Basejumper.com - archive

As time goes by, is BASE jumping getting safer? Most statistics show that the number of deaths and injuries goes up year by year, but of course this is probably due to more people entering the sport. These statistics will also be skewed by the fact that as time goes on, people are probably going to be introducing and trying riskier aspects of the sport, e.g., proximity flying.

My question is whether overall the sport is becoming safer for beginners. Is it possible that in 5 years time, the risks faced by novice jumpers will be measurably lower than what they face today, or did face 5 years ago? If so, what determines this risk, and what advances in the sport can lower this risk further?

While there is always a non-zero element of real risk, the risk is mostly self-determined by jumpers.

The way to increase safety is to make better judgement calls.

Unfortunately, participating in BASE in the first place requires a certain amount of risk-proneness.

As the equipment gets safer, jumpers take larger risks with their personal calls.

It's always possible to be the outlier who always jumps as safely as possible, and in fact the long term BASE jumpers tend to have been these people all along (because otherwise they wouldn't have survived so long).

Bottom line: I don't believe it's possible to make BASE "safer" because that would require a fundamental change in the people who choose to participate, replacing them with people who'd never have chosen to participate in the first place. But I do believe that individually we can choose to make our own participation safer or riskier by the judgement decisions we make.

No, I don't think so. The design of the fundamental equipment used has remained fairly static for a while, and there's already far more knowledge available of how to safely prepare for and accomplish an entrance into BASE than most new jumpers will learn.

To have a major impact on the risks you'd have to change the participants.

'Booth's rule #2', often attributed to skydiving pioneer Bill Booth, states that "The safer skydiving gear becomes, the more chances skydivers will take, in order to keep the fatality rate constant".[21][22] Even though skydiving equipment has made huge leaps forward in terms of reliability, including the introduction of safety devices such as AADs, the fatality rate has stayed roughly constant when adjusted for the increasing number of participants.[23][24] This can largely be attributed to an increase in the popularity of high performance canopies, which fly much faster than traditional parachutes.[citation needed] A greater number landing fatalities in recent years has been attributed to high speed manoeuvres close to the ground.[25]


from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_compensation

applies equally to Base jumping, with added spice that we all tend to taking higher than usual levels of risk compared to the general population