Basejumper.com - archive

We all know BASE is not safe. And it sure is as dangerous as we want to make it. Do you think skydiving is safe?

safer than BASE sure, safe to the point that you can dick around, not pay attention to the game and expect to get away with it continually? no

with proper gear and proper training it can be safer than whuffo`s think.... but ofcourse the risk exists

You are paying to ride an airplane to an altitude of thousands of feet above the ground.

You are going to intentionally jump out of the airplane and directly into a very dangerous situation: If you don't decelerate to a very slow speed before hitting the ground you will die.

In order to accomplish this deceleration, your plan is to toss a small parachute into the air. Attached to this small parachute is a larger parachute basically consisting of a square patch of nylon and several small diameter lines. If these items, which have been deployed into airspeeds around 120 miles per hour, don't work in a reasonably controlled fashion they will malfunction and you will not decelerate enough to survive the imminent impact with the ground.

You can cut away the first one and try the same thing again. If the second (and last) option doesn't work exactly as expected, you will not decelerate enough and you will die.

Even if it all works properly and the chaos of deployment culminates in a flying and controllable parachute over your head, you can still be killed if you make errors in landing it.

To me, that doesn't fall into the "safe" category.

Nugget.

Touche.

There are many different disciplines to skydiving. Some more dangerous than others. Freefall is one thing, the canopy ride is another. Knowing your gear, knowing your limits, having knowledge of what you're about to do, practicing good body position, stay relaxed, etc, etc, etc are all good things in skydiving as they are in BASE. And in that respect I still say the currency can be the magic denominator. And being current flying a canopy is better than not being current. So skydiving experience and currency does help your BASE. But there still seems to be a complacency amongst some BASE jumpers towards the dangers of skydiving. Look at the poll.

Fuck. I don't think "living" is "safe".

I agree with everything you said. Still I can think of many more accurate words to describe skydiving than "safe".

Surfing the internet: safe

Watching TV: safe

Playing golf: safe

shooting pool: safe

bowling: safe

rock climbing: not safe

scuba diving: not safe

BASE jumping: absolutely not safe

Skydiving: sorry, not safe

I'm not saying it's not manageable as far as risk goes. All risks can be managed but your post asked if the sport is safe. It's just not. To try and prove otherwise is futile, I'm afraid.

Edit: You know after some thought something occured to me. If you have to wear a harness and a helmet, what you're doing is not safe.

Hey I was asked to give a few words at my father's funeral this coming Thursday. You don't mind if I use this at the end do you. I think it's a nugget all on it's own.

PS: Let's stay on the subject people. My father was dying of cancer for over two years.

I voted "no".

Are you assuming only BASE jumpers voted in the poll? This is a skydiving web-site.

My opinion about the complacency amongst some BASE jumpers extends further than the results of this poll (shit at this time only a handful of people have even voted and yes you are right, I can't argue, this is a skydiving website).

Complacency kills in any high risk sport.

Rock climbing should be "extremly dangerous" IMHO.

Since doing anything that requires actions to keep you alive is dangerous, skydiving doesn't fall into the not safe realm to me.

In my opinion skydiving is a dangerous but a calculated risk. To determine the safety level of the sport you need to evaluate the risks and the actions taken to mitigate the risk. Less performance/malfunction knowledge/training=more dangerous. Once these actions are performed to the current standard or above the activity can then be deemed "safe" even though it is still really dangerous. I think everyone knows the risks of skydiving through the first jump course. If the current standard was jumping one rig all the time or a separate reserve then you can say that skydiving is complicated and dangerous but as long as the training and technology increases along side of the activity you can most likely deem it safe.

The pioneers of parachuting did some really funky stuff at first testing new rigs and gear. Skydiving has been an ever changing sport and has become safer. BASE jumping started the same way by the pioneers and safety has improved along with it. To me as long as safety training and R&D continue to increase on pace with the sport then it will remain "safe" jsut really dangerous when all the safety measures have been employed and you still have a big wad of fabric over your head. A lot has to do with your own knowledge and trust in your instructors. Don’t take a tool for his word.

