Jump numbers and canopy accident risk

[DocPop 1]

Thanks for doing this, Wendy.

It is very hard data to interpret due to the different numbers of jumpers in each category, different category sizes etc, but this is definitely a starting point.

The one thing that does stand out here is that canopy fatalities as a percentage of total fatalities is much lower for the 1-100 group vs the others (8.8% vs 21-37% for all the other bands). This could be due to a number of things including less aggressive wings, less aggressive landing styles or less ability to deal with other issues than landing.

The median data does tend to suggest that lowturn fatalities do affect higher jump # people than other accidents, and I suppose all the above reasons could explain that.

Thanks again - interesting!

"The ground does not care who you are. It will always be tougher than the human behind the controls."

~ CanuckInUSA

[Calvin19 0]

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the number of landings can only equal the number of jumps you have.

~ wrong.

I have over 1000 small cross braced canopy landings and only 200 small crossed braced canopy jumps.
In total I have over 2200 canopy landings and about 600 hours of canopy time, a lot of it with close proximity to nasty terrain and in high wind conditions.

Jumps does not equal risk, safety, or attitude. but jump numbers is all anyone has to measure by, even if the measurement is semi-relative.

-SPACE-

[Abedy 0]

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I'm not that experienced but here's my thoughts: jump numbers are related to TYPE of risk more that just saying (all) canopy risk. For example
101- 500: more likely to make a cocky/ ego/ "mad skillz" related mistake
500- 2000: more likely to make a "swooping error" (i.e. missed the pond and smack the ground)
2000+: relatively low risk level at this experience.

Just my thoughts. Of course the above doesn't apply to everyone.

That's pretty close to what a study done by the University of Münster in Germany found in 2006. The findings can be found at: http://features.pewforum.org/quiz/us-religious-knowledge/ Though in German, most of it should be easy to figure out. Some facts:
The risk of an accident is lower by the end of jump season (page 11)
There is sort of an inverted Gaussian curve for the relation of wingload and accidental risk (page 21, lowest at WL 1.3-1.5)
Risk sinks significantly beyond 500 jumps (page 23) but also depends on frequency e. g. high risk if only 10 jumps within one year
Youngsters and old farts less prone to accidents
DFV (sort of Germany's Parrotshooter Association ) less prone to accidents, wow.

Nuff said.

The sky is not the limit. The ground is.

The Society of Skydiving Ducks

[davelepka 4]

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The one thing that does stand out here is that canopy fatalities as a percentage of total fatalities is much lower for the 1-100 group vs the others (8.8% vs 21-37% for all the other bands). This could be due to a number of things including less aggressive wings, less aggressive landing styles or less ability to deal with other issues than landing.

It's related to comfort, or the lack of. Of your first 100, the first 25 are closely monitored. Maybe the next 25 still find you under the watchful eye of a mentor, or out on your own where you tread carefully adjusting to being in charge of yourself.

If you figure that different jumpers progress at different rates, you can see that the majority of jumper will spend the majority of their first 100 jumps probably being more careful than their next 100 jumps.

Additionally, when you figure 25 (at least) jumps on student gear, and most jumpers start with a still-large transition canopy, the bulk of the first 100 jumps are made on very conservative gear. On top of that, the jumpers probably have lower overall wind or condition limits. Once they work into a 'sport' canopy, and become more comfortable in general, several layers of safety are shed with the first 75 to 100 jumps.

Keep in mind that when I say this, I don't mean that jumpers with 100 jumps are unsafe. We all know that jumping a 280 or 260 is safer than jumping a 190 or 170, and this is why students end up jumping 280s and 260s. The rest of us have foregone the safety an oversized canopy can provide, and accpeted the risks of jumping a smaller wing. We may view it as an 'acceptable' risk, but it is added risk none the less.

The same could be said for pull altitudes, jumping in bigger groups, and jumping in less than ideal weather conditions. All considered 'acceptable' risks, but the fact remains they are indeed added risks. Students, and many jumpers with less than 100 jumps do not have these risks present on their jumps, and therefore would be less likely to suffer an incident due to those factors.

[obelixtim 100]

Not replying to your post in particular. but a lot of it is down to PC bullshit, where people are discouraged from saying what they think for fear of upsetting someone. You can't tell someone these days to pull their head in for fear of ridicule as " not being with it".

Mostly, I believe it comes down to AFF, where it seems, most of jumpers of the last few years have been trained.

A lot of todays instructors have been brought up within the same system and don't have the knowledge or experience to impart proper canopy survival skills.

The early jumps are all concerned with FF and the things they have to learn in that aspect...and fair enough. Its a tough way to learn to skydive. An overwhelming number of things to learn at once, and canopy skills are at the bottom of the priority list.

These peoples canopy skills from jump number one consist of " listen to the radio.".

