Basejumper.com - archive

I dont think that anyone can argue that this has been probably the worst season ever for wingsuiting. We pride ourselves on not having a regulatory body of any sort, and I love that, but we need to do a better job of regulating ourselves and the people we jump with. I am tired of seeing fatalities that no one is surprised with. People saying "yah, it was just a matter or time for that guy" or "yah that jump was way outside of his skill range". If you see someone doing something stupid, tell them. If you see someone on an exit who looks like they shouldnt be on an exit, tell them. Theres no need to be a dick about it, and if someone does it to you dont take it personally. We are dying off quickly as of late. Ive talked with friends after the most recent fatality, and we were all surprised that the jumper had been jumping Brevent. I thought about sending him a message, as did several others, but no one did. Maybe you wont stop that person who wants to be the coolest guy with the best videos, and there are some people we know will never listen, but you might just make them stop and think what they are doing. Please stay safe out there.

I live in France near a very high viaduct and have met and jumped with lots of visitors over the years. A couple of years ago I had a 4 day pass from child and work duties and met a young Scandinavian jumper there and we started jumping. He was dangerous. He had no concept of safe progression, was impossible to pass information to and it was blindingly obvious to me he was a crater looking for a grid reference.
After 2 days and 9 jumps of this I sat him in a bar and calmly, clearly and carefully set out my concerns. He had answers for all of it (obviously) and rejected every point out of hand. I left him there and went home early, despite perfect weather.

He was dead within a month.

Talk to them if you can, tell them what's worrying you, but remember (as we say at work,) ya can't save 'em all.

Don't beat yourself up about it friend, do you really think your message/talk/call would have resulted in him walking away from that exit? maybe, but I'd say unlikely.

Dave M

I agree 100%

4 years ago I needed my E, was invited to go
with LeRoy(RIP) and Stitch on some shit show.

I evaluated the plan, logistics, and ultimately
decided to not go and said exactly why - one
guy had to be rescued and the other guy died.

I'd rather have an awkward conversation than
live with regret and doubt about a situation...
sometimes they listen, sometimes they don't.

We've all seen issues like that. It was bad experiences that made me lose interest in building base gear.

Now here I am several years later. I've been thinking about some of the incedents that we've had recently and thinking about technical issues. I've actually been tossing around ideas for a new rig. But then I stop and think about things like this. I wonder if we've reached the point of diminishing returns in terms of trying to make the gear safer. I mean between wing suits, tracking suits, canopies, and rigs there really isn't an excuse for any one to die base jumping any more. We talk about ideas like risk homeostasis but it seems like the sport is getting worse faster the any development. Judgment seem to have deteriorated and it doesn't seem like the simple numbers of jumpers involved can justify the death rate.

It makes me wonder if we should maybe go the other way. Rather then building a new generation of equipment, maybe we should just stop. So what if. What if all the manufactures just stopped. no more mail order rigs. No off the shelf canopies with deep break settings pre tuned (for some one other then you.) No more first jump courses. Just tossing out a what if. Has the sport really become any better since the introduction of any of these things? Don't laugh but I actually wonder. What if we asked for twin falls to actually be made illegal? People have been jumping Aubrin for ever. It's not like it's slowed them down. How many people have died there in comparison to twin falls. What if in order to make your first base jump you had to actually build your own rig. Don't laugh that's exactly what I did so, yes, I do have the right to talk shit about it. You would actually have to be a good enough rigger to design and build your own rig. You would have to spend the time to set up your own canopy. I mean those things in and of them selves are pretty decent speed bumps that require a certain amount of dedication and learning in order to over come. Some times I wonder how it might change our sport. Some times I think it would be for the better.

I'm not sure how to make youtube go away. It may be a bell that can not be unrung. I remember when video of base jumping was rare, special. Every one didn't get to see it.

I suppose I'm just talking shit here. I doubt it will ever happen... but what if? Maybe the way forwards is to slow the sport down. Some times I feel like it's a sports car with bad breaks. Way too much go and not enough stop. What if all of a sudden it was... less easy.

