Skydiving Popularity

[SkyHigh04 0]

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A lot of good thought put into the responses.
The reason why I asked the question in the first place, is because I know we've all had activities that have grown exponentially from the underground. The downside to having such increasing popularity, is the lack of shine the sport has when everybody starts picking it up. Take for example paintball. There's a sport that really picked up in the past 5-10 years. When I started it was still fairly small. Not too many companies out, tournaments and fields were scarce. It was fun though, to keep a small group of friends that would go out on the weekends, and play all day. Now that it's bigger, almost nobody cares if you play paintball. Annoying 12 year old kids will get up in your face for anything you do wrong on the field.
Maybe I should rephrase my original question.
Would you want skydiving to grow enough that all the emo kids start taking FJC?
Emo Voice: "Hey...man...I can't jump with ya. I'm doing solo because I like to express myself, falling through the clouds."
Next thing we know we'll have horrible youtube videos, with depressing emo/screamo bands as the soundtrack. Oh wait, we already do! Oh no!

Just in case you're talking about me for getting into skydiving and wanting to post my vids because I'm proud of what I did....then fuck you, you don't even know me, who are you to judge people by what kind of music they put in their vids??????????????
If you're not talking about me then disregard this message and blue skies to you.

"...And once you have tasted flight, you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards, for there you have been, and there you long to return..." - Leonardo da Vinci

[billvon 2,400]

>Before I started to jump (which has only been a few months) my friends
>at the time acted like getting seriously hurt or killed is not a possibity in
>skydiving but a given.

It is more likely than not if you stick with it. ("Seriously hurt" being defined as something that grounds you a long time.)

>Statistically, skydiving is safer than driving a car . . .

No, it's not.

>I also dont see how encouraging people to try a tandem is doing a
>dis-service to anyone.

It's not - provided you portray the sport accurately. "It's safer than driving" is not accurate.

[sapplegate 0]

I'm pretty sure you can have it both ways. I don't think it matters how much advertising you do, you are not going to get so many people skydiving and staying late, that you loose that close knit community. If you double the number of first jump students, it would drastically improve the economics for the rest of us, would improve relations with the general public, and would add a few friends to our community. I think it is all good for skydiving.

I also agree with whomever said that it depends on where you are. Some of the smaller laid back DZ's are going to stay that way because of location. No worries about them being swamped with jumpers. At my home DZ, I have never seen a "professional packer", a gear sales store, or RV hook-ups.

Blue skies!

[tmaricle55 0]

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I miss the days when I could ask anyone to jump and they would.

Planning a trip out that way this fall... See you and jump with you then!

Muff Brother # 3883, SCR # 14796 ICD # 1 - Pres.
Yeah, I noticed and I think it's funny!

[vskydiver 0]

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Planning a trip out that way this fall... See you and jump with you then!

Awesome!

[fasted3 0]

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[Just in case you're talking about me for getting into skydiving and wanting to post my vids because I'm proud of what I did....then fuck you,

He wasn't talking about you.

HE WAS TALKING ABOUT ME!!!
After I quit crying, I'm gonna blast him with a paintball gun.

But what do I know?

[SkyHigh04 0]

Right.................?

"...And once you have tasted flight, you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards, for there you have been, and there you long to return..." - Leonardo da Vinci

[piisfish 135]

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I would

Yeah except I looked on your profile and you are exactly what I'm talking about. Wingsuit and freeflying? Besides you aren't at my DZ. Might as well though, you'd fit right in.

I also do some FS. Quite polyvalent, bad everywhere

The things I don't do are CReW (yet), classic accuracy and style.. Oh and surf...
Always happy to do different stuff. Ask Her Redness Amazon about our 5 way Death Star in Eloy...

Oh and tell Andy F, we still have some Vitamin A ready for him

scissors beat paper, paper beat rock, rock beat wingsuit - KarlM

[crashtested 0]

This is skydiving not base jumping.... not everyone dies or gets injured....

I have more chance statistictly dying or breaking my bones on my bike than i have skydiving.

To much scare mongering goes on dz.com, you can put that on my headstone when i go in

[aresye 0]

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[Just in case you're talking about me for getting into skydiving and wanting to post my vids because I'm proud of what I did....then fuck you,

He wasn't talking about you.

HE WAS TALKING ABOUT ME!!!
After I quit crying, I'm gonna blast him with a paintball gun.

That wouldn't feel to good.

