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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 B

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/

dahart 9y ago
Wrong. USPA has 35k participants, not 350k. http://test.uspa.org/facts-faqs/safety http://test.uspa.org/facts-faqs/safety Decade 2010-2015 Average fatalities per year 22.3 Average membership per year 35,189 Fatalities per thousand members 0.63 You didn't bother reading my comment? You just shared the same link I shared and discussed above. Those two links you shared are both examples of failures of statistics. They are comparing the risk of a single jump to the risk of a year of participation in other activities. That's a math fail. Skydiving is most definitely not safer than canoeing or boxing or SCUBA or football. It doesn't even pass the smell test that football could be more dangerous than skydiving. You've been misled by a cute poster that someone who's bad at stats screwed up.
- manarth 9y ago
  I did read the comment, and reposted the same link to identify it as the source of the canoeing stat. My reference to 350,000 participants is this text [1]: The United States Parachuting Association has nearly 35,000 members. It estimates that about 350,000 people complete more than 3 million jumps in a typical year. 3,000,000 jumps / 350,000 people = 8.57 jumps per person per year (approx). It doesn't even pass the smell test that football could be more dangerous than skydiving. The perception of football as "safe" can be attributed to its popularity: many people play football, therefore it's viewed as normal, just like driving. [1] http://adventure.howstuffworks.com/skydiving8.htm http://adventure.howstuffworks.com/skydiving8.htm
  - dahart 9y ago
    You've used an unsourced figure from a website that used faulty logic to evaluate the risks of skydiving relative to driving, in an intentionally misleading way. You've done some calculation based on this unsourced number, while ignoring the mortality rate that the USPA publishes. The USPA themselves says the annual risk of mortality is 0.63 per thousand members. That's about 1 in 1600. You are off by an order of magnitude. It's no wonder you think skydiving is safer than canoeing, but it is not true. The stats we have are for members and excludes non-members. But one thing you might be missing is that non-members jump an average of once. At least 90% of the 3.2 million jumps are repeat jumps by members, members comprise the bulk of the statistics anyway.
    - manarth 9y ago
      I agree that the reference to 350,000 is unsourced - the article claims that number comes from the USPA, but I can't find any relevant data on the USPA site. non-members jump an average of once. At least 90% of the 3.2 million jumps are repeat jumps by members That was the figure that I was struggling to source, but 90% feels high to me. At 90%, that gives a mean of 82 jumps per member per year, which feels high to me (although my experience as UK skydiver may be skewed by the amount of time we spend on the ground waiting for the skies to clear!) It would be useful to see a more complete breakdown of the jump stats and fatalities, because it might indicate the riskier elements of skydiving (my gut feel says swooping or high wing-loading), but I haven't found a data breakdown that detailed.
      - dahart 9y ago
        You're right; it would be useful to see a more complete breakdown, and get a better sense of what specific aspects are riskier. Hook turns are definitely a significant culprit, I agree with you. The BPA website (link below) has some claims about what the risk factors are. > 90% feels high to me. Well, I'm guessing on top of the unsourced 350k number you shared, so maybe it would be best if we stop guessing. But most non-members that jump are doing a tandem jump. A tandem jump in the US involves a USPA member doing a repeat jump, and most of the time a non-member making their first jump. All we can say firmly is that 1 in around 1,600 trained and qualified USPA members die each year. That is the actual mortality rate for people who continue to participate in skydiving. Since you're in the UK, the BPA also publishes safety info separately http://www.bpa.org.uk/staysafe/how-safe/ http://www.bpa.org.uk/staysafe/how-safe/ The one thing you can't say is that canoeing is more dangerous than skydiving. According to the sources we have, canoeing mortality rate is 1/10k while skydiving is 1/1.6k. Skydivers die ~6x more per year than canoers. Drivers in the US die at the rate of 1/6k per year according to the sources you shared. So skydiving is ~4x riskier than driving. And canoeing is less risky than driving. We can ignore the question of how many jumpers are USPA members if we look at the per-jump fatality statistics. The 1 death per 101k jumps lets you evaluate the risk of doing a single jump vs doing 100 jumps in a year. Let's use the current USPA numbers instead, which is now averaging around 1 death per 140k jumps (shown here http://www.uspa.org/facts-faqs/safety http://www.uspa.org/facts-faqs/safety). Your chance of dying doing a single jump is 1 in 140k. That seems low, but it's a single jump. Your chance of dying in a given year, if you make 100 jumps, is 100 in 140k, or 1 in 1,400. Some people do more than a thousand jumps per year, so if you jump 1000 times, your odds are 1 in 140. Looking at it this way, it's easier to gauge the risks because jumping more means risking more.