I'm just in a grouchy mood. Ignore me.

Lee

Weathergirl and Riggerlee... Your posts seem to address the newbies and people with "unsafe progression."

I believe this year was the year of the experts going in. I see some of the survivors chatting online (facebook, here, youtube, etc) and I honestly don't think it has sunk in that a bunch of people we have met, known, seen, chatted with online or offline, have died in rapid succession. It is not, in my opinion, Bridge Day or Twin Falls that we now have to fear.

I have lost some of my best friends (skydiving) and people I have known (BASE) in the last 3 years, and I will say this... It is youtube that is killing people... That perfect wingsuit flight, that awesome swoop... The last three swoop fatalities I witnessed - one common thread - a camera on the ground and a history of posting great video online. In one case, multiple cameras including a remote control helicopter overhead to catch the swoop.

I talked with one of the now dead minutes before their jump, I knew their motivation as they told me exactly what and why they were on that jump, and it hurts to know that they went "slightly bigger than normal" for reasons as superficial as someone with a video camera in the landing area.....

I am not afraid to speak up, I just did. Just last night I showed a video of a wingsuit flight posted on facebook to another friend... As the waiter walked by, he said is that you? I said, "No, that is my dead friend." He said "How did he die?" I said, "No one knows yet, but he will be very soon...." Most active BASE jumpers know this guy, and he is making great videos... But... Statistically, he is dead man walking now.

Seriously, flying a wingsuit inches above the ground - there is a point where skill is no longer important and it is just luck that keeps these folks alive.

So how do you speak up to those at the "top of our sport?" I don't know. They have no respect for me as I fly my wingsuit away from the rocks and I am not jumping as much as them or as much as I used to. I bet some of them will bash me on their facebook walls this afternoon, "did you see what tdog wrote?”, just as they have bashed some of the long time jumpers (a.k.a. survivors) for their viewpoints. Oh well, hopefully they will be alive to see the "likes" they get for their post....

Yes, I am frustrated, too many people I have known or known of. Sorry for the rant.

not all the baby turtles make it to the ocean. this sort of thing is part of base jumping. the people who dont respect it for what it is cant be told anything else most times. i think looking out for yourself is the biggest concern and if someone cant do that, well theyll be jumping with darwin soon.

+1

BA$E

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I hear ya but it seems the ego will prevent most from hearing the warnings. I would bet that if you had a group of 10 jumpers and 9 of them told 1 of them that they were being reckless or were under-prepared, the 1 jumper would still jump just to prove to the others that they were capable. Then on the ground if everything went ok that time the jumper would thumb his nose at the other nine and say 'see, I told you assholes I was good enough'

I would contend that it is not wingsuits that are the killers in this sport, it is the ego telling us that we can do it and are sufficiently prepared, when in fact we may not be. The ego tempts us with a new glory producing line or tells us it's easy, especially since we have seen the line flown so many times on youtube by others who can't be nearly as good us
Most jumpers I have met over the years don't seem to have the outwards appearance of much of an ego but I know it lies within all of us. Always there pushing for recognition, always wanting to be better than the other person, often propping ourselves up on false assumptions. We all have it, it just comes down to controlling it enough to allow us the time to develop a solid skill-set and a strong mental state that knows boundaries but still give us the drive to accomplish new and ever progressing goals.

That's pretty funny coming from someone with less than 100 jumps and a BASE number in the 1,600s on their signature line.

I really like the baby turtle analogy.

I Am very okay with that! People at the end do what they want, even if it is the wrong way! Why? Because they think that nothing will happen to them.

Wingsuiting is not freefalling it is an other sport than classic basE jumping. It is more. More complex situation, more time in danger, more close the terrain, more skills needed... Piloting is easy to learn, being a good pilote is more difficult.