Some continue for many jumps "listening to the radio", then graduate, and are let loose thinking they have it all sussed. They graduate, then go out and buy their own gear and are basically left to themselves.

Its one of the big flaws off AFF, and the chickens of AFF are coming home to roost in the number of incidents/fatalities UNDER GOOD CANOPIES that we see today.

In the "good old days" jumpers were more intensively trained in canopy skills, because that was their first experience of skydiving.: i.e. they were trained to do a safe parachute jump.

For the last 10 years or more, the "old" system has been subverted by some need to progress faster, better, quicker, as if thats the best way to learn to skydive... A generation of jumpers has grown up not realising or even knowing that canopy skills are an important part of surviving the jump.

I always thought a good part of my first jump instruction was the canopy flight part. "Don't fuck up" was an important message I imparted, and it applied to every part of the skydive. Once that message was ingrained, they then learnt to skydive.

People today are all to ready to downsize and go for speed and glory. A lot ofthe people on the DZ who once would have advised caution have retired, and are no longer present to influence life on the DZ.

I've thought from the day AFF was introduced that it was a flawed way of teaching people to survive a jump from an aeroplane. In the "good old days" fatal accidents under a good canopy were extremely rare.

I believe the stats today reflect reflect what I've always maintained. Learning to fly and land were the first and most important part of skydiving.

Safe FF skills followed as natural progression. First jump instruction sticks in the brain, and is the most influential training any skydiver will ever recieve...

Canopy skills were always first, now they are last.

I'm certain that my thoughts will now be dismissed as the rantings of and old fart who knows nothing of the reality of skydiving in 2010.

If people are not taught vital canopy skills from day one, this trend will continue. End of story.

My computer beat me at chess, It was no match for me at kickboxing....

[Calvin19 0]

Didn't parachutes and any ram-air canopy really suck 30 years ago? hell, 20 years ago? No one would die under a good glider because the fastest possible roll rate was 30 degrees per second?

[nigel99 144]

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I think it is really interesting that there is a blip centered on each 1000 milestone. No, not a very big blip, but a noticeable one nonetheless.

I agree with Phree with one exception the first 1000 milestone. I suspect that at about a 1000 jumps people get a second round of additional confidence and push their personal boundaries again or more (I am a little over a 100 jump wonder so this is speculation!).

One thing that I noticed when compiling the figures originally that surprised me was that the breakdown based on age does not tally with what I expected. That is younger jumpers do not dominate the fatalities. I realise this could be down to younger people being more resilient and therefore surviving greater injury but it could also mean that much of the "noise" we see here on dz.com regarding pushing the envelope is simply the skydiving equivalent of AOL inches?

Experienced jumper - someone who has made mistakes more often than I have and lived.

[nigel99 144]

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I assume these are total fatalities, rather than canopy/landing related incidents? Can you confirm?

Thanks.

yes it was total fatalities. I am not sure how many were canopy related but I am pretty sure it is the landing that kills most skydivers, very few people die in freefall

Experienced jumper - someone who has made mistakes more often than I have and lived.

[Abedy 0]

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That's pretty close to what a study done by the University of Münster in Germany found in 2006. The findings can be found at: http://www.metatag.de/webs/dfv/downloads/3_-_Fallschirmsportstudie-Weimann-Jorch.pdf Though in German, most of it should be easy to figure out. Some facts:
The risk of an accident is lower by the end of jump season (page 11)
There is sort of an inverted Gaussian curve for the relation of wingload and accidental risk (page 21, lowest at WL 1.3-1.5)
Risk sinks significantly beyond 500 jumps (page 23) but also depends on frequency e. g. high risk if only 10 jumps within one year
Youngsters and old farts less prone to accidents
DFV (sort of Germany's Parrotshooter Association ) members are less prone to accidents, wow.

Nuff said.

(Edited past the 6-hour period, hence the extra post with the correct URL. Sorry about that...)

The sky is not the limit. The ground is.

The Society of Skydiving Ducks

[rnicks 0]

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I now only land the Sabre2 downwind.


Does that mean that you get out low or do high pulls on every single jump?? That seems much more boring than landing a slow canopy.

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[DocPop 1]

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I now only land the Sabre2 downwind.


Does that mean that you get out low or do high pulls on every single jump?? That seems much more boring than landing a slow canopy.

I see where you're going with this....landing traffic, right?

No, I do regular skydives, but I land away from the other jumpers and accept a longer walk. I only jump for the landings so that is acceptable for me.

"The ground does not care who you are. It will always be tougher than the human behind the controls."

~ CanuckInUSA

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[erdnarob 1]

Thank you very much for that quite "complete" report from the FAI. I can see it matches quite well what I have posted earlier.

Learn from others mistakes, you will never live long enough to make them all.

[Joellercoaster 6]

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natural talent

[edit]

Never mind, I think that says it all.

