash. That was for motorcycles where accidents are survivable and things are much more in your control. For low wingsuit flying those last two points are both questionable.
- kobeya 9y agoI will call bullshit. There is no way it is safer to hug terrain than to jump at altitude from an airplane.
- KGIII 9y agoThey said safer than BASE jumping, though they didn't capitalize it. BASE jumping is jumping off stuff, not out of stuff. It is an acronym. Building Antenna Span Earth, I think.
- kobeya 9y agoI'm aware of what BASE means. Grandparent post was comparing BASE jumping to wingsuit skydiving out of airplanes and helicopters. Parent said that BASE jumping off of mountains could be safer. I called bullshit.
- SomeStupidPoint 9y agoI know nothing about wingsuits -- how are they used from planes and helicopters? Do you just jump and then use a parachute when you get low enough?
- amenghra 9y agoCorrect. A few people have landed with their wingsuits, but that's pretty rare. Look up Gary Connery or Jeb Corliss for example. You are still going pretty fast, you need ideal terrain (angle, water or boxes), and a hundred things have to go perfectly fine. It's a pretty insane feast.
- joelrunyon 9y agoYup - instead of freefall, you "glide." Then pull your chute whenever. Here's an example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2VIbrVVQRw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2VIbrVVQRw
- avenoir 9y agoSo I think the article is about Wingsuit Proximity Flying, and what you're describing is Wingsuit BASE Jumping. Are these two considered 2 separate, albeit similar, sports? Can any pilot practicing BASE Jumping leap off a cliff or do you somehow train for this?
- manarth 9y agoCan any pilot practicing BASE Jumping leap off a cliff or do you somehow train for this? Technically, all that's needed is money to buy a wingsuit and a parachute, and a cliff. Without training, they might manage to get the wingsuit operating properly for some of the flight, but I wouldn't want to see the odds of a successful landing. The general training arc would be to learn wingsuiting from an aircraft (like a regular skydive), and build up hours/experience flying a wingsuit in clear air (and deploying a parachute several thousand feet above the ground), before going into wingsuit base jumping (and build up experience there before going into prox). There's some more detail in this Quora answer: https://www.quora.com/What-does-it-take-to-become-a-wingsuit-flyer-How-do-people-practice-something-that-could-so-easily-turn-deadly-How-do-people-pinpoint-the-right-terrain-What-kind-of-physical-strength-do-people-need-to-resist-the-wind-and-hold-themselves-even https://www.quora.com/What-does-it-take-to-become-a-wingsuit...
- DrScump 9y agoHere is a trailer for a great short film on the topic: https://youtu.be/X6zxtGyZFSE https://youtu.be/X6zxtGyZFSE What struck me about the profiled jumpers was their calm, sane demeanor -- not the showboat thrillseekers I expected. BUT, most seemed unsatisfied by the experience when minimizing risk. To me, being 100 or more feet from terrain would be the experience of a lifetime. But many leaders in the sport keep pushing the envelope to a fatal degree (and in each example it was terrain, not equipment failure or weather).
- cvsh 9y agoProbably because it's the most dangerous thing you can do short of actually attempting suicide
- damnfine 9y agoBet its even closer than you think. Nobody I know who does BASE is still alive. Some quit, others died. Everyone just kind of expects to die doing it. Blue skies, black death.
- eternalcode 9y agoWhy is it not banned?
- base698 9y agoIt is in the land of the free. It's generally not banned in Europe, so most BASE jumpers who are active spend at least a few weeks a year there. About 10 to 20 die world wide in about a population of 1000 or so active jumpers. It can be done relatively safely but the group isn't big enough to regulate effectively and most BASE jumpers are hostile to anyone mentioning the idea.
- dghughes 9y agoI've seen this mentioned before, it seems to be the main point. > Most beginners who die appear to be making variations of the exact same error, according to Webb. “They jump off a cliff, get flying, and for some reason there's just this human reaction to try to hug the air like a big, gigantic beach ball,” he explains. “By hugging air you feel as if you're creating or catching more lift than you actually are. What ends up happening is your suit can only grab so much air, and it starts to stall. When it starts to stall, it loses lift, starts to drag, and then, splat.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- jdietrich 9y agoA lot of highly experienced jumpers are also dying, probably due to a mix of complacency, envelope-pushing and the inherent lack of margin for error in terrain flight. This point is made in the latter part of the article: > Figuring out why the best are dying confounds, saddens, and even irritates just about everyone I’ve spoken to in the wingsuit BASE world. “It’s really puzzling to me,” says Rich Webb. “I wish I knew, but I think it has to do with complacency.” > Webb points out that many of the best are dying on flight lines that might be considered either “easy” for them, or they’re lines that they’ve done before. “It comes down to the fact that they're so comfortable in a stupidly high-risk environment,” says Webb. “We just don't have the luxury of margins in our sport, so at some point it catches up to you if you're not on it all the time.” > Andy Lewis speculates, “I would say so many experienced wingsuiters are dying because they are trying to execute jumps with very low margin for error. Eventually when you make a mistake you hope you have room. And now low margins are so standard in the sport. It just kills people.”
