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Comment by benzofuran | Hacker News Reader

With the proper training and experience, this is an academically rewarding sport / hobby, and is quite safe - still less so than normal open water diving but not the death trap that it seems. The NSS-CDS (http://nsscds.org) keeps accident analysis articles on hand (only seems like older ones are available on the website right now, dead tree is still the boss in this arena) covering these.

Similarly though, there's a trough in the safety numbers where folks between about 100 and 1000 hours seem to be involved in most accidents.

I'm not sure if I'll keep this up if/when I have children, but that's something I'll have to wrestle with when it comes. I have a number of friends who've retired from caving until their kids are teenagers or permanently now that they are fathers & mothers.

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A similar trough exists in general aviation—accident rates are markedly higher for somewhat experienced pilots than for beginners. The consensus among pilots seems to be that you are most dangerous between the time you think you know what you're doing, and the time you survive your first big scare.

There's probably a good lesson here for computer programmers...

> There's probably a good lesson here for computer programmers...

That sounds like a great Ask HN topic[1].

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14792764

I seem to remember hearing the same about drivers. Might have been for my country (Germany) specifically, where the minimum age for a license 18. If you get your license at 16, you're still in the upwards swing on risk-taking behaviour, which might drown out all other statistical signals.

Yes, the most dangerous drivers tend not to be the ones who just got their license, as they usually still adapt and don't drive too fast. It becomes dangerous after a few months or 1-2 years when a driver feels confident enough even though he still has very little experience.

I disagree here. You're dangerous until you know you know what you're doing. Having a bad scare might make you not repeat that situation, but you're still just as dumb after it as you were before (well, at least that's been true for me).

You can disagree, but I'm talking about an objective phenomenon.

https://www.amazon.com/Killing-Zone-Second-How-Pilots/dp/007...

> when they leave their instructors behind and fly as pilot in command for the first time

This is very different. If an instructor is present the danger is clearly lower. The book deals with the phase where pilots first fly alone without external help.

Read the book and you'll see that the spike comes after the first few dozen flights without an instructor present (from 100 to 350 hours of flight time). I believe you're quoting the blurb, which doesn't reflect what's actually in the book.

There are also a number of facebook groups for accident discussion, analysis, and learning that are kept pretty civil and are usually good resources. There's some pretty interesting chatter about this incident in them right now.

Turns out a large boulder shifted and cut their guide line (and significantly obstructed the route out) which led to this - there's no amount of planning that would've prevented that.

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