All of this of course hinges on the pioneers claiming it is safe to begin with. I don’t think anyone has made that claim about BASE jumping yet. I think I heard about skydiving being safe at safety day one time as I remember

Well, I don't know about that...
I was on my way to the dropzone a couple of years ago. Right next to the dropzone there's a golf course. I was riding a bicycle when I passed the golf course. Suddenly a golfball hit the road just three feet away from me. A golfball in the head is bad for your health...
Never had a close call like that in skydiving...

Smokeman

well, about 100 people a year are killed on golf courses when struck by golf balls.

anyway, anything you do is only as safe as you make it out to be in comparison to something else.
breathing is not safe when your head is in a cloud of carbon monoxide.

If you define safety as absence of risk name one thing that is safe.

I do not think you can simply say if something is safe or not - There are examples of people who did everything right skydiving and died - That brings me to the conclusion that Skydiving is not safe - But in the end life is not even safe - there are things more or less dangerous, more or less likely to die doing it but you can be never sure and you should be never sure because this is fatal in many cases! Thats my opinion of this topic ...

Not to mention that "the most likely place in the States to be attacked by an alligator (three deaths between 1992 and 1998) is not deep in some swamp, but on a golf course."

Stark, P. (2001). Last breath: Cautionary tales from the limits of human endurance. Ballantine.


I couldn't find statistics on bowling--all those tornados and other freak occurrences that kill bowlers skew the numbers, don't ya know--but I did turn up a piece Tom Buchanan wrote a couple of years ago with the definitive answer to the question "how safe is skydiving?" along with an internal link to the National Safety Council and an article entitled "What are the odds of dying?" It includes raw numbers, one-year odds and lifetime odds for selected causes of death in the United States only.

Someone who has at least an approximate idea of the numbers of active BASE jumpers in the world since 1981 could do the overall historical statistics for the sport, but probably only the numbers for the last three or four years are relevant as a predictor for the future.

Edited to add: I'm amazed by the results of the poll so far, so I'd like to know: How many of you folks voting "yes" have ever seen a skydiving accident that resulted in a fatality?

I think that we're in danger of descending into a debate about semantics. You can't just ask whether something is safe or not; it's too black-and-white. Many, if not all, activities suffer from varying degrees of danger.

Skydiving is dangerous, it's just that most people consider that the risks are manageable and that it is a repeatable exercise. Some people do not consider that to be true of BASE. However, I'm sure those feelings used to be more prevalent towards skydivers than they are now, so it all comes down to perception.

I voted "No" in answer to the poll, but I don't think that the question is particularly helpful and that the poll result - which is unsurprisingly close - purely reflects differences in interpretation and nothing else.

To me the actual jump is relatively safe - alot safer than the backcountry skiing and snowboarding I do on a regular basis, or even mtn biking to me - those have much higher a chance of body trauma per second I participate in them.

I think the ride to altitude is pretty unsafe, I think canopy flight can be pretty unsafe when you get abunch of non-pivoting-heads in the air, which seems to be the case more and more and more...

i think its about what YOU feel is a safe,were the limit?

i think its far more safe to me to skydive than running marthons..

i think its more healthy to me to skydive than riding a motor bike

i think boxing(which aint an extreme sports as i know of)is more dangerus that both skydiving and BASE(they dont have a fight whith out getting brain damegede))
I genneral see skydiving as a Realativ safe sport.

i dont see BASE as a safe sport,but think it can be done realativ safe(compared to the risk of jumping off objects)

yes i voted yes i think skydive is safe in a yes and no Q(as i then will think genneral and not on special extreme projects etc)

This poll is too straight forward.

I'm an AFF instructor so here's my point.

Skydiving is not safe. I can assure you that there have been times the student would have certainly met his/her demise with out intervention from said instructor. The rest of this scenario can get pretty big and is not worth adding to.

The risk is not calculated until there's enough experience to calculate with. A new skydiver may "accept" risk, as stated by the waiver he signs but that risk is not actually a calculated one. The thought process for most people are very much along the lines of what are the odds they'll be damaged? Those odds are not that great therefore the person does the jump.

