4 ms·

If you die on your first parachute jump, you're unlucky. If you live your entire life doing these "small chance each time" stunts, maybe we should not be so su

If you die on your first parachute jump, you're unlucky. If you live your entire life doing these "small chance each time" stunts, maybe we should not be so surprised that your eventual demise was this kind of thing. Was an interesting character, RIP.

kylecazar 1y ago
Definitely a true statement, but reports are saying he was already unconscious as he fell, so some open questions remain
- Simon_O_Rourke 1y ago
  Not that I doubt the reports, but how could anyone possibly make that call?
  - catlikesshrimp 1y ago
    Yes. A pathologist can know if there was a catasthropic event like the natural rupture of an artery (e.g. stroke, heart attack) In vivo events evolve differently than post mortem ones, e.g. strangling a dead body shows differently than strangling a person to death. More recently, he might have been wearing a vital signal monitor that kept logs. Nowadays probably the latter.
  - diggan 1y ago
    Someone so famous and regularly doing spectacular things surely have a bunch of sensors attached to them that reports a bunch of metrics about their physiological state.
- ngruhn 1y ago
  Well if "unconscious" happens to you in a restaurant you don't fall out of the sky.
  - 0x000xca0xfe 1y ago
    The final result is often similar while driving. Or walking down a flight of stairs, at least for oneself.
    - baobabKoodaa 1y ago
      No it's not. In both examples you are very likely to survive. This is different than the ~0% chance of survival Felix had in the air.
      - 0x000xca0xfe 1y ago
        Tens of thousands die falling on stairs every year. You don't have to fall out of the sky to die. Just last year a good friend of mine had to bury her sister because she fell while exiting her car. You are more likely to survive than in small aviation crashes but most people (probably Felix included) spend way more time on that than flying. As a motorcyclist I'm surely not well of either when I suddenly fall unconscious. There are many activities where you really should not pass out while doing them, but they don't make for interesting headlines.
        achierius 1y ago
        "Many people die from X" is different than "you will most likely die if you X". Most people who pass out in vehicles probably survive. Say we ignore the cases where you're on a side street, stuck in traffic, going at slow speeds, etc. (and just end up idling in the road with people honking/routing around you) -- so just consider the deadliest case, going at speed on the highway. While there aren't statistics for this particular scenario, we can look at the numbers for multi-car collisions in general, as that's near to the worst thing that could happen if you did just stop managing your car while at speed (gliding into the median is much less likely to be fatal): https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/809438 https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/.... One line in the report suggests this should be broadly comparable to what we're thinking of: "In about 40 percent of fatal single vehicle rollovers and 57 percent of multi- vehicle rollovers, investigating officers reported that no crash avoidance maneuvers preceded the crash". Even still: the fatality rate is <10%! Compare to >80% if you pass out while doing underwater cave diving.
Simon_O_Rourke 1y ago
There's a concept I read about before called micromorts, where activities are given a danger rating something like the expected number of fatalities per million events. So riding a motorbike 100 miles is 8 micromorts. Hang-gliding is 9 micromorts. Base jumping is 430 micromorts. And summiting Everest is 37,000 micromorts. Incidentally, of those - I know of two guys who died either on Everest or at base camp there over the past 15 years. First guy fell on the descent, and the second guy developed health issues at altitude (apparently related to an Israeli team immediately prior stealing their oxygen bottles).
- d_e_solomon 1y ago
  I try to calibrate risk based on the likelihood of dying during my commute. I'm glad that there is a more standardized scale!
  - smus 1y ago
    Is there anything you do that ends up being more dangerous? Genuinely curious
    - criddell 1y ago
      I often think about this while riding my bicycle to work. The exercise and quiet time surely has a positive impact on my health span, but being among cars risking collision and breathing in exhaust is a negative. What’s the net result?
  - perilunar 1y ago
    Well if you commuted by riding 100 miles per day on a motorbike for 40 years your total risk is roughly 77,000 micromorts (77 millimorts?), or double the risk of summiting Everest once!
- Kalibr 1y ago
  [flagged]
- perilunar 1y ago
lazyant 1y ago
also with time they get more cocky? While new drivers have a higher crash rate in their first year of driving, the fatality rate is actually highest in their second year, not their first.

