The danger element

[b_dog 0]

Going skydiving (although a tandem) for the first time was probably the best experience of my life. I'm glad I was able to do it once and I sure want to get into the sport, and I am saving up for the AFF course now.

But I must confess that the potential danger of the sport is requiring some effort to accept. Like the one article at this website says, "Skydiving is not ten pin bowling." A fact that I was beaten over the head with after I signed five papers of legal waivers at the DZ.

I do want to go into skydiving, but as with everyone who is in the sport knows, there could always be the case where something goes wrong and it could cost your life as a result. Yes, that can be said about many things in life--even driving to the store, you are at potential for serious injury or death. But it seems particularly egregious in a sport such as this. And yes, the more knowledge and skill you accumulate, the more you will be prepared for trouble. But as I have seen it said a few times at these boards, you could do everything right and still die. And as a stark newbie, I can't help but think my absence of experience is recipe for disaster. But everyone has to begin somewhere, I guess.

I read the fatality database, and I can see many of the ways things can go wrong, either due to human error or equipment malfunction.

I mean, not only do I have my own life to consider, but I must also consider my family. Each of our families has an emotional investment in our being alive, and I feel uncomfortable putting that on the line in participating in a sport that would repeatedly place me in possible immediate danger.

But I know these are the same things everyone in the sport must consider, both fresh blood and professional.

I suppose it makes that quote ring true, "If you want the ultimate, you have to be willing to pay the ultimate price." Everyone who is in the sport has agreed to take that risk, so that they could live life to the fullest. If I go into the sport, I will have to do the same.

[CanuckInUSA 0]

It's not the number of breathes we take in life which counts. It's the number of times your life takes your breathe away. Can you die skydiving? Yup you better believe it. How will you die? I'm not sure how I'll die, but if it happens while I'm doing something that I like doing, then that's better than dying from some disease or some stupid accident/incident.

Try not to worry about the things you have no control over

[jimshred 0]

I have struggled with this danger element myself. I have read and heard many stories about serious injuries and some deaths due to the sport.

This danger element is one of the reasons (there are others like money, time, and juggling other priorities) why I decided to put my skydiving aspirations on hold till next spring. I have told myself that if I still have strong desires to continue then I will restart AFF training next spring.

You mention how it will affect your family. If you are married and have kids then you might want to discuss this with them.

My 2 cents opinion, try the FirstJumpCourse AFF-CatA and AFF-CatB (or if doing AFP go up to non-tandem assisted level). Then make the hard decision of continuing on. But this is just my 2 cents worth.

Be safe and have fun.

______________________________________
"Find your passion, find that thing you love, and, well, get out there and do it" - Jeb Corliss

[kelpdiver 2]

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And as a stark newbie, I can't help but think my absence of experience is recipe for disaster. But everyone has to begin somewhere, I guess.

The record for AFF students is pretty good. The pull altitude is very high, you have a good guy looking after you, and the canopy size is big. Still no guarantees, and you're still responsible for yourself.

[slotperfect 7]

You have mastered the first step of learning to skydive already - respecting the risk. If you continue to seek wisdom, knowledge, and training to mitigate that risk as much as you can, you will never get complacent and will maximize your chances of skydiving for a very long time.

Equipment and training have evolved quite well over the years, so you will receive training on equipment and techniques that will serve you well.

I will share with you the best advice I ever got - given to me from two of my respected Instructors when I was a B licensed jumper: "Don't be in a hurry. Get very good at the basics of where you are now in your skydiving career before you move on to other more difficult things." That applied to canopy downsizing, demos, large RW formations, seeking ratings, and other things. It has served me very well.

Ultimately it is your decision - gather enough information from trusted sources to make sure its a well informed decision.

Bonne chance,

Arrive Safely

John

[immanence 0]

I have weighed these questions many times. When family or friends have expressed concern to me I tell them, "I could be knocked down in the street." While true, I don't make a point of standing in the middle of the road and playing chicken.