--
"I'll tell you how all skydivers are judged, . They are judged by the laws of physics." - kkeenan

"You jump out, pull the string and either live or die. What's there to be good at?

[airtwardo 6]

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Didn't parachutes and any ram-air canopy really suck 30 years ago? hell, 20 years ago? No one would die under a good glider because the fastest possible roll rate was 30 degrees per second?

Suck is relative term......they opened softly for the most part, and didn't 'spin-up' during deployment requiring a cut-away....that didn't 'suck'.

Back in the 70's and 80's people hooking low broke themselves but it was an anomaly compared to today, where it has become a common place part of the sport...the old canopies didn't 'swoop' like they do today so there wasn't a whole lot of motivation to try to learn how to hook low 'correctly'.

Usually seeing a friend laying there screaming with bone shards poking through their jumpsuit was motivation NOT to push the canopy to it's limits.

~ If you choke a Smurf, what color does it turn? ~

[DocPop 1]

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natural talent

[edit]

Never mind, I think that says it all.

What do you think it says?

"The ground does not care who you are. It will always be tougher than the human behind the controls."

~ CanuckInUSA

[Joellercoaster 6]

OK, you did ask.

I propose a different correlation:

Whenever a poster on dz.com uses the phrase "natural talent" in a general way, they are in fact referring to themselves.

This correlation approaches 100%.

Dude, you may in fact be the special unique snowflake you hope you are. But nobody is special and unique enough to do what you were doing before you changed canopies without real, serious risk.

The argument that the maximum wingloads and rules about canopy planform are aimed at the general public and don't account for the talented, current and trained is entirely false. They are. Everybody else should be even more conservative.

You know what? I'm pretty current. I'm undoubtedly talented (my cat tells me so), I'm getting coaching, and I just switched to a Sabre2 to accelerated my progression. So we have that in common
Good luck with the downwinders. Swooping is dangerous, you could still kill yourself, but: your new canopy can swoop like a bastard, I reckon once you figure that out you won't be bored any more.

Have fun.

--
"I'll tell you how all skydivers are judged, . They are judged by the laws of physics." - kkeenan

"You jump out, pull the string and either live or die. What's there to be good at?

[format 0]

Perhaps I could be of some assistance.

A 'Natural Talent'
is a person doing something that he/she doesn't have a clew about,
yet
they perform admirably... and again, and again and so on.

If one wants to achieve 'Natural Talent' status,
one must ignore anybody's opinion on the matter, risk a lot and try it out.
Then comes the battle: "it was luck", "was it luck" and then, in a couple of years, one MIGHT get acknowledged... by some.
Or one may bounce or break and there's no battle - all would say "I've said so".

Big freakin' deal.

What goes around, comes later.

[kuai43 7]

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One way of looking at this might be that for 42 years, I've been making small, regular deposits in this bank of experience: education and training. And on January 15 the balance was sufficient so that I could make a very large withdrawal." -- Chesley Burnett "Sully" Sullenberger III

I've been fortunate enough to have done many things in many ways over the past 52 years I've spent on this planet and this is one of the most important things any of us can reflect on.

I'll accept arguments from all who've spent a commensurate amount of time here.

Every fight is a food fight if you're a cannibal

Goodness is something to be chosen. When a man cannot choose, he ceases to be a man. - Anthony Burgess

[fcajump 153]

This sport has inherent risks, many of which we can't (or choose not to) completely eliminate.
eg - If I rent my own jump plane and jump in an area where there are no other jumpers in the air at the same time, I virtually eliminate the possibility of a canopy collision... But I choose not to eliminate the risk to this extent.

The sport also has risks that on can minimize.
eg - do not fly a highly loaded canopy and don't swoop, you may have minimized (though not eliminated) the "hook turn into terrain" risk.

Some lessen their risk exposure to voluntary risks with experience...
learning their gear
practicing EPs for many different experiences
reading about other's misfortunes and determining how to avoid or deal with the situation if they are ever faced with it
knowing when to say 'no' to (too) windy/gusty days
knowing how to fly your slot and not funnel the 17 way (hi Randy R.
learning how to deal with other canopies in close proximity (learn CReW)

Some choose to use their experience to increase their risk exposure:
learning to swoop a little farther
big ways
learning "CReW"
intentional cutaways
exiting at 2k
water jumps
night jumps
(day jumps?)

I agree with those that argue that the type of risks (canopy or otherwise) change over time. I also agree that beyond those inherent risks in the sport, one's risk exposure is more directly related to attitude than just jump numbers. Cocky is cocky, studious and cautious is less so.

For most of us, I think our overall risk level stays about the same... learning how to minimize one risk, we use the new experiences to increase our exposure to risk in new ways (hopefully in order to learn to minimize the risk with the new activity).


But, I could be wrong... that's the risk I take posting here

JW

Always remember that some clouds are harder than others...