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The same discussion is going on with lots of sports from winguit flying to football.

I do wonder if pointing at some people's lack of preparedness or skill is misleading. These choices carry significant risk, regardless of skill. Very experienced mountaineers die every year. Skydivers and base jumpers with decades of experience have accidents. (I knew some, before I chose to stop skydiving.)

Suggesting that "experience" will make you safer leaves one with the obvious question of how to gain that experience. It also ignores the fact that more participation in any risky activity is more exposure; the longer you do it, the more likely you are to have an accident.

To elaborate on my suggestion of emphasizing the experience of people who participate in dangerous activities: the goal would be to communicate that experience is necessary (not sufficient) for safety. I agree that these activities have some constant fraction of risk you can't remove.

I'm 100% with you that preparedness and awareness and skill and experience improve your odds and are good things. But if you want true risk awareness, you must know that experience only improves your odds a small amount compared to the time spent participating in the activity. And, like I said, you still have to gain that experience. Everyone who's experienced went through taking those risks when they were less experienced. Many survived because of luck, not because of experience.

Consider it this way: half of all drivers in auto collisions weren't at fault for the accident. You can be the best/safest driver in the world, and you might only reduce your odds of an accident by half. You can beat that easily by cutting your driving to 40%, or eliminate the chance of dying in a car crash by not driving (which might involve an alternative activity that carries it's own risks.)

There are similar factors that are out of your control in most risky activities. In rock climbing, there are loose and sharp and slippery grips, there is weather and equipment, and there are often people on the other end of your rope. There are a lot of potential failure points that skill simply doesn't eliminate, whereas time spent in an activity always compounds the risk.

Skydive once in a year and you have a 1 in 100,000 chance of dying. If you make 100 jumps in a year, your chances multiply to 1 in 1,000. There is no amount of skill that will overcome the compounded risk of prolonged exposure to an inherently risky activity.

I agree with your greater point, but your auto collision example is flawed.

If you say half of drivers are not at fault, it's only because we assume only one person can be at fault. Most collisions involve more than one mistake, and it's certainly possible for a sufficiently good driver to improve their odds by much better than half (there is more to defensive driving than just not making obvious mistakes.) This is not to claim, of course, that perfection is possible. Sometimes the chips are all stacked against you and there is nothing reasonable you can do.

> If you say half of drivers are not at fault, it's only because we assume only one person can be at fault.

You're absolutely right; there are at least some collisions that are the fault of both/multiple drivers, or of no drivers. I did assume that fault is most often one driver in two-car collisions (and I still think that), but I shouldn't have stated it as fact, I was thinking of it as the premise of the subsequent point. My apologies.

> Most collisions involve more than one mistake

That's a strong claim you're making. Citation needed.

Here are some resources:

https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/...

http://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/t/general-statistics/fatalit...

> it's certainly possible for a sufficiently good driver to improve their odds by much better than half

Of course. Single vehicle crashes are already more than half. 30% of all car fatalities have been attributed to drunk driving. Don't ever get in a car after drinking, and your odds are already much better. Another 30% of car deaths occur when speeding. Stay under the limit, and your odds are that much better again.

I hope you can see that I wasn't claiming that half is the actual limit, I was making a point about the arithmetic of probabilities. My point is that if factors out of your control are responsible for x% of crashes, then the maximum upper limit of good you can do by honing your skill and being the best driver in the world is 100-x%. The point is there's an upper bound to what training and preparedness can do for you, and that upper bound can always be exceeded by avoiding the risk in the first place.

i think there's a big difference between football and wingsuit BASE jumping.

Football is "accepted" as safe to do by children and parents are expected to purchase expensive gear and are left in the dark about potential for long term injury.

nobody is sending their kids out to BASE jumping school before they are 18 and can make their own decisions.

You're right; there is indeed a large risk difference between football and base jumping. Though it has recently come to light (in the public consciousness) that football carries significant risk of concussion and CTE with prolonged exposure. As a parent, and having talked to many parents about this, football is not as widely accepted as being safe as it was ten years ago.