We do expose ourselves to enhanced risk if we're jumping out of airplanes rather than playing ping-pong. People rationalise it by saying, hey, look at the numbers of jumps done per year and the number of fatalities. Each fatality is tragic, but compared to jumps made the amazing thing is that there are not more. In my opinion, finding comfort in statistics is not a way of coming to terms with the fact that in this sport you can die on your next jump. For me, then, it is a broader issue: one intersecting with all kinds of social ideas and beliefs, of the deepest and broadest and most personal kind.

I don't believe in God myself (at least not the way I see others believing in or talking about God). But I do think there is something akin to predestination. I think life is a test. You can sit in your bubble or you can try to get out there and trust the world. As Montaigne said 400 years ago, "There are thousands who are wrecked in port." I think the issue, then, is trust: trusting the world. That is not the same as recklessness, or passiveness. You engage the world by knowing about it (in this instance, by builiding your knowledge of skydiving, its procedures, its technical evolution, etc.). Ultimately, you have a time when you will exit. It may be in the air, or on the ground. Many athletes die of heart failure. Who would figure?

What does all this mean? Build your knowledge about the sport and be vigilant and be safe. But know that none of us are getting out of this alive anyway. Engage what you love because time might be short. Better to live and die than die inside living in surrogate womb. I don't think anyone holds death off by playing it safe. They just die inside.

One of the other skydivers on this forum has a signature that I like: "I refuse to tiptoe through life, only to arrive safely at death."

Blue skies,
ian

"where danger is appears also that which saves ..." Friedrich Holderlin, 'Patmos'

[Jill_UK 0]

yeh skydiving is dangerous, there's no point disputing it, if you dont know what you're doing, you could die simple as that... you shouldn't take this fact for granted and for that reason you should try and learn everything you can (you'll gain more confidence when you do your ground school for AFF and know what to do in emergency situations, learn more about the equipment etc.), follow the advice of your instructors and dont take stupid risks and you should be ok...

putting all that aside i dont regret taking up skydiving for a moment, i've had the best year of my life (which doesnt say much as im only 19) and in my mind the benefit outweighs the risk...

[Sneakerz 0]

The way I look at it is, where I go skydiving, I have to drive on one of the deadliest roads to get to my home DZ(central FL section of I-95) . The drive to the DZ is probably more dangerous than the jump itself. I had a lot of thought when I first started as to the dangers and possibilities of accidents etc, etc and what didnt help much is that we have had a couple accidents this year one of which I was there for and was someone I knew quite well. But ya know, I have been flying since I have been about 13 and my first instructor warned me that being involved with aviation (same as with skydiving) pretty much eveyone is friends and you really dont forget anyone you meet and that accidents can and do happen. I have lost a few friends flying just the same as with jumping. I think one of the things that makes it so hard to go through is the fact something you love to do has taken the life of someone you knew or had an attachment to, but the bigger picture is, we are all out there and wether its flying and/or skydiving, we are living life instead of letting life pass us by. And to all of those who critcize is by saying "everytime you jump its like commiting suicide" or something to that nature, I believe you to be more jealous than anything because you arent courageous enough to truly live your lives. I have been happy with everything that I have done and experienced in life so far. If I for some reason were to fall ill and be on my death bed right now, I can say that I have done everything that I have wanted to do up to this point of my life. Can you say the same? Live it up, you are only here once.

"Those who dance are considered insane by those who cannot hear the music"
-dont remember who said it

---------------
"Once you find a job that you like, you never have to work another day in your life"

[JohnMitchell 16]

There has never been a safer time to be a student skydiver. The advances in training and equipment have reduced accidents and fatalities enormously. Where as students were about 50% of the fatalities when I started jumping, now we sometimes go an entire year without a single student fatality nationwide. Impressive.

You say that you worry about "something happening" causing your death, as if it would happen passively. Most people killed jumping kill themselves. You are in charge of how you train and how you fly. Making the right decisions is a big part of survival.

