going in

[GAZ14 0]

just read a post about going in. It ended up quite a long thread with many people speaking of the many times they have witnessed fatalities and what can be learned from the situation leading up to. I`m a new and very enthusiastic skydiver with a strong mind and will, but i find myself rocked by how common serious injury and death seems to be in the sport. I`m fully aware that rolling out of a plane at 13k and relying on a lump of material to inflate and save your ass has it`s risks but just how common are theese incidents!?

[MB38 0]

http://www.skydivingfatalities.info/

I really don't know what I'm talking about.

[Mike111 0]

I was told to bear in mnid the number of jumps that go without hitch aswell every weekend.

Personally, I hold the same attitude as you - leaving a plane at a high altitude certainly ain't safe in one remote way at all, regardless how many statisitics are waved in front of me or other arguments.

[skytash 0]

I tend to describe skydiving as a low risk, high hazard sport. The chances of something happening (as a proportion of jump numbers across the world) is low, but if something does happen it's bad.

tash

Don't ever save anything for a special occasion. Being alive is a special occasion. Avril Sloe

[tdog 0]

Skydiving is definitely more dangerous than driving a car (and we will let how much more dangerous be debated in the other threads where it has been debated in the past)...

I have seen three things that makes skydiving *different* than auto fatalities in terms of how the community handles the situation.

1) The community is small, and most people travel a lot to see friends and jump in new places, making new friends. Within two degrees of separation, I bet I know every skydiver in the US, whereas they say the general population has no more than 6 degrees of separation.

Quote

Definition of Six degrees:

(Six degrees of separation is the theory that anyone on the planet can be connected to any other person on the planet through a chain of acquaintances that has no more than five intermediaries. The theory was first proposed in 1929 by the Hungarian writer Frigyes Karinthy in a short story called "Chains." )

So when someone "goes in", we likely know them.

2) How many times have you found a discussion forum on the internet debates about every single hunting accident, car accident, or medial malpractice.... You don't... Skydivers, perhaps in part to item 1 above, and in part to seek knowledge, likely know the facts around most of the fatalities. We have a tendency to dig into the facts, so we can learn, so it does not happen to us...

3) And, I think a lot of skydivers want to "prove" that it will not happen to them, so they justify the risk by analyzing others and saying, "I won't do that"... Here is a snippet of a PM that went back and forth between myself and a regular on these forums:

Quote

(person a)

...but as someone put it on the forums, when (a highly respected person) goes in for very complicated reasons, people get the shit scared out of them... They want facts now to prove it will not happen to them...

(person b)

And the other half of that is that some people have a need to say "OK, he was an idiot and he died, I'm not an idiot therefore I won't die." If they read about an experienced jumper who did everything right and still died, then they realize _they_ could get killed too - and a large (and increasing) number of people in this sport can't accept that.

GAZ14, if you are "hooked" in skydiving with your 14 jumps, you will know... And you will see the rewards are huge in this sport, and you can change your life expectancy a great deal by respecting the sport, not pushing your limits under canopy, etc... But you can still do everything right and die, but it is pretty rare that people who do everything right die....

[GAZ14 0]

I guess reading a thread that long on the negative side of things affects the mindset. After checking out some links and stats a favorable perspective emerges, thanks guys.

[MB38 0]

Read through the incidents forum here. You'll read of the kinds of things that can go wrong and hopefully learn how to avoid them, but you'll also learn that mistakes and accidents can happen... and that's what this sport comes with.

I really don't know what I'm talking about.