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Skydiving is actually a very safe and low-risk 'adrenaline' activity, from what I've heard. There are multiple redundancies and you are almost never at the mer

by jly 9y ago

Skydiving is actually a very safe and low-risk 'adrenaline' activity, from what I've heard. There are multiple redundancies and you are almost never at the mercy of randomness like with winsuits, climbing, or whitewater rapids. The deaths that do occur are almost always from experienced jumpers that not following recommended safety processes, often in the pursuit of pushing things to the edge. The point is that unlike some other extreme sports, most skydiving deaths are preventable by conservative jumping.

dahart 9y ago
> Skydiving is actually a very safe and low-risk 'adrenaline' activity, from what I've heard I'm sorry, but you've heard wrong. Skydiving is super dangerous, relative to other sports. Less than wingsuit flying, but more death per participant than most other sports. There's an unfortunate infographic that's made the rounds that makes skydiving look relatively as dangerous as football, but they made a mistake with the numbers and left people with an incorrect and extremely misleading impression. A lot of people are now saying that skydiving is "as safe" or "safer" than football, and that is flat out false. I hope nobody is motivated to skydive thinking it's super safe, because it's not. > There are multiple redundancies and you are almost never at the mercy of randomness like with winsuits For a single jumper, there's one redundancy - a spare chute - and they fail and/or tangle at about the rate of 1 in 800 jumps, from what I recall. For a BASE jumper, there's no redundancy, they don't normally have a spare. Almost everyone who jumps more than a few times does formation jumping or other group activities, if not get into BASE or wingsuit. Formation jumps put you at the mercy of other people, which are less controllable than mountains or trees. I stopped formation jumping after a couple of bad ones where I had close calls that were other people's mistakes. Most of the people I knew during my time skydiving are now dead, more than a dozen people.
- clueless123 9y ago
  Here we go again.. (I think we discussed this topic previously) Skydiving, hang gliding,Paragliding and many other "adventure sports" contain a significan amount of risk.. the difference is that skydiving (not base jumping) is tightly regulated by the FAA, there are strict training requirements, equipment maintenance etc etc .. it is almost like flying a plane. so.. it is super dangerous compared to knitting.. but it's quite safe compared to many other risk activities.. (Paragliding, hang gliding, motorcycle racing on a street, experimenting with drugs, proximity flying etc) Most of the people I've met during 20 years skydiving are very much alive and still jumping, several hundred people..
  - dahart 9y ago
    Oh hey, you're right, we did discuss this a while ago. Nice to see you again! Yes, you're right that skydiving is safe compared to the sports that are more dangerous than skydiving. I agree and admit there are sports and activities that are more dangerous than skydiving. Wingsuit flying is one of them. Last time we talked, you said the risk of dying skydiving is 1 in 100,000 and pointed at the comparative table here: http://www.besthealthdegrees.com/health-risks/ http://www.besthealthdegrees.com/health-risks/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12419507 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12419507 That number is per jump, not per year. The other 11 pictures in the top 12 of that page are per year figures. The units are different, the comparison is invalid. Juxtaposing these numbers is wrong, and quoting 1/100,000 per jump is super misleading when you compare it to the annual fatality rates of other sports. This is what I was talking about above. The annual fatality rate of skydiving is 1 in 1,580. Skydiving is a bit safer than hang-gliding, roughly 3x. It's definitely not 180x safer, which is the very first thing the infographic implies. The infographic depicts skydiving as safer than boxing, football, canoeing, and SCUBA. That is flat false, skydiving is much more dangerous than all of those combined. BTW, with respect to regulation, about one in about 1600 skydivers die each year after having gone through training, after safety inspections, after exposure to the risks and liability waivers, after subscribing to USPA magazine and reading about each and every death in the U.S., etc. etc. Since nobody needs a license to get in a canoe, you may expect a higher percentage of people who are unprepared for the risks of canoeing to die doing it. Skydiving has a relatively high fatality rate despite the fact that it's regulated and the skydiving population has more training and safety equipment than other sports.
    - manarth 9y ago
      Since nobody needs a license to get in a canoe, you may expect a higher percentage of people who are unprepared for the risks of canoeing to die doing it Breaking down the numbers, the skydiving fatality rate is a reported 1 in 101,083 jumps. To normalise that to a per-year rate, we can take the USPA rate of 350,000 participants conducting 3,000,000 skydives per year [1]. That gives a mean of 8.6 jumps per year for each participant. Given the 1 in 101,083 risk, that amounts to roughly a 1 in 11,750 risk of fatality per year. The risk of canoeing in the linked article [2] is 1 in 10,000, so according to those reported statistics, skydiving is slightly safer than canoeing, significantly safer than boxing, is roughly 3 times as risky as scuba diving, and 5 times as risky as football. [1] http://adventure.howstuffworks.com/skydiving8.htm http://adventure.howstuffworks.com/skydiving8.htm [2] http://www.besthealthdegrees.com/health-risks/ http://www.besthealthdegrees.com/health-risks/
- 15155 9y ago
  How many skydiving deaths are a result of swooping - relative to normal, vanilla jumps, I wonder.
  - dahart 9y ago
    I don't know, it's probably significant, and I think that data is out there. The USPA reports all the accidents monthly. I just looked here: http://www.dropzone.com/fatalities/ http://www.dropzone.com/fatalities/ and 2 of the 5 most recent are low turn accidents. I once watched a guy hook turn and break his back. :(