- joelrunyon 9y agoIt shouldn't be that confusing. The mortality risk here is ridiculously high. No matter how good you are at something, you're not perfect. In any other sport, you can be a half-second late and have normal consequences, recover and be okay. In BASE, you're dead.
- 9y ago
- NegativeK 9y agoChris McNamara, who's done some incredible climbing feats, gave a take on getting into wingsuit BASE too fast and managing to get out: http://www.chrismcnamara.com/post/120721775716/base-jumping-death http://www.chrismcnamara.com/post/120721775716/base-jumping-...
- chrissnell 9y agoI had a close call this summer whitewater rafting on the Upper Animas River in Colorado and it has caused me to re-think every serious risk I take and has changed me in a big way. I was participating in a multi-day trip run by one of the local guiding outfits through the Upper section of the river, a much more difficult and serious undertaking than the Lower Animas, which is frequently run by average day-tripping tourists. We were on the No Name Rapid [1] and our boat capsized at the entrance to the rapid. I was stuck below the boat, my body somehow entangled in rigging, and was dragged underwater for some distance through a very fierce class V rapid. I was finally able to free myself enough to get my mouth above water and breathe, close to drowning. I managed to fully free myself and swam to shore at the first opportunity. When I made it, I kissed the ground and promised that I would never needlessly risk my life in the pursuit of adrenaline again. I cried like a baby when I returned home that evening and held my kids and wife again. Prior to this trip, I had done many adventurous and dangerous activities: rock climbing, ice climbing, lots of mountaineering, off-road driving, backcountry skiing... it really brings it all into perspective when you have a close call. All of that adrenaline-chasing just seems completely ridiculous to me now. [1] The No Name Rapid. We capsized at the spot pictured at around 0:04s. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjO37ABQ6mI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjO37ABQ6mI
- mark_h 9y agoI have a couple of friends, both white-water guides and accomplished outdoorsmen, and they both put whitewater in a different category of risk: you can do everything right, and still die just due to the unpredictability of it. One of them said he had an instructor who basically said "if you stick with this long enough, either you'll die or someone you know will". They were both in the latter category.
- auxym 9y agoA pretty popular avalanche safety book [1] has, in the introduction, an actuarial table of your survival probability if you keep going out in avalanche terrain x days a year, year after year... [1] http://www.mountaineersbooks.org/Staying-Alive-in-Avalanche-Terrain-2nd-Edition-P512.aspx http://www.mountaineersbooks.org/Staying-Alive-in-Avalanche-...
- perilunar 9y ago- because they're going too fast when they hit the ground? - because their sink rate is too high, and gets worse when they stall? - because 3:1 is a lousy glide angle? - because their wings are too small?
- drdrey 9y agoRegular BASE jumpers perform worse on all these metrics but don't die as much. All these metrics apply the same to skydiving wingsuit jumpers but they don't die as much. The real problem is that flying closer to things leads to more likes.
- jandrese 9y agoIt seems like the process went like this: 1. BASE Jumping is dangerous, because sometimes the parachute opens backwards and slams you back into the object you jumped off of. 2. Solution: Use Wingsuits to get further from the object before deploying the chute. 3. Thrill Seekers: So this means we can skim over the rocky ground and through forests right? 4. What, no! That would have the opposite effect! Absolutely not! We were trying to make fewer corpses, not more! 5. I'm gonna be a hero...
- tootie 9y agoExtreme sports like this just feel so dumb. Why are you risking your life for a momentary thrill? You'd get a better rush and be safer taking heroin.
- base698 9y agoIt's a challenge mentally? Overcome fear see different places, have different experiences? I've been skydiving and base jumping longer than I've not been and it's led me to some of the most rewarding experiences of my life.
