family and skydiving

[bodypilot1 0]

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at what point did your families "accept" the fact that you were going to be doing this forever?

i took my mom out to the DZ last weekend to kind of ease her mind on the fact that skydiving has become a part of my life and it seems to have calmed her nerves a bit. i still have those family members and friends who do not agree with the sport at all.

what to do with these people?!

You have a whole 2 jumps and think this is for the rest of your life? Tell them the average skydiver only stays in the sport jumping actively for maybe 2-3yrs, then they spend the rest of the time posting in this forum.

www.WestCoastWingsuits.com
www.PrecisionSkydiving.com

[TROGDOR 0]

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Statistically speaking, your chances of hurting yourself or losing your life are more than likely higher on your local roads heading towards the supermarket than jumping out of a plane.

I think you are fooling yourself if you seriously believe this. You made me wonder though (since I've been selling the same line to my wife) so I did some math.

Disclaimers;
1. My numbers are from google, I didn't verify from multiple sites
2. the math assumes 1 person in 1 vehicle
3. you mention getting hurt or killed, i only looked at killed
4. I suck at math

Let us assume-
3 Trillion miles driven in 2007 in the US
2.5 million skydives in 2007 in the US
18 skydiving deaths in 2007
42000 traffic deaths in 2007

I couldn't find data for 2007 traffic deaths, but the 42000 number is pretty constant, I compared it to last year's skydiving deaths to help your argument. 2007 was a "good" year

that is one death for every 71,428,571 miles driven, and one death for every 138,888 skydives. So, that means that one jump has the same chance of killing you as driving 514 miles. I guess your supermarket is a little further away than mine.

yes. way too much time on my hands. I need to shut up and jump!

be safe out there!

[kj126 0]

This one is a funny topic for me:
This year I went through a divorce I was a jumper and so was she, but when we had children she stopped jumping thinking of the possibility of both of us being in the plane at the same time and something going wrong.
Even in the divorce papers, she had written where I could not have the children at the dropzone, as if something did happen to me that the attention would be on me and not the kids.
We all assume the risk- but I consider it living more than anything.
To me sitting on the couch, saying why you jump out those planes for. Is a waste of your life.
I want memories-not regrets.

I Am Sofa King We Todd Did!!

[mitsuman 0]

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You have a whole 2 jumps and think this is for the rest of your life? Tell them the average skydiver only stays in the sport jumping actively for maybe 2-3yrs, then they spend the rest of the time posting in this forum.

im sure after you enrolled in your aff classes...you knew too

i think the best thing for most is just not talking about it. although i do think bringing out the family to the dz is good because they can see first hand that people enjoy themselves and its not AS bad as everyone thinks. Granted of course you WILL die if something goes really wrong, although the chances of that happening to someone that day are very slim.

i took my mom out to the dz for my aff1 and it helped her a lot. she loved the people there and how friendly everyone was.

but i can definitely see this becoming an issue with the future wifey

Hi, my names Jon, and I love to skydive.

[Andy9o8 0]

I appreciate your attempt to rebut the "driving is more dangerous than skydiving" idiocy with statistics, but that kind of analysis is really pointless.

To people who repeat that bullshit in my presence, I sometimes tell them this:
You have a 100% malfunction of your car while driving, the car stops. Maybe that will cause an accident, maybe it won't. Maybe the accident will kill you, maybe you'll be unharmed. You have a 100% malfunction of your equipment on a jump, you WILL die. Not might - will. Anyone who doesn't understand that intuitively is a fool.

[Andy9o8 0]

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Even in the divorce papers, she had written where I could not have the children at the dropzone, as if something did happen to me that the attention would be on me and not the kids.

Not to get in the middle, but you raised it here. First, while many dropzones are family-friendly, others are less so, in the sense that they're very adult places that are simply not wholesome environments for children. Second, if children are at a DZ with one parent only, and that parent bounces, especially without the other parent there to give them immediate care and comfort, imagine the traumatic effect of that on children. Frankly, I've always had that concern whenever I see any children at the DZ with their parents. But, maybe that's just me.

[mr_music11 0]

Ok.... maybe I was asleep that day in stats class!! Didnt mean to piss any1 off! No worries.. obviously my "guestimation" of calculated risk was obviously off. My words were only to try and compare some of the obvious risks that each of us take everyday in our normal lives and put that in perspective to the choices that we make as skydivers. Minimizing risk is ALWAYS the name of the game. That being said... blues skies to you risky skydivers! and safe travels while on the ground too!!

If flying is piloting a plane.. then swimming is driving a boat. I know why birds sing.. I skydive.

