70sGuy

I got a full driver's license on my 16th birthday and ordered a drink in a bar on my 18th. That was in the 70s. (After dreaming for several years about throwing my driver's license down on the bar counter, the bartender did not card me, leaving me totally devastated, but that is OT ) Now the drinking age is 21, and there is a fairly complex set of hoops to jump through before a full driver's license is issued at a minimum age of 18 (in my state). The interim provisional license (minimum age 16.5) does not keep them off the road, but it makes even a minor speeding ticket or other moving ticket a major deal in terms of more hoops to jump through, and/or license suspension. It also effectively keeps their peers out of their cars, presumably eliminating teenage joy riding. At least for the first 5 months, making joyriding a privilege reserved for 17 year olds The point being that minimum ages for some things have been generally going up over the years. I started jumping at age 17, with a waiver signed by a parent. And I was a walk in, not a DZ brat or known entity. Back then I don't recall any legal issues over the right of a parent to waive their child's rights? Is this a more recent innovation? I got my minor aged son Scuba certified in the mid-90's and similarly signed a waiver on his behalf. And don't recall any controversy surrounding that. What is the deal now with scuba certs and dive site waivers? Personally I am old school and I don't have any fundamental problem with the minimum 16 year age. I don't like the gov't interfering with family matters. And it served me well . But it occurs to me that all this drama over the waiver for minors is effectively a sneaky back door way to raise the age limit. And like it or not it is consistent with other cultural changes over the years. I'm not arguing the age limit, just pointing out the consistency with societal changes in general. As far as making medical decisions at age 14, I seem to recall that that was a direct result of the hugely political issue of abortion and abortion rights. PLEASE, I hate to even mention that- I don't want to debate abortion. Only to point out that that reasoning is purely political in the truest sense, and instigated by a very specific political debate. At least that is how I "understand" the historical basis for that exception to the general age limits. Very unique circumstances.

I think this is how it works: The defendant's lawyer calls said jumper as an expert witness and he testifies that an AAD would not have fired. The plaintiff's lawyer hires a skydiver to go out and make one fire- under some circumstance. Worst case, his witness gets to argue it out with the plaintiff's lawyer on cross, babbling about wing loadings and canopy design. And remember, it is not even a "legal fact" in the sense of a court trial, that there was nothing wrong with that canopy other than a fired brake, and/or that canopy actually performed the same as some other test jump scenario. If he can't find that expert witness then he hires another expert witness to spend 2 hours testifying why the defence expert is wrong, arguing about wing loadings and whatever other technical trivia might be dredged up. None of it has to make much sense, it just has to obfuscate any opinions on the matter, no matter how good anyone here thinks that opinion is. And juries are smart enough to understand that expert witnesses can be paid to say anything. They just don't know enough to make a qualitative judgement in something as foreign and uncertain as skydiving. The whuffo jury goes into deliberation, clueless as to what all that meant. But they can (hopefully) read, and the USPA BSR is something they can wrap their heads around. I think the idea here is that the Ultimate Truth does not matter. Juries (or judges if no jury) have no better handle on the Ultimate Truth than anyone else. Especially in this sport. In most issues, there would not even be a *unanimous* consensus here among all the "expert witnesses" in this forum, and these are the best in the industry, right? And they aren't even being paid for their opinion here, which can change things The BSRs, though, are an Ultimate Truth, by definition, in terms of what they say about AADs, as well as the fact that an AAD was or was not used. Moral of the story: it is best to keep all the "paperwork" in order?

But aren't we talking strictly about the unusual cases? If we aren't concerned about how to prevent the few low reserve pull fatalities that do occur, then why even have an incident forum? Why not simply chalk off the fatalities to "unusual circumstances"? And your last quoted sentence, which I bolded, suggests quite a contradiction in your thinking there Along the same lines, if the actual percentage of skydivers that are using RSL's is as high as some suggest, then without RSLs these low reserve pull fatalities might not be nearly as unusual as they are now. (USPA should gather some statistics on RSL use in conjunction with their annual renewal survey. It would answer a lot of questions regarding the statistical arguments) My line of reasoning on the seat belt analogy is that, for most or perhaps even all skydivers, skill should not be considered in this decision. And because of that, the seatbelt analogy fits perfectly. Surely this is true of most skydivers. Because, by definition, most skydivers cannot have better than average skills. I cannot possibly argue that you, Peter, do not have those skills. Only you can "know" that, assuming it is possible to know that. And what I am saying here is predicated on the fact that 4 skydivers this year ended up somewhere around line stretch on their reserves as they impacted. And surely all 4 thought through this "skills verses statistics" decision and they surely thought they had the skills to beat the odds. The only reason I entered this thread is that I recently had a discussion with a post AFF grad student who I think is somewhat confused by these RSL discussions that have gone on "forever" here... It concerns me that no matter how you coach your thoughts, the nature of things is that there is always confusion between the very personal choice you have made, based on thousands of jumps, and the "statistically correct decision". Even the USPA SIM is trying to say the same thing, I think: in order to more safely jump without an RSL you must pit your skills against the statistics. (After reading the recent Parachutist article on RSLs, I got the distinct sense that they are heading in a direction of more forcefully recommending RSLs, except in the case of CRW, for which I don't think there is any disagreement by anyone. Maybe subsequent to reviewing the 2013 fatality reports?) Even worse, I well know that initially uncertain and scared students quickly become 100 jump wonders and that seems to stay that way for some time. And I think that is a very dangerous phase of a skydiving career, where the average skydiver believes they possess exceptional skills that history has always and will always prove they do not, for the most part have. So I think we (including all the others that responded to my post) had a good discussion on this and I hope that the context of the decision is well understood by those trying to learn something here. And in particular I hope I've made someone, somewhere, realize that statistically they are not likely as good as they currently think they are. I truly wish we could interview those 4 dead skydivers to find out how often they practiced their EPs and how many successful cutaways they had. I think an interesting scientific experiment would force 100 similarly minded skydivers (that intend to get stable before their reserve pull) into unexpected spinning mals and see how many can cut away at 1000 ft, actually get stable, and beat the race against time. And then repeat 10 times for each. You understand that you have as little as 3 seconds between 1000 ft and the 500 ft level where you yourself acknowledge it doesn't matter any more? So you must leave some margin for error there and I am curious how long you think it will really take to get stable and how much margin for error you leave yourself in the event you can't? How exactly will you divvy up those 3 seconds? And Wendy made a very good point too in this regard. And you believe you can do that in a consistently repeatable way? (and by "you" I really mean the hundred people reading this that might get the idea that they can do the same) I'm not being facetious or picking a fight. Honest. These are serious questions, although I suspect no one would ever do that scientific experiment. I really am curious, at a purely intellectual level, if people really are as good as they think they are. But more importantly I hope that people reading this understand that in most, if not all cases, it might be prudent to assume they aren't that good, even if they think they are.