kylecazar 1y ago

Definitely a true statement, but reports are saying he was already unconscious as he fell, so some open questions remain

Simon_O_Rourke 1y ago
Not that I doubt the reports, but how could anyone possibly make that call?
- catlikesshrimp 1y ago
  Yes. A pathologist can know if there was a catasthropic event like the natural rupture of an artery (e.g. stroke, heart attack) In vivo events evolve differently than post mortem ones, e.g. strangling a dead body shows differently than strangling a person to death. More recently, he might have been wearing a vital signal monitor that kept logs. Nowadays probably the latter.
- diggan 1y ago
  Someone so famous and regularly doing spectacular things surely have a bunch of sensors attached to them that reports a bunch of metrics about their physiological state.
ngruhn 1y ago
Well if "unconscious" happens to you in a restaurant you don't fall out of the sky.
- 0x000xca0xfe 1y ago
  The final result is often similar while driving. Or walking down a flight of stairs, at least for oneself.
  - baobabKoodaa 1y ago
    No it's not. In both examples you are very likely to survive. This is different than the ~0% chance of survival Felix had in the air.
    - 0x000xca0xfe 1y ago
      Tens of thousands die falling on stairs every year. You don't have to fall out of the sky to die. Just last year a good friend of mine had to bury her sister because she fell while exiting her car. You are more likely to survive than in small aviation crashes but most people (probably Felix included) spend way more time on that than flying. As a motorcyclist I'm surely not well of either when I suddenly fall unconscious. There are many activities where you really should not pass out while doing them, but they don't make for interesting headlines.
      - achierius 1y ago
        "Many people die from X" is different than "you will most likely die if you X". Most people who pass out in vehicles probably survive. Say we ignore the cases where you're on a side street, stuck in traffic, going at slow speeds, etc. (and just end up idling in the road with people honking/routing around you) -- so just consider the deadliest case, going at speed on the highway. While there aren't statistics for this particular scenario, we can look at the numbers for multi-car collisions in general, as that's near to the worst thing that could happen if you did just stop managing your car while at speed (gliding into the median is much less likely to be fatal): https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/809438 https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/.... One line in the report suggests this should be broadly comparable to what we're thinking of: "In about 40 percent of fatal single vehicle rollovers and 57 percent of multi- vehicle rollovers, investigating officers reported that no crash avoidance maneuvers preceded the crash". Even still: the fatality rate is <10%! Compare to >80% if you pass out while doing underwater cave diving.

Simon_O_Rourke 1y ago

There's a concept I read about before called micromorts, where activities are given a danger rating something like the expected number of fatalities per million events. So riding a motorbike 100 miles is 8 micromorts. Hang-gliding is 9 micromorts. Base jumping is 430 micromorts. And summiting Everest is 37,000 micromorts. Incidentally, of those - I know of two guys who died either on Everest or at base camp there over the past 15 years. First guy fell on the descent, and the second guy developed health issues at altitude (apparently related to an Israeli team immediately prior stealing their oxygen bottles).

d_e_solomon 1y ago
I try to calibrate risk based on the likelihood of dying during my commute. I'm glad that there is a more standardized scale!
- smus 1y ago
  Is there anything you do that ends up being more dangerous? Genuinely curious
  - criddell 1y ago
    I often think about this while riding my bicycle to work. The exercise and quiet time surely has a positive impact on my health span, but being among cars risking collision and breathing in exhaust is a negative. What’s the net result?
- perilunar 1y ago
  Well if you commuted by riding 100 miles per day on a motorbike for 40 years your total risk is roughly 77,000 micromorts (77 millimorts?), or double the risk of summiting Everest once!
Kalibr 1y ago
[flagged]
perilunar 1y ago

lazyant 1y ago

also with time they get more cocky? While new drivers have a higher crash rate in their first year of driving, the fatality rate is actually highest in their second year, not their first.