0
spacetrance

Should I worry about this...

Recommended Posts

YAY! He's back!

I don't know how we all got by without your insightful comments for like a whole week.

So, in your vast, international experience how many jumpers have you known that have been killed, paralyzed, brain damaged, or otherwise permanently injured? And how many people do you know that suffered the same fate from other activities?

The clueless feeble old masses want to hear your wisdom spoken.

- Dan G

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Quote


Parachutes can malfunction and skydiving is not a safe sport. There is a reason for all the paperwork, people die doing this and you need to accept that.

On a side note, I think the warnings get too overboard. It comes off as chest beating. According to gov't stats, skydiving is safer than football, canoeing, hiking, and other more common activities, none of which come with such dire warnings.

http://www.besthealthdegrees.com/health-risks/

Advanced stuff like base (1 in 60), swooping, sure, warn of imminent danger. But tandem and vanilla fun jumping are slightly safer than going to a dance party. The warnings should correspond accordingly.



The data presented at the link is incomplete enough to be misleading. Their data for skydiving is easy enough to understand, as it makes sense that it is per jump. But it gets somewhat ambiguous for activities like football, canoeing, or hiking.

Let's take canoeing for instance. The data says 1:10,000, but it doesn't say in 10,000 what. Is this per year? Per trip? Per hour?

Skydiving is per jump, so figure that's the risk for about 5 minutes skydiving.

Data from American Whitewater puts the risk of mortality from whitewater boating's most deadly year (1998) at 1.15 for every 100,000 user days. Which means 1 person dies for every 87,000 days spent boating.

So let's translate that to skydiving.

1 jump is statistically safer than a whole day spent on whitewater (not by much, 1:87,000 vs. 1:100,000(according to the infographic at the link)).

But if you, like most skydivers, usually go for 5 or more in a day's jumping, than a days jumping becomes a little more dangerous than spending the day on the river. Not by a whole lot for this example, but the same issue exists with the data for most the activities on that awful little infographic, so it ends up being pretty misleading when it comes to some fairly benign activities like hiking or driving.

Source for my whitewater data:
http://www.americanwhitewater.org/content/Wiki/stewardship:risk

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
brickk

Quote


Parachutes can malfunction and skydiving is not a safe sport. There is a reason for all the paperwork, people die doing this and you need to accept that.

On a side note, I think the warnings get too overboard. It comes off as chest beating. According to gov't stats, skydiving is safer than football, canoeing, hiking, and other more common activities, none of which come with such dire warnings.

http://www.besthealthdegrees.com/health-risks/

Advanced stuff like base (1 in 60), swooping, sure, warn of imminent danger. But tandem and vanilla fun jumping are slightly safer than going to a dance party. The warnings should correspond accordingly.



The data presented at the link is incomplete enough to be misleading. Their data for skydiving is easy enough to understand, as it makes sense that it is per jump. But it gets somewhat ambiguous for activities like football, canoeing, or hiking.

Let's take canoeing for instance. The data says 1:10,000, but it doesn't say in 10,000 what. Is this per year? Per trip? Per hour?

Skydiving is per jump, so figure that's the risk for about 5 minutes skydiving.

Data from American Whitewater puts the risk of mortality from whitewater boating's most deadly year (1998) at 1.15 for every 100,000 user days. Which means 1 person dies for every 87,000 days spent boating.

So let's translate that to skydiving.

1 jump is statistically safer than a whole day spent on whitewater (not by much, 1:87,000 vs. 1:100,000(according to the infographic at the link)).

But if you, like most skydivers, usually go for 5 or more in a day's jumping, than a days jumping becomes a little more dangerous than spending the day on the river. Not by a whole lot for this example, but the same issue exists with the data for most the activities on that awful little infographic, so it ends up being pretty misleading when it comes to some fairly benign activities like hiking or driving.

Source for my whitewater data:
http://www.americanwhitewater.org/content/Wiki/stewardship:risk




So, it's safe-ish :D
blank

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
jrodrod

***
Your stats are not from the government, why would the US Governmant keep stats about climbing deaths in Nepal?



Why don't you go ask the CDC (which is gov't) and then get back to me. They may or may not keep stats but they do report them. There is a difference. In any case, do you have a point? If you have stats that contradict the gov't stats, go ahead and post them.

to risk (or participate) in beating this dead horse:

your citation did not give CDC stats. The top of it shows the CDC's list for leading causes of death, but the rest came from a variety of sources, some more useful than others. I'd say they spent more time on the snarky graphics than in collecting the information.

That skydiving rate of 1 in 101,083 looks to be an estimate for risk of dying in a single jump, measured by dividing the approx number of jumps in a year by the number of deaths. But the risk of an active skydiver dying in a year has routinely been around 1 in 1000. 20 some people per year out of 2x,000 active USPA members. With the average annual jump count around 100, the two figures back each other.

Motorcycling as a mode of transportation also sees a death rate around 1 in 1000 per year. Not racing, as indicated in your cite. Scuba diving is probably about half as dangerous per dive as skydiving, though it's very difficult to measure the dive count, and a significant portion of the deaths are cardiac types that were likely to happen anyway.

Having already identified 3 suspect numbers, the prudent person dismisses it entirely. Skydiving isn't safe, and you've spent enough time in the sport to know this. Ask a planeload of jumpers for recommendations for a physical therapist or orthopedic surgeon. Do the same on a dive boat and count how many fewer answers you get.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
yoink

***

I started in the 70's, when it was still considered dangerous..



No considering required. I've read the 'scary stories from the old days' thread. You guys were batshit crazy. :D:D

Like I said, it made you pay attention . . . ;):)
I'm still amazed at people who say "Well, I opened low 'cause I didn't hear my Dytter." :o

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Quote

I'm still amazed at people who say "Well, I opened low 'cause I didn't hear my Dytter."



As opposed to, "I opened low because Bob bet me a case that he could open lower."

People will always find ways of being stupid.

- Dan G

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
DanG

Quote

I'm still amazed at people who say "Well, I opened low 'cause I didn't hear my Dytter."



As opposed to, "I opened low because Bob bet me a case that he could open lower."

People will always find ways of being stupid.

Yeah, I've opened low maybe a few times. . . :)


But, like you said, it was on purpose. It's a sketchy thing to do, but maybe a little less sketchy if you at least KNOW you're low, and won't have much time to screw around if there's a problem. ;)


Either way, not a bright idea. :S

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
DanG

Quote

I'm still amazed at people who say "Well, I opened low 'cause I didn't hear my Dytter."



As opposed to, "I opened low because Bob bet me a case that he could open lower."

People will always find ways of being stupid.

nothing stupid about free beer....
Ok, plenty stupid AFTER free beer.....
This is the paradox of skydiving. We do something very dangerous, expose ourselves to a totally unnecesary risk, and then spend our time trying to make it safer.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

0