[GLIDEANGLE 1]

I am fortunate that my wife has excessive faith that my AAD will keep me safe from all skydiving hazards. I am not about to help her understand the truth of the matter. (AADs are great but there are lots of ways to die or get injured that AADs can't prevent).

If I am happy, she is happy. I am fortunate that many years ago I bought a lot of life insurance --- long before I became a skydiver. So maybe she sees a silver lining in skydiving? Just kidding!

The choices we make have consequences, for us & for others!

[Piece 0]

You're assuming that deaths per mile and deaths per jump are comparable. I don't see that necessarily. Comparing skydiving to driving has to be done a bit carefully, otherwise we end up comparing apples to oranges. Skydiving has the rare property that it has a well-defined unit of participation: the jump. What constitutes one unit of driving? People usually compare deaths per jump to either deaths per driver or deaths per mile. It isn't clear to me that either of these things are the equivalents of a jump in driving.

Regardless, all comparisons based on averaging have inherent flaws due the non-uniform distribution of risk in skydiving that you hear about a lot on this forum.

http://icanhascheezburger.com/2008/02/28/funny-pictures-i-come-with-sarcasm/
Proudly uncool since 1982.

[NWernig 0]

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and one death for every 138,888 skydives.

There's no way I will be able to make that many jumps! Glad to Know that nothing can happen to me!

Nathan

[danielcroft 2]

Not to mention all the variables involved. State of repair, packing, etc. Drink driving, on the phone, etc. Even if we say that one skydive equals one ride in the car it's still not the same thing anyway as Piece said.

Suffice it to say, you're *not* more likely to die in a car accident. You're much more likely to die if you do stupid crap but that applies to everyone and in everything they do.

I realize the total malfunction was being used as an example, I wonder how many absolutely total mals happen per year in this sport.

[pirana 0]

I think being an active skydiver increases your chances of death by accident in any given year by a factor of about 20 over driving.

My very crude (so crude in fact that this can only really be called an example) numbers used were:

200,000,000 active drivers
40,000 annual traffic deaths
1/50th of 1%

10,000 active skydivers
30 annual skydiving deaths
1/3rd of 1%

Even if the numbers are off a good bit, the estimate is still in the ballpark; and by no stretch of imagination are the 2 activities remotely similar in risk. My biggest guess is on active skydivers. If that number is too high, then the percentage only gets worse. So if somebody has better numbers, plug them in.

Of course when you start to drill down into the data certain trends make the overal probablilities very different for different groups of individuals. For example, teeneaged drivers are incredibly more dangerous to themselves and others than drivers in their 40's. Similar comparisons can be made by looking at categories of skydivers.

" . . . the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

[wolfriverjoe 1,340]

Still comparing apples to bunny rabbits. How many skydivers have you seen talking on a cell phone while under canopy? Or putting on makup while in freefall? Training levels, frequency, distractions, and so on make any comparison irrelevant. (by the way, I drive a semi through Chicago on a regular basis- that can be scary!)

"There are NO situations which do not call for a French Maid outfit." Lucky McSwervy

"~ya don't GET old by being weak & stupid!" - Airtwardo

[pirana 0]

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Still comparing apples to bunny rabbits. How many skydivers have you seen talking on a cell phone while under canopy? Or putting on makup while in freefall? Training levels, frequency, distractions, and so on make any comparison irrelevant. (by the way, I drive a semi through Chicago on a regular basis- that can be scary!)

No. It's comparing the probability difference of death in a given time period based on participation in 2 distinct activities.

Yes, if you drill into the details of the fatalities you will find lots of variation based on subcategories and personal habits. That does not make the initial comparison invalid.

" . . . the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

[Andy9o8 0]

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How many skydivers have you seen ... putting on makup while in freefall?

I take it you've never been to Skydive Long Island.

[Andy9o8 0]

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I realize the total malfunction was being used as an example, I wonder how many absolutely total mals happen per year in this sport.

Not a huge number, but that's beside the point - which is that once you physically commit yourself to the act of making a parachute jump - by releasing your body into the air at an otherwise unsurvivable height - unless there is, at a minimum, adequate function of the equipment you are wearing, your death is not a possibility, it is a certainty - and that's what makes comparisons to almost anything else specious. Thus, any method of analysis which dilutes this ultimate truth is equally specious.