- corporateslave2 9y agoBut those experiences are just self induced near death experiences. It's an illusion of meaning
- Simon_says 9y ago> It's an illusion of meaning. Sure, but to be fair, so is everything else.
- danielharrison 9y agoJust like sitting in a chair all your life and eating fast food until you actually have a real self induced death experience , sans adrenaline.
- base698 9y agoMet billionaires, actors, famous people. Saw places I'd never have seen that are some of the most beautiful on Earth, and even got married at one of them. Talking about all the things around the experience. In fact most of the reason I still continue to do it is the people.
- tudorw 9y agoI'm with you, it seems like confused macho posturing from people who seem to have little comprehension that they have responsibilities beyond their immediate desire for excitement, I have no statistics but I'm going good to guess it's a predominantly male sport, the mother's, fathers family and friends and responders they leave behind might have expected more, just because you can does not mean you should.
- cpncrunch 9y agoProximity flying is just inherently dangerous. Even with power, many people have died. Sparky Imeson, who wrote the "bible" of mountain flying, died from flying too close to terrain. The strange thing is that he was actually flying back to somewhere that he had had an accident in the past (the first time he just got seriously injured, the second time he died). If you look at the accident location, there is a valley at right-angles to the valley they're flying up, possibly causing katabatic downdrafts or something similar. Steve Fossett apparently died flying too close to terrain at high density altitude with forecast winds possibly resulting in downdrafts. Both of those people were extremely experienced pilots, but they just cut the margin for error too low. The main problem seems to be that winds are somewhat unpredictable, and if you're flying too close to terrain you might not have a chance to recover if you hit a sudden downdraft. I can't imagine doing this with a powered aircraft, never mind a wingsuit. These pilots who died were 100-300ft from terrain, never mind a few feet like these unpowered wingsuit pilots. If you stall from 100ft you're dead in almost any type of aircraft as there isn't enough altitude to recover. (I don't know how many of these wingsuit deaths were caused by stalls. It seems equally likely that they just misjudged things or a small change in wind just pushed them into terrain). There's gotta be safer ways to get an adrenaline rush.
- Simon_says 9y ago> died from flying too close to terrain Is that a euphemism for crashing into the ground?
- jdietrich 9y agoBASE wingsuit fliers tend to skim just above the surface of a slope rather than flying at higher altitude. You'll see it a lot if you watch GoPro videos. This is phenomenally dangerous in a powered aircraft, but it's near-suicidal if you're flying a wingsuit.
- jandrese 9y agoBut it makes for awesome GoPro footage[1] so people keep doing it. When you see people flying so low that they have to weave between trees you know that they're going to make a mistake or hit an unexpected gust of wind and kill themselves sooner rather than later. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTzwvyzzfjk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTzwvyzzfjk
- WalterBright 9y agoFlying is not natural for humans. Our instincts are wrong, and our senses misinform us. This is well known among pilots, and why one has to fly regularly to keep the license, and why a large part of pilot training focuses on trusting the instruments rather than your body.
- base698 9y agoPilot training only focuses on instruments during IFR training. Private pilot and most VFR is done without emphasis on instruments. Aerobatics rely on senses and no instruments. Source: Skydiver, BASE jumper, paraglider, aerobatic airplane pilot, private pilot land and sea.
- WalterBright 9y ago> Aerobatics rely on senses and no instruments. But I bet you check the airspeed and altitude before doing any maneuvers that'll take you near the ground. I've seen the videos of pilots at airshows pulling out of a dive and having not quite enough altitude to do it. Also, stall recovery is well known to be something that runs counter to every natural instinct a person has.
- loup-vaillant 9y agoThere's a difference between using one's own senses and using one's own instincts. Stall recovery is easily done with one's own senses (sight, hearing, and proprioception), even though the correct response is counter-intuitive. Looking at the instruments would even be a bad idea when you stall, because you'd lose time which you could use to save your life. I even know of a sailplane instructor that turn the instruments off for the student (not for himself, though), so the student can learn to read his own sensory information correctly before relying on instruments.
- jiri 9y agoYes, this! Flying is hard and our instincts are wrong. Anyway, pilot training is focused on dealing with critical and problematic situations. To be able to fly with instruments only, without them in case of failure, to glide safely, to not fly in proximity to other objects ;-) etc. Unfortunately, IMO in wingsuit flying, the safety is so thin that it would be hardly significantly improved with regulated training.
- solidsnack9000 9y ago> Wingsuit skydiving has virtually zero fatalities... Virtually zero or really zero?
