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Comment by dahart | Hacker News Reader

I think most everyone watching the sport has been predicting a higher death rate, it's quite unsurprising, and why is not a mystery -- but this article was very well done IMO. It's clear from the explosion of wingsuit videos that the risk factor is dramatically higher, and that the videos themselves are going to be a factor in luring more people with less experience to try it. It looks amazingly fun, and very tempting if you're already or willing to start skydiving.

I personally feel very lucky to have passed through the skydiving phase of my life alive. Every jumper I knew personally except one is dead now. Some died in the most crazy unlikely ways, and a bunch of them died together in a plane crash after a weekend boogie. Skydiving is super dangerous, and BASE is even more dangerous, and wingsuit BASE trying to buzz the ground within inches -- How are so many BASE jumpers NOT dying??

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I strongly disagree with your statement. Skydiving is NOT "Super Dangerous". 1. it is highly regulated.. you actually need a license to practice it. 2. Statistically is a not more dangerous most outdoor sports.

3. Anecdotally, I've been a skydiver for over 20 years, in that time I've seen very few deaths. (much less than other adventures sports)

The old saying goes. Skydiving is not inherently dangerous, but it is terribly misforgiving of your mistakes.

At least twelve people I used to know would say skydiving is super dangerous, if they were still alive. I don't disagree with you, but you're expressing (as well as disagreeing with) an opinion and subjective language.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say exactly. You've disagree but not clarified. Are you saying skydiving is safe? It is objectively, demonstrably not "safe". Unless you define safe to mean it's possible to do once without dying.

Your perceived safety level depends on how you measure it. You can measure deaths per participant, in which skydiving compares favorably to some other sports. You can also measure deaths per participation-hour, which some people feel is a much more accurate and fair way to measure, and in that case skydiving looks a lot more dangerous.

No matter how you measure it, and no matter what license and training you have, skydiving is quite risky. I have a USPA C license, and every single person I've known who died skydiving had a D license (more than 500 jumps).

My specific point is Skydiving is safer than other adventure sports.

Here are the numbers: Deaths per year http://www.dropzone.com/fatalities/

Risk of dying 1/100,000 http://adventure.howstuffworks.com/skydiving8.htm

A comparative table: http://www.besthealthdegrees.com/health-risks/

Anyway you count it, skydiving properly done is a fairly safe sport.

BTW, don't forget to check on the source for your comparative table: http://pmj.bmj.com/content/85/1004/316/T2.expansion.html

This shows that one skydiver dies in every 570 participants on average, per year. That's for average participation. If you jump more, you risk more. 0.006 deaths in 1,000 jumps is 1 in 167. So if you jump 2000 times in a year, your odds of dying are better than 1 in 100 for that year, assuming uniform risk distribution. That's playing russian roulette with a gun that can hold 100 bullets. Sure, it's safer than playing Russian roulette with 1 bullet in 6 slots, but only a single order of magnitude safer. I pulled that trigger once, and I think I'm done.

To put this in a more accurate perspective than howstuffworks is capable of, ~210 million licensed drivers in the US in 2014 divided by 34k deaths = 1 driver dies for every 6,176 participants on average, per year. How that works out to riskier than skydiving isn't a mystery, it's simply not true.

> Risk of dying 1/100,000 http://adventure.howstuffworks.com/skydiving8.htm

Yeah, so this quite nicely highlights the problem with your argument. You, and this article are both clearly downplaying the risks. One single jump per year. One in a hundred thousand for a single jump actually seems like bad odds to me. Go ahead and call it safe if you want, but plenty of active skydivers are doing hundreds or thousands of jumps in a year. A thousand jumps a year puts your odds, according to these stats you just provided, at one in a hundred. Sounds pretty risky to me!

Now, on top of that, this article compares 10,000 miles of driving in a year - an entire year's worth of driving every single day - to one single jump, and then somehow concludes that driving is riskier. Sorry, but that's kinda horse shit, and I think you know it. To me, this smells like an agenda to show skydiving is safer than it really is, and far from an accurate analysis. If they had tried to compare days, or car trips vs jumps, or participation hours, you'd find out that surprise! skydiving is significantly riskier than driving.

