When I was skydiving, everyone who is licensed and current in the U.S. received the USPA’s Skydiving Magazine, and in every issue was a report of every death an

When I was skydiving, everyone who is licensed and current in the U.S. received the USPA’s Skydiving Magazine, and in every issue was a report of every death and serious accident, and a “post-mortem” analysis of what went wrong and ways to avoid the same situation. The 28 people thing strikes me as a bit of tabloid writing. That’s 28 people in like 30 or 40 years, and it’s a big and busy drop zone. I can’t read the paywalled article but you need to compare the number 28 to the total number of jumps over that period, and to the national accident rate. 28 deaths without context is pretty meaningless. Yes, skydiving is a bit risky, and yes accidents occasionally happen. We’ve been losing 30,000 to 40,000 people to car accidents every single year for those 40 years. We’ve lost more than 700,000 people just since the year 2000. How does this country not shut down? (It’s easy to fling incredulity… just sayin’) Anyway, my local drop zone owner said that every time there was any kind of accident in the news, business tended to go up. The risk is part of the attraction.