That said, this has no bearing on my point above. It doesn't matter whether society has deemed some activity safe or not. What I'm saying is that skill and preparedness is a secondary factor in how much risk you bear for any sport or activity. The primary risk factor is how much exposure you have to the activity, how long you choose to do it. This is as true of walking on the sidewalk as it is of playing Russian Roulette.

In my opinion there is humanistic / philosophical difference between somebody risking his life purely for the experience (Honnold does not care for Instagram fame) and somebody for who this is a way to promote him/herself to satisfy narcissistic desires. If you are passionate for something I think it is fine to take risks - this Chinese daredevil was just a bit stupid and a victim of his personality flaws. If Honnold dies climbing - well, that would be very, very sad but that's just that then.

Can this really be put in the same league as what a free solo climber is doing? Most man-made structures are designed to be climbable, with safety gear, for people to maintenance. Rock climbing, on the other hand, forces one to sort out a way to make the climb.

As far as having a "head" for heights, I would agree that free solo climbing and climbing buildings is similar. I wonder how well this guy would do on real rock?

On a personal note, heights above which I will die from the fall are all the same. 100 feet or 1000 feet are all the same. Now between 20 and about 50 feet, that is where it is scary. That is if I don't have a reasonable backup such as deep water or a rope.

Perhaps not for this Russian climber as he says he specifically avoids doing any "one-arm pullups" and "superman-like stunts." However, the other daredevils like now-deceased Wu -- died doing a pullup from a building ledge -- he couldn't pull himself back up and then fell and died. So yes, buildings can be considerably safer if one avoids doing the ridiculous stunts.

You are right that climbing buildings is not directly comparable to free soloing rock. Each has things that make it easier or harder.

Rock isn't "meant" to be climbed, but the vast majority of free solo climbs occur after extensive roped rehearsals. Some people do "onsight"/climb without practicing with ropes first, but this is rare, and is essentially only done when the route in question is known to be easy.

Buildings are more predictable and regular, but these guys seem to be onsighting everything they do, which is mentally very different.

I agree for sure. There is only one red point free soloist that I can think of.

https://www.climbing.com/news/decking-while-soloing/

I was just reading about Honnold in the context of this opinion piece from Outside: https://www.outsideonline.com/2270296/stop-progression

At least WRT to the cycling thing, I can add some color. They aren't normalizing the rate of injury to the rate of participation. Certainly, the mountain bike industry is growing, and a greater number of people doing it guarantees greater numbers of injuries.

However, it only takes a brief tour through historic red bull rampage footage to see that gear is getting a lot more capable, and the stunts are getting huge. Watch Kelly McGarry's backflip (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0Mr9Z1fhtE) or Semenuk's big step-downs (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqY3LBawDXc).

The big question is whether this is really a problem. People have always done big stunts, and always died doing them. At some level, it should be for an individual to decide what risks they want to take, especially in the case of outdoor sports where the risks are more easily contained to only include the participant (unlike driving cars too fast, for example). I'm not sure there is a right answer.

I know this is editorializing, but I can't help but think that the relative increases in safety all around us also increase the need for that "risk outlet". Danger and adrenaline are parts of a natural state of being, but we don't encounter wild animals or suffer privation much anymore. Video games might sate that urge, but, for some people it isn't enough. When those people film themselves, they may not only be fulfilling their own need for risk taking, but providing an outlet for others' which creates a feedback loop of fandom, and pushes the drive toward risk. Those athletes that are unwilling to participate in that part of the bargain face difficulty getting sponsorships, views, and to make a living.

Social media challenges what it means to "be a professional", where the assumption is that you are good enough to evaluate the risks you are taking, vs just having a gopro, where the only barrier is whether you are entertaining enough to watch. Stories like that in the GP article are ones that put special credence to that distinction. Vitaliy became a pro while on camera. The fact is that we never used to see the progression until after it had happened - when an athlete was already a pro. Now we do.