2019

[raff 4]

It's futile, I know, but every year around this time, I start to fantasize about a year with -0- skydiving fatalities. To paraphrase Bill Booth, "People are dying because of decisions they make before they get in the plane."

Must it ever be so?

If you leave the plane without a parachute, you will be fine for the rest of your life.

[billvon 2,991]

Pretty much. Skydivers are happiest with a certain level of risk. If we did ever have a year with zero fatalities, the next year people would start doing insanely risky things. "What do you mean, it's dangerous? We are a ZERO FATALITY sport! For over a year! The safest sport in the US. You can't tell me that just because I am doing X that is going to change."

[gowlerk 2,193]

The whole point of skydiving is flying in the face of risk. If you want risk free then the tunnel is for you. Risk is relative. Some people BASE, others WS BASE, still others do proximity. I just skydive.

[AtrusBatleth 0]

gowlerk

The whole point of skydiving is flying in the face of risk. If you want risk free then the tunnel is for you. Risk is relative. Some people BASE, others WS BASE, still others do proximity. I just skydive.

It comes up in conversation occasionally that I have no plans to downsize, wingsuit, do high performance landings or big ways, etc. As I like to say, I am content merely jumping out of an airplane.

Max Peck
What's the point of having top secret code names, fellas, if we ain't gonna use 'em?

[MikeJD 0]

gowlerk

The whole point of skydiving is flying in the face of risk.

I disagree. Of course the risk adds a certain frisson, but for me the main point of skydiving is to play and perform in an environment that relatively few people ever get the privilege to experience.

Flying in the tunnel doesn't just remove risk from that experience - it also removes the joy of exits, chasing a rabbit on a tracking dive, building a big-way, leaving the plane last and swooping to your slot, flying a canopy at sunset...

You're right, of course, that it's unrealistic to expect zero fatalities in the sport, and considering what we're engaged in I think statistically the likelihood of being killed doing it is alteady remarkably low. That doesn't mean we shouldn't strive to reduce it further, but the same could be said of road traffic accidents - if we treated driving risk with the same level of respect as we apply to skydiving, I think we'd be saving a lot more lives.