- base698 9y agoOccasionally a single person will die in a year. As opposed to almost 20 fatalities in a much smaller population of wingsuit BASE jumpers every year.
- ucaetano 9y ago> We’re talking about real, human-powered flight—or, at least as close as humanity has ever come to it. Apparently the author hasn't heard about all the human powered flight initiatives, including crossing the English Channel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human-powered_aircraft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human-powered_aircraft
- perilunar 9y agoYeah, not human-powered at all. Gravity powered, like any other glider.
- DrScump 9y agoA friend of mine died on the Stanislaus before New Melones Dam was built (and not even in a rapid).
- lord_jim 9y agoCame across this Wikipedia list of wingsuit fatalities: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fatalities_due_to_wingsuit_flying https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fatalities_due_to_wi... The past few years is pretty sobering, especially given that most of these guys were experts and clearly knew their stuff
- personlurking 9y agoThis one seems a bit more comprehensive http://base-jumping.eu/base-jumping-fatality-list/ http://base-jumping.eu/base-jumping-fatality-list/
- coldtea 9y ago>In researching 2016’s dramatic rise in BASE jumping deaths, I was almost unable to keep up with the pace with which people were dying. Perhaps something to do with the increased popularity of social media and action cameras -- thus attracting a large body of non-seriously committed, in it for the views, darwin award nominees?
- emodendroket 9y agoThis is dismissed later in the article.
- delhanty 9y agoSix hours late on this thread and I can't see anyone calling out GoPro and friends: >Five days earlier, the GoPro star Uli Emanuele, 29, died when he crashed in the Dolomites of his native country, Italy. Freedom for these people (mostly young men) to die is one thing. But part of GoPro's profits are knowingly built up by a quasi-suicide cult. That's not that different from dealing heroin.
- lr 9y agoYou have to wonder, how many of them would be doing this (or any other "crazy" thing) if there were no cameras, no YouTube, Facebook, or Instagram Live, etc.?
- JshWright 9y agoI don't know how many people are doing it for the "internet fame" (my gut instinct is that it's a small percentage), but I'm sure there are many people who got into the sport in the first place because they watched it on the internet.
- kogepathic 9y ago> I don't know how many people are doing it for the "internet fame" (my gut instinct is that it's a small percentage) I don't have any numbers, but as with anything else (e.g. Russian dash cams) I don't feel that the behaviour of people has really changed. The difference now is everyone has a camera strapped to them, and with social media it's much easier to hear about someone who died doing X than in previous decades. BASE jumping is a dangerous sport. The advent of live streaming and HD cameras small enough to strap to your helmet and hand haven't changed this, but rather raised the profile of a failure.
- logfromblammo 9y agoPeople were white-lining with their crotch-rocket motorcycles at 135 mph before cameras got small enough to mount on their helmets. They used to just be a page 3 story in the local newspaper. Now their final rides are re-posted to every "rekt" thread. Perhaps eventually, enough people will absorb the lesson that doing a dangerous thing is dangerous, and will stop trying to make the "oh shit" glands above their kidneys express their "we're about to die" juice. I have seen enough of those videos that I'm pretty sure that the way I will die is by my tiny commuter sedan being forcibly disassembled by a heavy tractor-trailer or large SUV that crosses the center line. Humans are such fragile things. Why would you intentionally do things that might get your brains splattered across a rock, when we only have another 40 to 60 years to go until you can make a backup almost as good as biology provided?
- honestoHeminway 9y agoThere are just to many factors you do not controll, especially if you fly close to terrain. That tree that was upright yesterday, might have dropped. The birds that where far away in the morning, might get in your way. The little pond on the way, that was just mud, is dryed dust today swirling up. Wind drafts coming and going.
- siteshwar 9y agoCarl Boenish, who is considered father of modern base jumping, died while performing a base jump next day after marking his name in Guinness World Records. 'Sunshine Superman'[1] a documentary made on his life and death is worth watching. [1] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1322313/?ref_=nv_sr_1 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1322313/?ref_=nv_sr_1
- Havoc 9y agoWell yeah. That's kind like saying more people are dying from Russian roulette...while Russian roulette is experiencing a surge in popularity. Do something stupidly dangerous enough & in large numbers and you get rows of bodybags. Sounds callous but that is the reality of it.
- NegativeK 9y agoThat's oversimplifying or discarding the revelation. People expected wingsuit BASE to become safer with experience; practitioners didn't expect it to be a toss of the dice no matter what.