I didn't suggest no one ever went in because of an RSL. I said (implied) that no one managed to do it last year, at least in the USA. Exactly. And history proves it is, truly, a big, big IF. History proves that statistically RSLs are a huge winner, saving far more than they kill. And I think history proves many people that think they are smarter than the average bear.... aren't. Just last year, four people who thought they were better than average... weren't. And if, in fact, the vast majority of skydivers do use RSLs, then the statistical benefit is far greater than what shows up in the statistics. If most people use RSLs then most fatalities relevant to the use or disuse of RSLs would tend to relate to RSLs that failed the skydiver. But that statistical anomaly simply does not exist, except as anecdotal incidents. I said previously here that if you extrapolated out the fatality rate of the late 70s you would have over 400 fatalities a year now. Why the drastic decrease? Is the gear fundamentally better, in the sense that the main malfunction rate is 95% lower than back then? I don't think so, considering that the main impulse now is to downsize as quickly as possible into canopies that can't even recover from simple line twists. Are skydivers fundamentally smarter now than back then? I don't think so. That leaves basic safety improvements... things like AADs and RSLs that only a few lucky students had back in the day. Six of our club members from that era went in. Four would have been saved by a properly functioning AAD. The other two went in with line stretch on their reserves after a low cutaway. Now days so many people jump with RSLs that it is difficult to assess their effectiveness. The happy endings never end up in the incident forum. You gave a great anecdotal example of lightning striking, with an RSL very possibly contributing to a fatality (or maybe not since a student cannot be expected to get stable anyway?). I gave you a great anecdotal example of why either you should never wear a seatbelt - they CAN kill. Even worse, they will burn you alive after a crash. Or, perhaps, that anecdotal freak incidents should not be used to disprove the effectiveness of basic safety features that have stood the test of time. The logic of your argument (and it is a common one) is that a very careful and very skillful driver should perhaps not use a seat belt. Isn't that too a statistical loser? Something I learned over time is that on any given day, any given person might do something really stupid. And eventually they will. And that, I think, is why the fatality statistics are now so heavily stacked with highly experienced jumpers with thousands of jumps. Or said another way by someone else here, perhaps no one is as good as they think they are?.

Four experienced jumpers on the OP list went in with low cutaways. We can be very sure every one of them thought exactly the same things you do... "I know what i am doing and I prefer to be stable...." No one went in due to an RSL + reserve entanglement. Think about it. True story: years ago a neighbor (husband and wife) and their daughter were sitting in line at a toll booth on the New Jersey Turnpike. An 18 wheeler plowed into them, the driver too busy filling out his log book to notice the stopped traffic. The parents were belted in, in the front. Both died, and I presume they were burned alive (the gas tank exploded). But I had the decency never to ask the details on that. The daughter was in the back seat, not belted. She was somehow thrown clear of the crash and walked away without a single scratch. How that Miracle Occurred, I have no idea. But it happened. Personally I wear seat belts and I go with statistics, despite this morbidly fascinating anecdotal and very true story.

I think Bill has a good point. 1975 was probably about the last year where shot and half capewells and rounds dominated the DZ. In the USA there were around 50 fatalities resulting from about 350,000 jumps. If no one spent all that wasted money on useless upgrades, then we would have more like 400 fatalities per year, given the 3 million + jumps made now days. That was great gear; it was all you needed. And just think about all the additional good discussion you'd be having in the Incidents forum For that matter, think about how safe things would be if half the Otter load carried the parachute for the other half, and passed it off in freefall?

When a report says that the reserve achieved line stretch, that could be a very good clue that the (perhaps optimistically?) one or two seconds difference would have had a very good chance of making a difference. Isn't most of the deployment time getting the pilot chute into the wind stream and getting the bag out of the container and lines stretched? No one will ever know, but it seems that an awful lot of low cutaway/low reserve pulls have a reserve at least at line stretch.

Do you want to go back to the 70s when the fatality rate was around 1:8300 as opposed to the about 1:160,000 it is today? Most of those fatalities were low pulls/no pulls/low cutaways/low reserve pulls... unlike today when people have to drive themselves into the ground under perfectly good canopies in order to keep the fatality rate reasonably high. Same with AADs... most AAD saves are conscious people that just screwed up. There are probably 500 of those listed on the AAD save lists. And the real number is probably in the thousands by now. You are "right", they should have done it better but the punishment for screwing up is rather severe? Maybe the new classification will help people make that choice - do RSLs save more than they kill? Of course they would have to mark "possible RSL fatalities" some way, but it may be quite a few years before we see how those are classed??