by jly 9y ago

dahart 9y ago

> Skydiving is actually a very safe and low-risk 'adrenaline' activity, from what I've heard I'm sorry, but you've heard wrong. Skydiving is super dangerous, relative to other sports. Less than wingsuit flying, but more death per participant than most other sports. There's an unfortunate infographic that's made the rounds that makes skydiving look relatively as dangerous as football, but they made a mistake with the numbers and left people with an incorrect and extremely misleading impression. A lot of people are now saying that skydiving is "as safe" or "safer" than football, and that is flat out false. I hope nobody is motivated to skydive thinking it's super safe, because it's not. > There are multiple redundancies and you are almost never at the mercy of randomness like with winsuits For a single jumper, there's one redundancy - a spare chute - and they fail and/or tangle at about the rate of 1 in 800 jumps, from what I recall. For a BASE jumper, there's no redundancy, they don't normally have a spare. Almost everyone who jumps more than a few times does formation jumping or other group activities, if not get into BASE or wingsuit. Formation jumps put you at the mercy of other people, which are less controllable than mountains or trees. I stopped formation jumping after a couple of bad ones where I had close calls that were other people's mistakes. Most of the people I knew during my time skydiving are now dead, more than a dozen people.

clueless123 9y ago
Here we go again.. (I think we discussed this topic previously) Skydiving, hang gliding,Paragliding and many other "adventure sports" contain a significan amount of risk.. the difference is that skydiving (not base jumping) is tightly regulated by the FAA, there are strict training requirements, equipment maintenance etc etc .. it is almost like flying a plane. so.. it is super dangerous compared to knitting.. but it's quite safe compared to many other risk activities.. (Paragliding, hang gliding, motorcycle racing on a street, experimenting with drugs, proximity flying etc) Most of the people I've met during 20 years skydiving are very much alive and still jumping, several hundred people..
- dahart 9y ago
  Oh hey, you're right, we did discuss this a while ago. Nice to see you again! Yes, you're right that skydiving is safe compared to the sports that are more dangerous than skydiving. I agree and admit there are sports and activities that are more dangerous than skydiving. Wingsuit flying is one of them. Last time we talked, you said the risk of dying skydiving is 1 in 100,000 and pointed at the comparative table here: http://www.besthealthdegrees.com/health-risks/ http://www.besthealthdegrees.com/health-risks/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12419507 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12419507 That number is per jump, not per year. The other 11 pictures in the top 12 of that page are per year figures. The units are different, the comparison is invalid. Juxtaposing these numbers is wrong, and quoting 1/100,000 per jump is super misleading when you compare it to the annual fatality rates of other sports. This is what I was talking about above. The annual fatality rate of skydiving is 1 in 1,580. Skydiving is a bit safer than hang-gliding, roughly 3x. It's definitely not 180x safer, which is the very first thing the infographic implies. The infographic depicts skydiving as safer than boxing, football, canoeing, and SCUBA. That is flat false, skydiving is much more dangerous than all of those combined. BTW, with respect to regulation, about one in about 1600 skydivers die each year after having gone through training, after safety inspections, after exposure to the risks and liability waivers, after subscribing to USPA magazine and reading about each and every death in the U.S., etc. etc. Since nobody needs a license to get in a canoe, you may expect a higher percentage of people who are unprepared for the risks of canoeing to die doing it. Skydiving has a relatively high fatality rate despite the fact that it's regulated and the skydiving population has more training and safety equipment than other sports.
  - manarth 9y ago
    Since nobody needs a license to get in a canoe, you may expect a higher percentage of people who are unprepared for the risks of canoeing to die doing it Breaking down the numbers, the skydiving fatality rate is a reported 1 in 101,083 jumps. To normalise that to a per-year rate, we can take the USPA rate of 350,000 participants conducting 3,000,000 skydives per year [1]. That gives a mean of 8.6 jumps per year for each participant. Given the 1 in 101,083 risk, that amounts to roughly a 1 in 11,750 risk of fatality per year. The risk of canoeing in the linked article [2] is 1 in 10,000, so according to those reported statistics, skydiving is slightly safer than canoeing, significantly safer than boxing, is roughly 3 times as risky as scuba diving, and 5 times as risky as football. [1] http://adventure.howstuffworks.com/skydiving8.htm http://adventure.howstuffworks.com/skydiving8.htm [2] http://www.besthealthdegrees.com/health-risks/ http://www.besthealthdegrees.com/health-risks/
15155 9y ago
How many skydiving deaths are a result of swooping - relative to normal, vanilla jumps, I wonder.
- dahart 9y ago
  I don't know, it's probably significant, and I think that data is out there. The USPA reports all the accidents monthly. I just looked here: http://www.dropzone.com/fatalities/ http://www.dropzone.com/fatalities/ and 2 of the 5 most recent are low turn accidents. I once watched a guy hook turn and break his back. :(