[Piece 0]

The number of deaths per active skydiver is indirect inference (sorry, not a statistician, this may be the wrong terminology). Being an "active skydiver" (whatever that means) does not cause death, a skydive does. A unit of skydiving really should be the jump, any comparison we make has to involve actual jumps in some way. BTW, there are a little more than 30,000 members of the USPA and there are a little more than 40,000 fatal traffic accidents per year, probably a lot more deaths.

Maybe tonight I'll write a post about my way of comparing the two activities that I believe has some meaning, no-one seems to have mentioned it yet. I don't like the idea of posting this comparison since it is very misleading... Safety in skydiving is a catch-22, in order to be safe you must believe that you are unsafe. That is the bottom line for actual skydivers, not the statistics.

http://icanhascheezburger.com/2008/02/28/funny-pictures-i-come-with-sarcasm/
Proudly uncool since 1982.

[Piece 0]

I disagree. The probability of catastrophic equipment failure is very important to me personally. If it was high I would not skydive, I do not wish to commit delayed suicide. Certainly catastrophic equipment failure is a bigger deal in skydiving than in driving but it doesn't mean that statistics are meaningless in this context, in fact I think this is the only context in skydiving in which they matter to me...

http://icanhascheezburger.com/2008/02/28/funny-pictures-i-come-with-sarcasm/
Proudly uncool since 1982.

[AggieDave 6]

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How many skydivers have you seen talking on a cell phone while under canopy? Or putting on makup while in freefall?

The equivalent would be the jumpers who insist on swooping in traffic. You have to be very focused to swoop well. That leads to visual and auditory exclusion and subsequently to canopy collisions.

As a side note, yes I have seen a jumper talking on his cellphone under canopy. It was apart of a dare and it was a prank call trying to order a pizza for delivery and yes it was really funny!

--"When I die, may I be surrounded by scattered chrome and burning gasoline."

[pirana 0]

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Being an "active skydiver" (whatever that means) does not cause death, a skydive does. A unit of skydiving really should be the jump, any comparison we make has to involve actual jumps in some way.

Yes, the unknown to me is the number of active skydivers. I suspect my guess of 10K to be low, maybe very low. Especially if the criteria is having a license and having jumped at least 2 times in the last 12 months.

I think looking at the whole population, ignoring units, and just saying "People in the population who engage in this activity have X% higher probability of being dead 1 year from now than people in the population who engage in that activity; all other things being equal" is the only statistically meaningful way to compare.

If you try to assign or compare units that do not equate across the activities, the numbers make less sense, not more. Trying to compare jumps to trips, or freefall time to drive time, or other stuff like that is what gets into the apples to oranges territory.

There is a reason actuaries do not get into the units game. You can finagle the definitions to get the result to say whatever you want. Whereas X% of all skydivers will die in a given period versus Y% of drivers during the same period is as pure as it gets to stating the overall risk to the population.

" . . . the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

[pirana 0]

I thought that looking at it from an actuary point of view might provide some perspective.

If you were going to insure drivers and skydivers for $1 million each, but rate them separately; you'd have to collect about $3000 from each skydiver annually, but only about $200 from each driver.

That's going on my assumption of 10K skydivers to spread the risk. If that number is low, then the cost per skydiver increases.

Sheds a little light on why they do not want to insure skydivers.

" . . . the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

[Piece 0]

I agree with you in principle but actuaries are interested in answers to different questions. Furthermore, they typically deal with activities that are very different from skydiving.

Anyway, here's what I did, please feel free to criticize it. I will more or less ignore decimal precision since I don't know the conventions about that. The national safety council publishes the following table: http://www.nsc.org/research/odds.aspx. Here we have the odds of dying from, say, an automobile accident, either in 2004 or for a person born in 2004.

For skydiving I used USPA statistics at http://www.uspa.org/AboutSkydiving/RiskOverview/tabid/63/Default.aspx. In the last six years there was an average of 24.2 deaths per year. Using the membership surveys we have an average of 2,169,677.2 jumps per year.

First let's use yearly numbers.

Probability of dying in an automobile accident: 1/6,198.
Probability of dying from n skydives using the most braindead model possible: 1-(1-24.2/2168677.2)^n (if anyone wants an explanation of how I got this just ask).

If n=100, about 1/897 probability of survival. If n=400, 1/224.5 probability of survival.

Now let's use lifetime numbers.

Probability of dying in an automobile accident: 1/81.
Probability of dying in an accident as defined by the NSC: 1/35.
Probability of dying from 1500 skydives: 1/60.
Probability of dying from 6000 skydives: 1/15 (due to the simplicity of the model this number is probably completely meaningless).

Remember that the risk from skydiving is compressed into a lot fewer years than driving. What this means in terms of how safe the activity is is up to the jumper to interpret.