- Havoc 9y ago>People expected wingsuit BASE to become safer with experience; And I'm sure safety does improve with experience. They're still rolling the dice though. Some roll it with better odds than others sure but ultimately: >On a long enough timeline the survival rate for everyone drops to zero
- chias 9y ago> And I'm sure safety does improve with experience. The fact that people generally seem to assume it does (but that it actually doesn't) is the primary thesis of this article: "What’s more worrying about wingsuit BASE fatalities, though, is that there appears to be no consistent bias toward experience."
- Havoc 9y ago>(but that it actually doesn't) is the primary thesis of this article Kinda. It does improve safety in the sense that someone with zero jumps under their belt is far more likely to die than someone with some experience. That should be fairly self-evident and the fact that they even list a common beginner mistake shows this effect. That quote you've got there to me is trying to communicate that experience will improve your odds but won't save you from my "on a long enough timeline..." quote. The other thing that screw this up is that a noob and an experienced jumper won't be doing comparable things. So the experienced jumper is safer, but is also doing substantially more dangerous stuff. Measuring deaths vs experience doesn't capture that.
- eighthnate 9y agoA 2016 article? A dangerous sport that rapidly grew in popularity in recent years has increases in death? What do you expect?
- AmVess 9y agoThe most telling fact is that there is no clear bias of experience in these accidents. This simply means that the method is wrong. For sure, this is a bit like calling water wet, but people will continue to turn themselves into high performance lawn darts until they change their approach to safety. I think a lot of them don't fully appreciate how little room for error there is. They fly at around 150 MPH which is 220 feet per second. Once someone has realized there is a problem, they have gone 55 feet. Once their body and flight suit have reacted to that problem, they could easily be well past having traveled 300 feet. This is assuming perfection in body and suit. It's radically easy to blow through 600+ feet before your mid/body/suit can come up with a survival plan if you are even a little bit panicky. Quite a few deaths are from impacting terrain. By this I mean in transit terrain, meaning that they flew into something like the talus or a giant rock and didn't have enough time to avoid it. Quite a few more deaths are from inability to deploy the parachute in time.
- emodendroket 9y agoIt's not clear they're dying for the same reasons though.
- TremendousJudge 9y agoI think there are a lot of parallels with motor racing here. It was extremely dangerous on its early days, and didn't get safer when drivers got more experienced. It got safer when the cars got safer, and we still get deaths anyway (most recently in F1 the death of Jules Bianchi)
- amygdyl 9y agoNo. I have been a serious F1 fan for closing on four decades and I must implore you and anybody else who might be tempted to discount to present values the hope that you express, to consider just how far motorsports* the physical environment and envelope of racing has been altered:. - magnesium (not alloy!) monocoque body shells were ruled out. - as were countless rare or highly expensive materials that created paper thin transitions in operation before failure. - strict cockpit exit limits are enforced, 5s max to be standing on the tarmac and already have the steering wheel replaced - pit speed limit introduced and lowered - cornering radii universally enlarged, both by track design and track enlargement - ditto above because high torque hybrid formula propulsion gives you more apex profiles - driver aides have been a feature of F1 regardless of the rules, at no time has every assistant device become illegal - hundreds billions of dollars in chassis, monocoque and aerodynamic R&D have been expended since I was born. - delta sector split times read out on the steering wheel, feeding the driver closing dynamics and other indicators alert to track slicks and debris Those were in no particular order, but all changes to far more than likely possible with wingsuits and skydiving. Moreover these changes happened over decades. That may be too obvious. Until you next hear a water cooler cringe worthy moment when a proverbial PHB or sales jock exclaims how everything is enabled nowadays to the ultimate, by modern technology. We're all susceptible to a little bit of that.. * in my example F1, which suffered a near 30% fatality rate in years around the time of my birth, causing F1 to take a early lead, but it is not the solitary work of F1, the HANS device is a NASCAR R&D product that has saved F1 lives certainly. (I'm a rare advocate of taking much more of the American culture than would be popular, as I feel that avoidable accidents have occurred due to overreliance on the systems and that gut instincts are not on balance a negative in racing, as you may be inclined to imagine, if you are a American fan visiting your first F1 weekend. But the culture as a danger is something that F1 had to address internally, or be outlawed, very early in relative time.) Edit: phone
- sickbeard 9y ago> I later learned this man’s real name was Armin Schmieder. He was Italian, but lived in Freiburg, Germany. He was a father to a young child. He was 28. this pisses me off so much. Why would anyone but that irresponsible?