[Macaw 0]

Although I've been out of AFF just recently, skydiving has already made me take the responsibility for my own life. By finding out and understanding all nuances of the risks you can take that responsibility. There's always a danger element in every sport (I'm also into downhill freeride skiing - that is a less risky sport!) and I'm not really into statistics because even if someone tells you that AFF incidents records has been very good it doesn't mean in any way that you can assume nothing will happen to you and ignore practicing your EPs.

Although I feel so excited about my jumps over the week-end I try to speak a lot to my instructor, more experienced jumpers and I every Monday I start with reading safety articles and incidents/fatalities reports on the web - some stories made me literally cry but all that cools my head and reminds of the risk and ways to mitigate it.

Unfortunately, not everything is so ideal. One thing that scares the hell out of me is the thought that even if I die skydiving or freeriding (i.e. something I loved doing), it will still be very difficult for my family to accept it. The thought that I may make somebody suffer this pain drives me crazy.

________________________________________
Life is a series of wonderful opportunities brilliantly disguised as impossible situations.

[Newbie 0]

If you look into the annual breakdown of fatalities, the majority actually involve experienced jumpers. I'm tending to worry more now about what's going on on a jump and what can go wrong then when i first started, when all i was doing then was burning a hole through the sky, largely by myself and pulling high. The propensity for things to go wrong, more wrong, or wrong more increases as you jump more, become complacent and fail to weigh up the risk as your confidence grows.

This doesn't mean jumping is totally safe, obviously. As the saying goes, if you survive your first 100 jumps, you will probably be ok. I think the "probably" in the sentence is emphasised for good reason.

Good luck on your decision

"Skydiving is a door"
Happythoughts

[rasmack 0]

Quote

... As the saying goes, if you survive your first 100 jumps, you will probably be ok. I think the "probably" in the sentence is emphasised for good reason.

The saying I heard was that the most dangerous jumpers where those between 200 and 800. But of course that was from an 800 jump wonder

HF #682, Team Dirty Sanchez #227
“I simply hate, detest, loathe, despise, and abhor redundancy.”
- Not quite Oscar Wilde...

[Newbie 0]

Quote

Quote

... As the saying goes, if you survive your first 100 jumps, you will probably be ok. I think the "probably" in the sentence is emphasised for good reason.

The saying I heard was that the most dangerous jumpers where those between 200 and 800. But of course that was from an 800 jump wonder

Yup, i'd say that about correlates with what i heard - basically once you are over 200, you are in a new danger zone of complacency and increased risk associated to the type of jumps you might be doing.

"Skydiving is a door"
Happythoughts

[Luv2Fall 0]

Risk management, my friend......risk management. Having said that, each time the door opens - I'm reminded that if I cannot accept the possible consquences, I should never exit a plane.

[RossDagley 0]

At the end of the day it's risk versus reward - you know the risk. Are you willing to accept the reward?

Continue in this sport long enough, and there is likely to be a time when you approach the door and dont want to jump. That may be fear you need to overcome on AFF level 3, or common sense telling you the winds are too high and you really shouldn't have got on the plane in the first place.

I guess what I'm trying to say is you have the final say, EVERY jump, whether to get out that door. If you're fearful during AFF (plenty are) it may just be something you need to work through with your instructors. If theres a voice inside saying dont jump, well to me thats different. Short of an aircraft emergency, you never HAVE to jump. Ride that plane down. Listen to the voice inside, stay current, stay informed, avoid complatency and you *should* stay safe. Just dont do anything dumb

The oldest saying in the book: There are old skydivers and bold skydivers, but no old/bold skydivers.

[goose491 0]

Skydiving is safe!... we wear helmets!

My Karma ran over my Dogma!!!

[bob.dino 1]

Quote

Skydiving is safe!... we wear helmets!

The helmet is safe - it's wearing a skydiver for protection.


(joke stolen from some comedian)