I was more of saying the whole emo and youtube thing as a joke, but looking back on it, it doesn't come off that way very well.

The emo scene at my school in 2006 was pretty bad.

Skydiving: You either learn from other's mistakes, or they'll learn from yours.

[SkyHigh04 0]

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[Just in case you're talking about me for getting into skydiving and wanting to post my vids because I'm proud of what I did....then fuck you,

He wasn't talking about you.
HE WAS TALKING ABOUT ME!!!
After I quit crying, I'm gonna blast him with a paintball gun.

That wouldn't feel to good.
I was more of saying the whole emo and youtube thing as a joke, but looking back on it, it doesn't come off that way very well.
The emo scene at my school in 2006 was pretty bad.

I'm far from emo, just have a broad taste in music....i'm more like hippie at heart who dresses decent lol

"...And once you have tasted flight, you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards, for there you have been, and there you long to return..." - Leonardo da Vinci

[skadyver 0]

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Before I started to jump (which has only been a few months) my friends at the time acted like getting seriously hurt or killed is not a possibity in skydiving but a given.

Well thats just silly , your friends are more dramatic then me if they thought that. Honestly to me I think its a given though, if you stay long enough either you will get hurt or someone you care about does, and well thats hard as and in some respects harder.

lol at least my frends dont claim to be a skydiver but are too scared to jump...imo you should just lurk until u deal with your fear....I have only been jumping since march of this year....also didnt realize I was posting in the BASE forums.I am assuming u BASE jump along with your extensive skydiving experience?

btw, one of my instructors passed away yesterday, for no apparent good reason, very similar to my sister getting ran over on her front lawn by a drunk driver....neither HAD to happen..

personally I cannot imagine jumping till I deal with this horrible and entirely preventable tragedy....

My heart goes out to Ricks wife and sons...

blue skies to all,
Steve

[skadyver 0]

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>Before I started to jump (which has only been a few months) my friends
>at the time acted like getting seriously hurt or killed is not a possibity in
>skydiving but a given.

It is more likely than not if you stick with it. ("Seriously hurt" being defined as something that grounds you a long time.)

>Statistically, skydiving is safer than driving a car . . .

No, it's not.

>I also dont see how encouraging people to try a tandem is doing a
>dis-service to anyone.

It's not - provided you portray the sport accurately. "It's safer than driving" is not accurate.

Skydiving is a remarkably popular sport. The United States Parachuting Association has 34,000 members. It estimates that about 350,000 people complete more than 3 million jumps in a typical year.
The big question is always, "How dangerous is skydiving?" Each year, about 30 people die in parachuting accidents in the United States, or roughly one person per 100,000 jumps. Look at the US Skydiving Incident Reports to get an idea of the types of problems that lead to fatalities. If you make one jump in a year, your chance of dying is 1 in 100,000.


How does the fatality rate in skydiving compare to other common activities? Since most adults in America drive cars, let's compare skydiving to driving. Roughly 40,000 people die each year in traffic accidents in the United States [ref]. That's 1.7 deaths per 100 million vehicle miles. Therefore, if you drive 10,000 miles per year, your chance of dying in a car wreck in any given year is something like 1 in 6,000. In other words, we accept a higher level of risk by getting into our cars every day than people do by occasionally skydiving. You would have to jump 17 times per year for your risk of dying in a skydiving accident to equal your risk of dying in a car accident if you drive 10,000 miles per year.

A logical question to ask here is this: Given these statistics, why do we think of skydiving as dangerous and driving a car as safe?

The first reason has to do with frequency. At 30 per year, fatal skydiving accidents are infrequent. That tends to make each one newsworthy, so you are likely to hear about them. On the other hand, there are about 110 fatal car accidents every day in the United States. In a city of one million people, 160 people die every year in car accidents. If you heard about every car accident, you would go insane, so you only hear about a few of them. That leaves you with the impression that car accidents are infrequent even though they happen constantly.

The second reason has to do with familiarity. Most people drive every day and nothing bad happens. So our personal experience leads us to believe that driving is safe. It is only when you look at the aggregated statistics that you realize how dangerous driving really is.
For more information on skydiving and related topics, check out the links on the next page.

http://adventure.howstuffworks.com/skydiving8.htm

Keep in mind my suggestion for non-jumpers was never to become a licensend skydiver, but to try a tandem, regardless of the personal "fears"

let's see you defend that..

or most likely just delete my post since that what this forums likes to do to any messages they dont agree wtih

COMMUNISM ROX!