- dlevi 9y agoA
- pzs 9y agoPrevious discussion on this article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12418937 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12418937
- nkrisc 9y agoReading through I surprised to learn that both novices and veterans of the sport are dying. I suppose that's just how dangerous it is. As for myself, while I'm sure these are incredible experiences, there are other amazing things I can experience in life that aren't nearly as deadly. I'll stick with those and optimize for total volume of as incredible life experiences as is possible before I (hopefully) die of natural causes at an old age. Having a kid on the way changes my perspective as well.
- emodendroket 9y ago> Wingsuiters are striking apple-size targets from a mile away. And they’re flying mere inches above, around, and sometimes even through terrain that’s barely wider than their own outstretched arms. Well, seems like they've answered their own question.
- Raphmedia 9y agoEven birds and insects make mistakes. They spend most of their lives flying and still hit trees or windows and die. You can't expect a big monkey to stick wings on their body and not die at some point.
- Allower 9y agoMaybe that's because more people are trying wingsuiting
- m3kw9 9y agoNumbers and percentage can be deceiving. Also another reason if the percentage is increasing is that there is more of a urge to try to copy what daredevils do on YouTube, maybe they make it look easy. Or they want to create highlight videos themselves but highlights are the tricky stuff others haven’t done.
- itsdevlin 9y agoActive BASE jumper and wingsuit pilot here. Instructor of both. 2016 was by far and away our worst year on record. We lost newbies, heros, and damn near all levels in between. Since then, a few sites have taken a more locked-down approach where we used to be welcome, and as a community we've made progress to band together to push education and conservative decision making over 'dude that was so sketchy.' A lot of people have brought up the why - why do people do this when they know it's so dangerous? Well, that's a question that everyone needs to make for themselves, but for me it's quite simply that it's the only time I've found my mind to be quiet. It forces me to be present, assess everything in a level of detail that is unparalleled in any other time in my life, and quiet down every other distraction. Also, it's beautiful. Being in the mountains, on top of buildings, out on bridges, climbing antennae, all with some of your closest friends? It's incredible. There's absolutely nothing on the planet like that level of adventure. With all that said, it's fucking dangerous. I've managed to have a somewhat clean track record in my two years in the sport, with only two broken bones, but I have probably 20 of the people on the Base Fatality List still in my phone, four of whom I'd call great friends. It's fucking awful losing friends like that, but it's who we are. If they wouldn't have lived a life like this, would they have been them? A little while back I had the lightning strike closest to my family, when we lost Ian. Here's his story: https://vimeo.com/167054481 https://vimeo.com/167054481
- bira 9y agoAre you willing to die for it?
- itsdevlin 9y agoIn short, no. To bring a strawman into this: Would you die for your commute? What about a burger? A beer? All of these things kill people, and all of them can be avoided. People don't, because they like them. They accept the given level of risk by mitigating it as best they can, and going on about their lives. Risk is omnipresent. The real killer is when you don't understand the risk. If you think something has a 1:1mm risk of serious physical harm, you'll probably be alright with it. If something has a 1:100 risk of the same level of physical harm, you'll probably think twice (or you'll prepare yourself differently). Risk management takes two forms in our world: Unknown Unknowns, and Normalization of Risk. For newbies, unknown unknowns kill them. Thinking something is a 1:1m risk when it's 1:100 provides a real easy way to put yourself in a situation you're unprepared to handle. For experienced jumpers, normalization of risk is what seems to be killing us. If you take a shortcut that increases risk 10x, but you've taken it 1k times, in your brain it just becomes 'the way' and you forget that you're actually multiplying your risk. Do that enough different times and what in your brain is just 'the way' is actually the summation of a complex web of risk-multiplying shortcuts. Remember both of those things, and you might make to your next birthday. Maybe. Maybe you'll get killed sitting at a stoplight by being rear-ended by a drunk driver, like my first base jumping mentor was.
- levi_n 9y agoI plotted the total BASE + wingsuit deaths since inception: http://i.imgur.com/BdlUrFK.png http://i.imgur.com/BdlUrFK.png * Note that the BFL has some errors in it's dates, which account for the downward trend in 1993 and 2000
- 659087 9y agoHN attempts to sound authoritative on yet another subject it doesn't understand. A few people pretend to be skydivers after studying the wikipedia entry about the sport, but give themselves away through improper terminology.