Take a tandem student for instance. What are the odds he/she will be damaged? Not Very high is it? If the student goes in along with the instructor, the friends and/or family that witnessed the incident are absolutely certain the act of skydiving isn't "safe"

The skydive can be done safely and without incident, though it does not mean the actual deed is "safe"

When someone falls past your canopy by only a few feet, does that sound safe? Does missing an unexpected opening canopy by about 6 inches sound safe? How about an elbow to the face causing near black out... and so on... and so on... None of those actions caused serious injury or death and I "safely" reached the ground, but as DexterBase said quite clearly,

how does you guys define safe?

football were many players get hurt?
or other similar acsepted sports?

in most sports you have injuryes,i do agre that most sports dont have so many deads...

But how to define safe?

you can drive safly at your motorbike which dont mean anything if the rest on the roads aint...

I totally agree that assistance is needed in some instances. The risk calculation in the situation you state is the instructor. Also in that case the skydive isn't the problem the skydiver is. It doesn't mean that the sport is not safe.

Cars have brakes, Chutes have reserve handles, and people have brains. If we don't use any of them then the situation changes due to the person not the activity.

I think we need to define safe or this will turn into a Clinton deposition. Skydiving isn't for everyone and that is why the sport has implemented the training and safety that is has.

couldnt be said better

Hi Atle! It's funny you should appear on this forum for nearly getting hit by a golf ball. How's your foot? Are you back to 100% now?

I had a friend who always covered his head when driving by the golf course. I asked him why, and he showed me the scar on his forehead where he had a bunch of stitches. Seems he was riding his moped by the golf course and a stray ball sailed over the fence, hit him in the head, knocked him completely off his moped and into the boulevard. Small, hard balls being hit with long steel clubs...not safe.

Do you remember when sex was safe and sydiving was dangerous? I think they have traded places on the risk scale by now.

Life isn't safe!

Peace,
K

More people than just Clinton have been to depositions.

golf - not safe


fact- there are more hospitalised injuries on a golf course than any other sport bar-none including amature and pro sports

hockey - not safe.

[replyfact- there are more hospitalised injuries on a golf course than any other sport bar-none including amature and pro sportsdid you get that on the Incident forum from Golfzone.com ??

I tore my knee playing golf. Damn you adam sandler!, and damn my stupidity. I was running towards the ball like he did in happy gilmore, and swung too hard and over rotated my knee

For me golf: not safe

I'd like to see your source of that information as I've heard bowling is - no shit. Of course, I have no source...

There's More rubbish from the Papers, in which Professor David Ball "worked out a relative risk factor for each sport"...

That rox - thx!

Things shouldn't be classified as safe or not safe, as life isn't black/white. There are degrees of safe and danger and I think skydiving is as safe as you make it. You read about some tool ook-turning with 85 jumps, whereas some girl in the USPA mag had 3000 jumps without a chop, so they are essentially in different sports.

I think with moderate safety practiced, skyding is very safe. Don't pull lower than 3500, take reasonable care of your gear, pack carefully, etc...

I'm a trash packer, so I up the odds when I can't find a packer, which up the danger a bit. Other than that, I showthe sport great respect - pull a bit high most of the time.

Per Websters, I'd say no

Main Entry: 1safe
Pronunciation: 'sAf
Function: adjective
Inflected Form(s): saf·er; saf·est
Etymology: Middle English sauf, from Old French, from Latin salvus safe, healthy; akin to Latin solidus solid, Greek holos whole, safe, Sanskrit sarva entire
1 : free from harm or risk : UNHURT
2 a : secure from threat of danger, harm, or loss b : successful at getting to a base in baseball without being put out
3 : affording safety or security from danger, risk, or difficulty
4 obsolete, of mental or moral faculties : HEALTHY, SOUND
5 a : not threatening danger : HARMLESS b : unlikely to produce controversy or contradiction
6 a : not likely to take risks : CAUTIOUS b : TRUSTWORTHY