[aresye 0]

So if you make 100 jumps a year, your risk of death in skydiving is around 1/1000, according to those statistics.

Skydiving: You either learn from other's mistakes, or they'll learn from yours.

[Jumpah 0]

If the sport grows it'll be good for many, many people.
-- Most instructors might start living just over the poverty line.
-- Life and disability insurance availability would be more common and less expensive.
-- Jump tickets might level off
-- The USPA would have a bigger stick to wield with the FAA, and DZs may have more pull with the local community as a larger economic force
-- Skydiver Ale might just be available across the country (is that its name? The one from Montana I think)
-- One might find Skydiving Magazine at the local book store.
-- DZs might be able to survive single frivolous lawsuits.

I'll admit I'll be bummed the first time I see a canopy by Nike....

[redlegphi 0]

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If you make one jump in a year, your chance of dying is 1 in 100,000.

No. The risk associated with all jumps is not identical. For example, the chance of a tandem dying on a jump is not the same as the chance of a swooper dying on a jump. Each person makes individual choices before and during their jump which increases or decreases the risk associated with that jump. Pretending that each jump carries with it a uniform 1:100000 risk of death completely ignores risk management, which is probably the most important part of our sport.

[billvon 2,400]

>Given these statistics, why do we think of skydiving as dangerous
>and driving a car as safe?

Because it is more dangerous. You can look at it two ways.

First, take an average active skydiver, so as to accurately compare to an average active driver. He makes about 100 jumps a year. His risk of dying in any given year is about in in 1000, compared to the driver whose risk is about 1 in 6000.

Second, take an average tandem student. Often we hear "the drive to the airport is more dangerous than the skydive!" Assuming the same odds, his odds of getting killed during even a 100 mile drive is 1 in 600,000. His odds of dying during the skydive is 1 in 100,000.

In both cases skydiving is significantly more dangerous.

>You would have to jump 17 times per year for your risk of dying in a
>skydiving accident to equal your risk of dying in a car accident if you
>drive 10,000 miles per year.

That's even more inaccurate. Someone who jumps less than 17 times a year sees SIGNIFICANTLY more risk per jump than someone who jumps 100 times a year. 17 times a year is one jump every three weeks. That is not sufficient to maintain a decent level of currency - and uncurrent jumpers are more likely to be injured or killed.

There is a very strong desire for skydivers to see their sport in the best possible light. The desire is so strong that sometimes they will stretch the truth, or use misleading statements, to "prove" that their sport is "good" or safe or meets some other criteria. It's great that people are so excited about their sport, but we should not use that excitement to mislead others.

>Keep in mind my suggestion for non-jumpers was never to become a
>licensend skydiver, but to try a tandem, regardless of the personal "fears"

No problem! As long as we are honest with them about the potential risks.

I start every FJC with a statement along the lines of "skydiving is a dangerous sport. You can be injured and you can be killed." It's always better to let people make the decision to skydive for themselves; giving them accurate and honest information is the best way to make sure that happens.

[kelpdiver 2]

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If the sport grows it'll be good for many, many people.
-- Most instructors might start living just over the poverty line.
-- Life and disability insurance availability would be more common and less expensive.
-- Jump tickets might level off
-- The USPA would have a bigger stick to wield with the FAA, and DZs may have more pull with the local community as a larger economic force
-- Skydiver Ale might just be available across the country (is that its name? The one from Montana I think)
-- One might find Skydiving Magazine at the local book store.
-- DZs might be able to survive single frivolous lawsuits.

I'll admit I'll be bummed the first time I see a canopy by Nike....

The sport would definitely be healthier at a larger footprint. Currently it's not big enough to handle downturns well, and it's not a sport that can continue with just a couple individuals in a given region. You need a minimum of a planeload, and more realistically, several planeloads on each weekday. I travelled with my rig once on a family vacation - the DZ did one load, and I managed to get on it, but for the effort level I'd not bother next time.

One's location matters, of course. The Bay Area had 7 DZs within 120 miles, now it has 6 (Santa Rosa gone). 4 of them are about the same size, using a King Air/Pac. Lodi is a bit bigger, Cloverdale is a cessna. If the number of recreational and tandem jumps drop in half, a couple of these would probably close, and the people who get orphaned will go to the others. But a region with just one DZ - that sort of drop in business isn't so good.