dahart 9y ago

Wrong. USPA has 35k participants, not 350k. http://test.uspa.org/facts-faqs/safety http://test.uspa.org/facts-faqs/safety Decade 2010-2015 Average fatalities per year 22.3 Average membership per year 35,189 Fatalities per thousand members 0.63 You didn't bother reading my comment? You just shared the same link I shared and discussed above. Those two links you shared are both examples of failures of statistics. They are comparing the risk of a single jump to the risk of a year of participation in other activities. That's a math fail. Skydiving is most definitely not safer than canoeing or boxing or SCUBA or football. It doesn't even pass the smell test that football could be more dangerous than skydiving. You've been misled by a cute poster that someone who's bad at stats screwed up.

manarth 9y ago
I did read the comment, and reposted the same link to identify it as the source of the canoeing stat. My reference to 350,000 participants is this text [1]: The United States Parachuting Association has nearly 35,000 members. It estimates that about 350,000 people complete more than 3 million jumps in a typical year. 3,000,000 jumps / 350,000 people = 8.57 jumps per person per year (approx). It doesn't even pass the smell test that football could be more dangerous than skydiving. The perception of football as "safe" can be attributed to its popularity: many people play football, therefore it's viewed as normal, just like driving. [1] http://adventure.howstuffworks.com/skydiving8.htm http://adventure.howstuffworks.com/skydiving8.htm
- dahart 9y ago
  You've used an unsourced figure from a website that used faulty logic to evaluate the risks of skydiving relative to driving, in an intentionally misleading way. You've done some calculation based on this unsourced number, while ignoring the mortality rate that the USPA publishes. The USPA themselves says the annual risk of mortality is 0.63 per thousand members. That's about 1 in 1600. You are off by an order of magnitude. It's no wonder you think skydiving is safer than canoeing, but it is not true. The stats we have are for members and excludes non-members. But one thing you might be missing is that non-members jump an average of once. At least 90% of the 3.2 million jumps are repeat jumps by members, members comprise the bulk of the statistics anyway.
  - manarth 9y ago
    I agree that the reference to 350,000 is unsourced - the article claims that number comes from the USPA, but I can't find any relevant data on the USPA site. non-members jump an average of once. At least 90% of the 3.2 million jumps are repeat jumps by members That was the figure that I was struggling to source, but 90% feels high to me. At 90%, that gives a mean of 82 jumps per member per year, which feels high to me (although my experience as UK skydiver may be skewed by the amount of time we spend on the ground waiting for the skies to clear!) It would be useful to see a more complete breakdown of the jump stats and fatalities, because it might indicate the riskier elements of skydiving (my gut feel says swooping or high wing-loading), but I haven't found a data breakdown that detailed.
    - dahart 9y ago
      You're right; it would be useful to see a more complete breakdown, and get a better sense of what specific aspects are riskier. Hook turns are definitely a significant culprit, I agree with you. The BPA website (link below) has some claims about what the risk factors are. > 90% feels high to me. Well, I'm guessing on top of the unsourced 350k number you shared, so maybe it would be best if we stop guessing. But most non-members that jump are doing a tandem jump. A tandem jump in the US involves a USPA member doing a repeat jump, and most of the time a non-member making their first jump. All we can say firmly is that 1 in around 1,600 trained and qualified USPA members die each year. That is the actual mortality rate for people who continue to participate in skydiving. Since you're in the UK, the BPA also publishes safety info separately http://www.bpa.org.uk/staysafe/how-safe/ http://www.bpa.org.uk/staysafe/how-safe/ The one thing you can't say is that canoeing is more dangerous than skydiving. According to the sources we have, canoeing mortality rate is 1/10k while skydiving is 1/1.6k. Skydivers die ~6x more per year than canoers. Drivers in the US die at the rate of 1/6k per year according to the sources you shared. So skydiving is ~4x riskier than driving. And canoeing is less risky than driving. We can ignore the question of how many jumpers are USPA members if we look at the per-jump fatality statistics. The 1 death per 101k jumps lets you evaluate the risk of doing a single jump vs doing 100 jumps in a year. Let's use the current USPA numbers instead, which is now averaging around 1 death per 140k jumps (shown here http://www.uspa.org/facts-faqs/safety http://www.uspa.org/facts-faqs/safety). Your chance of dying doing a single jump is 1 in 140k. That seems low, but it's a single jump. Your chance of dying in a given year, if you make 100 jumps, is 100 in 140k, or 1 in 1,400. Some people do more than a thousand jumps per year, so if you jump 1000 times, your odds are 1 in 140. Looking at it this way, it's easier to gauge the risks because jumping more means risking more.