My question is, what is the benefit to presenting skydiving as 'safe'? Does it make a difference to you if people think it's safe? Are you concerned about validating your choices? Do you want beginners who are unsure to feel like they should try it?

What are the risks to calling it dangerous? Does that prevent people from trying it? Does that say something about you? Why does it upset you to suggest that skydiving might hurt you?

Seems like the entire problem with wingsuit BASE is people thinking it's safer than it is, so calling it dangerous can only have a positive effect. In fact, that's exactly what happened with skydiving, and what the USPA is still doing. It used to be much more dangerous than it is now, and people calling it dangerous and raising awareness of the risks have increased the safety of the sport. But since we haven't eliminated the risks, why would we stop calling it risky?

Whether something is an opinion and whether it uses subjective language or not doesn't mean it's not a point worth discussing.

You'd be ignoring the entire concept of "inductive arguments" if you honestly thought that's the case. Arguments that aren't directly based on fact can still hold up if they're cogent.

So I'd urge you not to give undue importance to the subjectivity or opinionated nature of an argument.

(I neither agree nor disagree with any of your other points. Just that one particular thing.)

Noted, thanks. I didn't say it wasn't worth discussing. So, straw man?

Did they actually die skydiving? I have a lot of skydiving friends that have died, but none of them were actually killed skydiving.

Also for participation-hour are you only including free fall/canopy flight? Because 99% of skydiving is hanging out at the DZ, packing, drinking beer, waiting for fuel loads, etc. An hour of air time is a ridiculous amount of "participation" relative to other sports.

Yes, they actually died skydiving.

Yes, participation hours are only free-fall + canopy time. Drinking beer at the DZ does not count as skydiving in my book.

Yes, an hour of air time means a lot of jumps. That's the point. If you measure it that way, and some people feel that is the only fair way to measure it, then you find out that a combined hour of skydiving is a lot more dangerous than an hour of motorcycling.

How? Rapid downsizing / swooping? There's only something like 20 skydiving fatalities a year! (In the US)

I'm pretty sure that eg solo belly on a low wing loading with an AAD and RSL is more or less arbitrarily safe as long as you're not in Lodi.

Like I said, unlikely ways.

One woman I knew died in tandem certification training. She had a primary chute malfunction, then deployed the 2nd without cutting away properly. They got tangled, and she and the instructor both went in. The instructor had > 10k jumps and was very well known.

Another person I knew was the DZ safety instructor. During an AFF course, she had to pull the student's chute because he failed to respond. When his chute deployed, his body flipped and she was kicked in the face. It knocked her unconscious, and her parachute auto-deployed. That AAD would have saved her life, but when she landed still unconscious, she hit the only rock in the field with her head and died.

You have to admit those are very, very odd/unlucky cases. By those standards, riding a bike on the street is a "super dangerous" sport.. (I could tell you 10+ stories about odd/unlucky bike accidents)

I already did admit they were unlikely, twice. And yet, these 'unlikely' things happened multiple times, and nearly every skydiver I've ever known personally has died skydiving over the years. While specific circumstances might seem unlikely, it turns out that choosing high speed falling as an activity puts you in a position to get hurt more often than choosing not to, and that furthermore if you choose to do it very close to the ground in a wingsuit, the likelihood of severe accidents increases even further. This is not a surprise, nor is it some kind of agenda or spin on the facts, it's a simple truth.

Riding a bike on the street is somewhat dangerous, that's demonstrably true. Not nearly as dangerous per hour of activity skydiving, and far less likely to result in death if you have an accident, but by your own admission of tens of accident stories, bike riding has considerable risks, right? Mountain biking is a lot more dangerous than casual riding in the street, and I've gotten far more injured mountain biking than I ever did skydiving. But, I don't know anyone who's died mountain biking, and statistics prove that biking is overall less dangerous that skydiving, so I wouldn't put biking in the same danger category as skydiving. I would (and do) describe mountain biking as "super dangerous" to people just learning for the first time. But if I talked about skydiving with those same people I'd call skydiving "extremely dangerous" to differentiate it.

