unreported incidents...

[Glitch 0]

I did a bit of searching through the forums, but didn't really find what I was looking for... The subject was broached here, but didn't really answer the question other than to indicate that the responsible parties are leary of reporting anything other than major incidents or fatalities.

Anyway, I was wondering if anyone has any idea what the frequency of incidents really are? I'm defining 'incidents' as any skydiving related injury requiring a doctors visit (sprained ankle, hurt neck/back, etc...) but not necessarily at the time of the injury. I myself have dislocated a shoulder, broken my coccyx, jammed up my back pretty good, and numerous other 'incidents' that never made it to Parachutists or the annals of Dizzie.com.

So what's the scoop? Where are the majority of the accidents happening (...and don't reply "at the DZ" or "upon contact with the earth" or someother such nonsense, please) in our sport and whats the typical injury? Is there anyplace for these types of injuries to be reported? If not, than why?

Randomly f'n thingies up since before I was born...

[Samurai136 0]

Maybe they are all happening at Non-USPA dropzones.

"Buttons aren't toys." - Trillian
Ken

[JerryBaumchen 1,046]

Hi Glitch,

From personal contact with USPA, I was informed that Group Member dz's are NOT required to report incidents.

Jerry

[quade 3]

Among the issues is what is and is not considered worthy of being reported.

The FAA has a set of very well defined criteria and this was almost made regulatory a few years back, but the USPA was successful in lobbying against that.

Whether or not that was the "right" thing to do I'll leave up to individuals, but it certainly does leave us without the database of information.

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[dragon2 0]

Here in The Netherlands, you have to report any incident that damages either the jumper or other people or any goods/property and also any jump where a reserve opened. You have to fill out a standard form, which has questions like what kind of helmet did you use, what sort of shoes, goggles etc, what kind of jump it was, how many of same type, stuff like that.

No clue what if any statistics they get out of those, maybe something like "a jumper wearing colored goggles and sneakers has a bigger chance of a total malfunction"

ciel bleu,
Saskia

[Eule 0]

Quote

Here in The Netherlands, you have to report any incident that damages either the jumper or other people or any goods/property and also any jump where a reserve opened.

Germany has a similar requirement. These reports are summarized in a presentation at an annual meeting - about a year ago, I posted an English translation of part of the 2005 report. cengelbrecht's post in that thread explains the reporting requirements.

Quote

No clue what if any statistics they get out of those, maybe something like "a jumper wearing colored goggles and sneakers has a bigger chance of a total malfunction"

People giggled when I put the type of shoes I was wearing in the description of my landing incident in the Incidents forum - good to know that _somebody_ thinks it's useful info. :)

I did witness an incident (not mine) that resulted in a broken leg. I watched the Incidents forum for several days to see if the injured jumper would make a post, but the jumper never did. I considered making a post about it myself, but I finally decided that I should leave that decision up to the injured jumper. I'd have to check through the back issues of Parachutist, but I don't _think_ a report showed up there, either.

Eule

PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

[tombuch 0]

USPA has a summery of data collected on the annual membership renewal form. Check out the section called "Who Skydives" at: http://www.uspa.org/about/sport.htm#statistics. It includes pdf files of the annual data going back to 2000. Renewals for 2006 showed 2,122,749 jumps, and 908 injuries, giving an average of 1 injury for every 2,338 jumps. That data is of course all self reported.

When I was the S&TA at The Ranch, a large multi-turbine DZ, we tracked the actual number of jumps and correlated it to ambulance calls in 2003. At that time we had one ambulance call for every 2,989 jumps. That includes injuries as serious as a fatality, and as minor as a student ankle injury.

An interesting statistic that came from the 2003 Ranch study is that for that year, 23% of our ambulance calls were for landings off the field. That gave us incentive to reduce off field landings, and to improve our response to any landing away from the airport. The ambulance squad refused to report any statistics for later years, so we don't know for sure if we were able to reduce the off field injury rate, but anecdotally it sure seemed like we had success on that score.

Tom Buchanan
Instructor Emeritus
Comm Pilot MSEL,G
Author: JUMP! Skydiving Made Fun and Easy