byrne_r 0 #1 December 4, 2007 Hello all, My name's Riley, and I'm writing one of my final papers about skydiving. The paper is supposed to be an analysis of something that is usually seen as "high risk" behavior. My goal for the paper is to put skydiving into perspective by comparing the amount of fatalities that occur while skydiving to the amount of fatalities that occur because of something that we usually see as an everyday thing. As of right now, I'm considering the dangers of stairs vs skydiving. As of right now, I just need some terms put into words that I can understand. If anyone could simply give an example of the following(in relation to fatalities) it would be incredibly useful: Collision, No Pull, Landing, Malfunction, Reserve Problem, and "Other". If you put the word "fatality" behind each of those, that's pretty much what I need defined. I'm sure I'll need a lot more help relatively soon (the paper is due Friday morning) so any other links or articles etc. would be extremely helpful. Until then, thanks in advance! Riley edit: also, feel free to move this thread if I put it i the wrong spot. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
PhreeZone 15 #2 December 4, 2007 Collision - Colliding with another jumper. In terms of the fatality database on here this is used to describe when 2 or more jumpers collide under open parachutes. Think of this one as two planes flying into each other. No Pull - As it sounds. No activation handels were pulled before the jumper impacted. Lots of root causes here but often its unexplained. Landing - Durning some phase of the landing portion the jumper did something that killed them. Good examples are flying into the side of a building, doing a low turn that has you hitting the ground before your parachute levels out or something else between the time the jumper reaches around 1000 feet until they walk off the landing area. Malfunction - Main canopy had some sort of issue that the jumper was unable to correct prior to hitting the ground. This could be a failure to cutaway a canopy that has a major issue with it all the way to entangling the two canopies together and making it into an unlandable situation. Reserve Problem - There was a poroblem with their reserve activation that had it correctly worked they would have been fine but since it failed they are dead. Reserve baglocks, misrigged reserves, or ripped reserves all are part of this. Other - This is a catch all that is everything that does not fit into one of the other terms neatly. Getting hit by an airplane under canopy, CRW wraps, Airplane entanglements, medical conditions under canopy, etc. These all fit into this group. Under each group there are subgroups. Like the No Pull - This one can be broken down into medical issues - ie heart attacks in freefall, broken neck due to a freefall collision. Then it could be also including suicides as another subgroup.Yesterday is history And tomorrow is a mystery Parachutemanuals.com Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
byrne_r 0 #3 December 4, 2007 Thanks a lot. Odds are I'll be back with more questions, seeing as I'm partly writing this paper as a means of convincing my parents to let my dive. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
byrne_r 0 #4 December 4, 2007 Sorry to double post, but I was wondering if anyone could give me an approximate number of divers and dives taken worldwide, as well in North America/the US. I've found numbers that say anywhere from 2.2-3.3 million dives and around 350,000 divers in the US. The North American/US statistics are much more important, because I think I will be focusing on my specific demographic (American Male, age 19). Thanks so much, Riley Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
ZigZagMarquis 8 #5 December 4, 2007 Contact the folks here... www.uspa.org ... to see if they'll help you with some satistics. Tell them what your up to and see if they'll help or have something canned they can send to you. They may or may not take the time to do so, but if you don't ask they definitly won't. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
byrne_r 0 #6 December 4, 2007 Thanks, I sent them an email, so hopefully I should be getting a response within the next few hours. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
ZigZagMarquis 8 #7 December 4, 2007 Yeah, well, good luck with that. I hope the USPA responds to you in a timely manner with useful infromation, but I wouldn't hold my breath. You may wish to return to the web-site and look up the regional director for what ever area you're in. They usually have an email of their own for folks to contact them directly and you may get a better & quicker response than sending a generic email into the USPA to be vetted by some office-help gal/guy/person and (hoepfully) routed to someone to answer. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
byrne_r 0 #8 December 4, 2007 Do you mind if I quote/refer to you guys and your site in my paper? I completely respect you response, so don't feel obligated to say yes. Thanks again Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
BIGUN 1,061 #9 December 4, 2007 Zig's correct... You'll probably get the information quicker if you pick up the phone and call tha waiting on an email.Nobody has time to listen; because they're desperately chasing the need of being heard. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
AFFI 0 #10 December 4, 2007 You could probably get all the skydiving related information you need here in this site. There is a search function in the upper right hand corner, it is very useful.Mykel AFF-I10 Skydiving Priorities: 1) Open Canopy. 2) Land Safely. 3) Don’t hurt anyone. 4) Repeat… Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
kelpdiver 2 #11 December 4, 2007 Quote Thanks a lot. Odds are I'll be back with more questions, seeing as I'm partly writing this paper as a means of convincing my parents to let my dive. Skydiving is far more dangerous than stairs, esp for 19 year old men. No way to squirm out of that one. It's probably safer than driving drunk at your age. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
byrne_r 0 #12 December 4, 2007 Yeah I decided to not use the stairs example. It's too tough to deal with considering frequency etc, and it doesn't really apply to me. I have written about driving in general, and I will be including a drunk driving part. As of right now it's just an incomplete rough draft but I'm hoping to have a complete rough by tonight/tomorrow afternoon. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Cineo 0 #13 December 5, 2007 I found this page of the uspa to be very helpful with statistics you may want to use for your paper. http://www.uspa.org/membership/collegeclub.htm Hope it helps! Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
VTmotoMike08 0 #14 December 5, 2007 Quote Sorry to double post, but I was wondering if anyone could give me an approximate number of divers and dives taken worldwide, as well in North America/the US. I've found numbers that say anywhere from 2.2-3.3 million dives and around 350,000 divers in the US. The North American/US statistics are much more important, because I think I will be focusing on my specific demographic (American Male, age 19). Thanks so much, Riley Or somebody could just give you the info you need since it is fairly well known. There is a little over 30,000 USPA members in the US and slightly more total skydivers. As for an official citation or reference for your paper, that you will need to get from the USPA. I think we all wish there was 350,000 skydivers in the US. I will not speculate on the total number of skydives made annually but it is no where near 3.3 million. If you numbers were correct, that would equal only about 6 jumps per year for each of us Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
kelpdiver 2 #15 December 5, 2007 Quote Quote Sorry to double post, but I was wondering if anyone could give me an approximate number of divers and dives taken worldwide, as well in North America/the US. I've found numbers that say anywhere from 2.2-3.3 million dives and around 350,000 divers in the US. The North American/US statistics are much more important, because I think I will be focusing on my specific demographic (American Male, age 19). Thanks so much, Riley Or somebody could just give you the info you need since it is fairly well known. There is a little over 30,000 USPA members in the US and slightly more total skydivers. As for an official citation or reference for your paper, that you will need to get from the USPA. I think we all wish there was 350,000 skydivers in the US. I will not speculate on the total number of skydives made annually but it is no where near 3.3 million. If you numbers were correct, that would equal only about 6 jumps per year for each of us The 350k figure includes tandems and one off AFF-1 and SL jumpers. It might be a tad high, but not greatly. Those people do 1 jump. The active members of the USPA (2x,000) do the rest. 20,000 doing an average of 100 gives you 2M plus the 300k tandems. (average per is less than 100, skewed by the people who do a lot of jumps) Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
byrne_r 0 #16 December 6, 2007 Thanks so much for all your guys' help. I've put almost 4 hours into the paper, and I've gotten an email response from USPA. Everything is going really well, and I really hope it all comes together nicely. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
jtval 0 #17 December 6, 2007 QuoteI found this page of the uspa to be very helpful with statistics you may want to use for your paper. http://www.uspa.org/membership/collegeclub.htm Hope it helps!My photos My Videos Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
