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The 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

by AmVess 9y ago

The 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 ago
It's not clear they're dying for the same reasons though.
TremendousJudge 9y ago
I 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 ago
  No. 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
  - TremendousJudge 9y ago
    So, you're agreeing with me? F1 got safer because the cars got safer, not because the drivers drive more safely (safety measures were pushed by drivers though)

by AmVess 9y ago

emodendroket 9y ago

It's not clear they're dying for the same reasons though.

TremendousJudge 9y ago

I 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 ago
No. 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
- TremendousJudge 9y ago
  So, you're agreeing with me? F1 got safer because the cars got safer, not because the drivers drive more safely (safety measures were pushed by drivers though)