Can currency make you complacent?

[Orange1 0]

First up I want to make clear that I fully believe it is important to be as current as you can!

But I have become interested in what seems to be a recurring theme among many of the incident reports in the incidents forums: that the vast majority of them this year seem to be among highly current jumpers.

We keep on hearing a focus on how important currency is for safety, and obviously it is, but... there's clearly something missing. Do people who are highly current get a false sense of safety ("I'm so current that I must be safe" - consciously or unconsciously thought) that is effectively complacency? Do they get tempted to push their boundaries more because they jump so often? Do they take less time with gear checks, etc than less current people (who maybe, because they know they are not very current, take more care with gear checks, dive plans, checking the LZ, etc)?

We keep on hearing "why are so many people hurting themselves under fully functional canopies?" How about: "Why are so many highly current people hurting themselves under fully functional canopies?"

Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

[popsjumper 2]

Well, IMHO, it's hard to get complacent about anything if you only do it once in a great while.

But you are right, and you've heard it before...Complaceny Kills.

Doesn't have to be that way, but, there you have it.

Please do yourself a favor and keep that in mind the rest of your skydiving career. As conservative as I am, I still have to slap myself sometimes to make sure I am listening to my inner voice.

My reality and yours are quite different.
I think we're all Bozos on this bus.
Falcon5232, SCS8170, SCSA353, POPS9398, DS239

[billvon 2,996]

>Do people who are highly current get a false sense of safety
>("I'm so current that I must be safe" - consciously or unconsciously
>thought) that is effectively complacency?

They get a sense of safety, since they are more familiar with what's going on. Is it a 'false' sense? I guess that would depend on whether it led them to simply be more confident or to become reckless.

>Do they take less time with gear checks . . .

Almost certainly, but short gear checks do not equal _poor_ gear checks. Everyone's gear/habits are different, and there are some five-second gear checks that are as thorough (and in some ways safer) than a 30 second gear check by a newer jumper.

[kallend 2,027]

To be current means you jump a lot, and jumping a lot means you may well be at increased total exposure to risk, even if the risk goes down for each jump.

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[Orange1 0]

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To be current means you jump a lot, and jumping a lot means you may well be at increased total exposure to risk, even if the risk goes down for each jump.

That makes absolute sense for a particular jumper, but it doesn't necessarily explain why so many incidents are experienced jumpers rather than newbies? Unless say the # of D-licence jumpers far outweighs the # of As (as a very rough proxy)?

Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

[skybytch 273]

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How about: "Why are so many highly current people hurting themselves under fully functional canopies?"

This doesn't address your main point of currency and complancency, but one possible answer to the question above is because they are swooping.

Many people don't realize just how fine the line is that swoopers dance on (note - I am not saying that those people who died swooping didn't realize this; I'm sure at least some of them did). Swooping increases a jumper's risk of getting hurt or dying. While this applies to jumpers who are learning to swoop and/or aren't real current, IMHO it also applies even if they are highly experienced and highly current. When you are going that fast, that close to the ground, a little mistake can hurt - and anybody, regardless of how experienced or current they are, can make a mistake.

I think swooping is much like BASE - it's not a question of will I get hurt doing this, it's a question of when. There are a lot of variables (risk factors) involved in swooping that we can't control. Which is a big part of the reason I neither swoop nor BASE jump.

[Orange1 0]

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>Do they take less time with gear checks . . .

Almost certainly, but short gear checks do not equal _poor_ gear checks. Everyone's gear/habits are different, and there are some five-second gear checks that are as thorough (and in some ways safer) than a 30 second gear check by a newer jumper.

Maybe I should have phrased that "less care" rather than "less time".

Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

[popsjumper 2]

[reply...even if the risk goes down for each jump.

[billvon 2,996]

>but it doesn't necessarily explain why so many incidents
>are experienced jumpers rather than newbies?

If everyone makes 500 jumps a year, and "newbie" means under 100 jumps, and the typical career of a jumper lasts 20 years - then there will always be 100 times more experienced jumpers than newbies. So you'd expect experienced jumpers to be involved in incidents 100 times more often than newbies if everything else was equal. If they only got hurt 10 times as often, that would indicate experienced jumpers were much _safer_ (on a jump-by-jump basis) than newbies.

[recovercrachead 0]

If everyone makes 500 jumps a year, and "newbie" means under 100 jumps, and the typical career of a jumper lasts 20 years - then there will always be 100 times more experienced jumpers than newbies. So you'd expect experienced jumpers to be involved in incidents 100 times more often than newbies if everything else was equal. If they only got hurt 10 times as often, that would indicate experienced jumpers were much _safer_ (on a jump-by-jump basis) than newbies.

[kelpdiver 2]

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To be current means you jump a lot, and jumping a lot means you may well be at increased total exposure to risk, even if the risk goes down for each jump.

That makes absolute sense for a particular jumper, but it doesn't necessarily explain why so many incidents are experienced jumpers rather than newbies? Unless say the # of D-licence jumpers far outweighs the # of As (as a very rough proxy)?

Because as he said, the total risk is higher. 1/2 the risk per jump with 5 times as many jumps translates roughly to 2.5 times the change of an accident.

Or put more bluntly, this isn't golf.

[Ron 10]

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We keep on hearing a focus on how important currency is for safety, and obviously it is, but... there's clearly something missing. Do people who are highly current get a false sense of safety

Most likely some of that.

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Do they get tempted to push their boundaries more because they jump so often?

I would think so.

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Do they take less time with gear checks, etc than less current people

Don't think so.

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We keep on hearing "why are so many people hurting themselves under fully functional canopies?" How about: "Why are so many highly current people hurting themselves under fully functional canopies?"

Simple really...The people who jump more, are exposed to the risk more. Add in that they are normally the ones pushing it more than the new guy and it all adds up.

But notice that the top jumpers who make 500-1000 a year are not the ones getting killed. So I think that all things being equal the hyper current jumper is safer.

"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms." -- Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson Papers, 334