Re: [base75] Trust in a Single Source BASE Rig ?
For a second parachute to reduce the fatality rate, for instance, it'd have to be true that there are a large number of fatalities in recent years that could have been prevented had the jumper had a reserve. I don't really think that's the case, though. Browsing through The List, I see: (a) lots of object strikes, for which a reserve seems clearly inappropriate; (b) hazards like drowning which aren't specifically parachute-related at all; and (c) "no canopy out" situations, most of which involved a jumper who only discovered the problem when he was 1-2 seconds off the deck, if at all.
There are
very few fatalities that one could argue would have been avoided had the jumper had a reserve. Hell, I discovered myself a few years ago that even when you're six seconds to impact, if it all goes to shit you have about enough time to (1) discover that fact; then (2) try one thing. If you're going to use your reserve, that means you're not (for instance) dipping a shoulder when you burble your pilot chute, since that would be your one thing.
I suspect that a reserve would be a security blanket that, if anything, made BASE
more dangerous by encouraging complacency (which I sort of suspect is the biggest hazard even now).
That without even touching the arguments regarding increased complexity of the system, the difficulty of configuring your reserve for every malfunction scenario on every jump, etc., etc....