I believe that this comparison is not more valid than yours but it is perhaps more meaningful to an actual jumper.

With regards to deaths per active skydiver per year, let us define an active skydiver as an active member of the USPA. Over the last six years there were an average of 31917.8 members in the USPA. 22.4/31917.8 is approximately 1/1425 and this is the rosiest number we have so far, with automobiles approximately 1/5000 according to your estimation. In your estimate skydiving is about 3.5 times as dangerous as driving as defined in this context. This may be due to the fact that many USPA members are, say, recent AFF graduates that may have not performed that many skydives in the previous year.

For anyone who thinks that any part of this calculation justifies skydiving as being "safe" remember that this is an average! This includes the jumps of tandem masters (a tandem jump counts as one jump if I'm interpreting USPA correctly), beginners, Arizona Airspeed, etc. Many people, including me, firmly believe that risk in skydiving is not uniformly distributed. Skydive safely and you're less likely to die, skydive unsafely and you're much more likely to die. Skydiving is not, and never will be, a safe activity in the sense that sitting on the couch is a safe activity. This risk must be managed through education and training! Skydiving is made safer by believing that it is unsafe. You deviate from this at your peril...

http://icanhascheezburger.com/2008/02/28/funny-pictures-i-come-with-sarcasm/
Proudly uncool since 1982.

[Andy9o8 0]

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I disagree. The probability of catastrophic equipment failure is very important to me personally. If it was high I would not skydive, I do not wish to commit delayed suicide. Certainly catastrophic equipment failure is a bigger deal in skydiving than in driving but it doesn't mean that statistics are meaningless in this context, in fact I think this is the only context in skydiving in which they matter to me...

You're missing the point. I'll try this one more time.

In almost every activity, even dangerous or semi-hazardous ones, such as driving or motorcycle or horse riding, or skiing, etc., some POSSIBILITY of death exists IF something happens. However, on each and every parachute jump, the CERTAINTY of death exists UNLESS something happens.

I don't understand why people feel the need to play semantic exercises with this most basic truth. It exists. Deal with it. And deal with the fact that whuffo moms and dads, who instinctively always fear for their children's lives, are aware of this basic truth.

[mr_music11 0]

Once again, wow... didn't know my statements about driving and skydiving would produce such banter. But honostly, I was only trying to bring into focus the fact that there are risks in EVERYTHING we do. From the point that we wake up (hopefully) to the point that we go to sleep. EVERYTHING could be given a risk factor. And yes, I will agree that skydiving might have a higher number in that risk colomn than driving, however you got to your answer! But ahhhh.. statistics can be construed to show what ever the person who is calculating those odds wants, it all depends on how the information is manipulated for the given outcome. With that said, I choose to live life in the moment.. that sometimes takes the form of skydiving (and I feel the most excellent form of "living in the moment" I might add ) and sometimes that will take the form of driving my car, or drinking a hot liquid while driving that car that may spill in my lap, may cause me to hit the center divide, hit other people in the process and kill us all.... a bunch of "what if's" no matter what route you take. Its all about minimizing what risks are involved. Bottom line, Im happy when I can skydive. My family wants me to be happy (as I feel that your families should feel about all of you as well!) Some family members understand why I do in life what I do and some family members dont. For those who dont... well... they just dont understand, and if after trying to explain they still dont understand... oh well. no love lost, we just wont talk about skydiving. Thank you all for the thread input... has been entertaining and enlightening to me. Safe blue skies to all.

If flying is piloting a plane.. then swimming is driving a boat. I know why birds sing.. I skydive.

[Piece 0]

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In almost every activity, even dangerous or semi-hazardous ones, such as driving or motorcycle or horse riding, or skiing, etc., some POSSIBILITY of death exists IF something happens. However, on each and every parachute jump, the CERTAINTY of death exists UNLESS something happens.

I knew this long before I started to skydive. Are you suggesting that the discussion should end at this?

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I don't understand why people feel the need to play semantic exercises with this most basic truth.

This basic truth is itself semantics: "you will live unless you fall on your head" versus "you will die unless you deploy your parachute." For the parachute not to be deployed something has to go wrong. Whether it goes wrong with you or with the parachute is semantics from the point of view of risk.

Parachutes have to be maintained and inspected, people have to be trained and educated. My point earlier was that it usually goes wrong with the jumper, not the parachute, and this is important to me, since I can at least try to control myself.

http://icanhascheezburger.com/2008/02/28/funny-pictures-i-come-with-sarcasm/
Proudly uncool since 1982.