Look, it's a subjective matter of opinion whether you summarize skydiving or any other sport as safe or dangerous relative to something else. Jumping on a trampoline, it turns out, is pretty damn dangerous, enough that the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends an outright ban on them.

So, what, exactly, is your objection? What do you want to have happen here? I'm fine with you calling it safe while I call it dangerous. Both are true, depending on what you compare it to. Is that unacceptable to you?

Are people drinking beer at the drop zone before they jump? Because that, by itself would seem like a huge red flag about the culture of safety in the sport.

Or if you just mean after the fact, hanging out at the end of the day, then never mind.

Skydiving is known for being very safe. Safer than american football, boxing, scuba diving, motorbike racing, and many other sports [0]

[0] http://www.besthealthdegrees.com/health-risks/

> Skydiving is known for being very safe. Safer than american football, boxing, scuba diving, motorbike racing, and many other sports [0]

BTW, after looking at the reference you provided, it's clear that skydiving is more dangerous than every other activity you just quoted, you got it backwards.

Scroll to the bottom.

  Parachuting Mortality rate: 0.1754 (/100 participants)
  Boxing Mortality rate: 0.0455 (/100 participants)
  Mountain hiking Mortality rate: 0.0064 (/100 participants)
  Scuba diving Mortality rate: 0.0029 (/100 participants)
  American football Mortality rate: 0.0020 (/100 participants)

Whoa there buddy, slow your roll.

I used non-specific and subjective language.

Please tell me how skydiving ranks against boxing per participation-hour.

EDIT: The comment above used to say "stop spreading lies". That's why I said "slow your roll", I was being called a liar for expressing my opinion.

Now that he edited his comment, mine looks bitchy. But maybe you can stop downvoting me anyway?

I don't know of stats that include per participation-hour. If you have them please share... I provided you with stats from trusted sources like the National Center for Health Statistics (see the link).

I'll go look, it's been many years. Regardless, it's easy to see that participation hours racks up more deaths in skydiving than other sports.

You are free to express your opinion, and free to disagree with mine. What you can't do is call me a liar for expressing my opinion, that is unreasonable.

All of the sports you listed are super dangerous.

Plus, you ignored the larger point. I wasn't making a point about skydiving, I was saying something about BASE jumping. Do you disagree that wingsuit BASE is more dangerous than skydiving?

I am a skydiver. I'm not current, but as a subscriber to USPA magazine, I'm well aware of the safety levels and risks. As are you. How you interpret the stats is up to you, but it's fair to call any significant number of deaths in any activity "super dangerous". It's equally fair to say that something with lower deaths than something else is, relatively, "super safe". All a matter of perspective.

But really, why do you care? It's not a secret that skydiving has risks. What's your point trying to call me out for saying that? Do you think people aren't participating in it because of the risks, and that my speaking it out loud is going to prevent someone from trying it?

The article the thread is about is talking about how the display of risky behavior has led to more risky behavior, not less. My local DZs are curious how every single time there's an accident and the local news talks about it, business triples for a month or so.

> ...as a subscriber to USPA magazine..

Somewhat you missed the safety section in USPA's website:

"According to the National Safety Council, a person is much more likely to be killed getting struck by lightning or stung by a bee."

http://www.uspa.org/facts-faqs/safety

Again, what's your point? Skydiving is super safe. There, are you happy?

What you just cited is both irrelevant and not a statistic. Getting stung by bees doesn't typically result in injury or death, so who cares how likely it is relative to anything?

Neither lightning strikes nor bee stings are "activities" per se, it's not something you choose to do. It's more fair to compare skydiving to motocross. But people don't accidentally skydive, so comparing to lightning strikes and bee stings is meaningless.

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