The BASE jumping is a paradox. We need to accept to die for jumping but do our best to not! Some think that they are invincible, they have forgot that we are not! Nobody want to die, but sometimes it is better to realize before that we have crossed our red line. This point is the foundement of safety in BASE jumping (and all dangerous activities). Pushing is limits yes but with lucidity to find the good balance. Perhaps, it is better to take distance with junkies hardcore videos, we are not all heroes.

Everything could happen in a jump, the best and the worst. That is life, don't loose the fight!

Take care.

to say that youtube is killing people is the same argument that guns kill people.

if you are not confident to pull off the jump, don't jump...if you die, than its your fault...like every other aspect of BASE

Flying a wingsuit inches off the ground doesn't make me responsible for anyone else going in

I don't. The baby turtles are a numbers game. We are supposed to be better than that; more intelligent and learning from our mistakes.

I agree with all you say, and it's an odd sport that gets riskier with experience but that's where we are in a way.

With proxy flying (and similarly perhaps with swooping and speed flying little wings down mountains) you are perhaps safer at the beginning when you're scared than you are with lots of experience. Eventually you get good enough to go harder/faster/closer until you are just a stain on the landscape, probably in a place you wouldn't be near with less time in the sport.

Not true for all the recent events I know, but general thoughts on the situation from a man who doesn't own a go pro.

Guns may not be responsible but gun culture is.

Confidence and skill are two different things. I'm pretty sure most of these guys were feeling confident up until they went in.

No, but condoning such behaviour is irresponsible.

Because it only takes experience to respect something dangerous correct? Ive only been in the sport a short time but its been long enough to see some scary shit and jump with people who have died. Theres a difference between people who die in the sport from outright stupidity and people who are very experienced dying from pushing the limits. My turtle comment want about the first kind.

Point is you can say i dont know anything because i dont have a sub 1000 number or hundreds of jumps, but its pretty sad if you need those to respect a sport like base jumping. I dont like it when people go in for no reason either man. But its the nature of what our sport is, especially when the path into it has relaxed so much and the majority of people who hear about it have no clue what goes into it.

It is a difference between the nature of "human" and the sport. The sport is as safe you want to play, and who you choose to play with.

+1

+2

I think you may have missed my point... There has been this historical fear in BASE that youtube is introducing other people to BASE and those people have started BASE because of it, or maybe tried something more aggressive those folks would not have done but for seeing that video... That is not my hypothesis. I never said anyone posting a video is responsible for someone else’s death, but instead I fear it is ultimately going to be their own.

If this was not a public forum, I would name names and cite facts about their fatalities (and anyone interested can PM me and we can chat) – however, the common thread with a set of dead friends was their motivation to capture themselves on video, that inspired them to do something they would not have normally done. Not all of them planned on showing the video on Youtube, most would have, but two would have shown it with pride to someone they really respected on the ground if they were still alive.

I don’t claim to understand the nuances of the motivations underlying it, possibly ego, possibly pride, possibly the challenge, possibly a competition with themselves or someone else to go slightly bigger, possibly being able to fly a line or swoop a swoop that someone else couldn’t, to fly a line that killed a friend as a sign of respect, etc… I know personally last time I was flying in the Swiss Valley I got a personal high on comments some friends posted on facebook... I imagine others do too.

So to use your gun analogy: “…same argument that guns kill people.” If you want that analogy to work with my observations of multiple dead friends, the people that are getting killed by the guns are the ones holding the guns when the gun gets turned on themselves.

Be safe guys.

Yea, I'm sure all the turtles are thinking exactly the same thing...

Theres a difference between confidence and assurance


if you follow this logic, BASE would have never been a sport. Neither wingsuits.

The experts are the ones going in...
If someone wants to strap a parachute on their back and jump off something, that is their own choice. No rules. Just ones own decision. Every time I tell my non-jumper work partner another jumper went in, he says "Let me guess, a wingsuiter?!"

I can see the attraction, but have no desire. I'm a solo, easy object, low risk jumper. I spend lots of time on each object, when I know I am ready to jump it, I jump it. My reward is my reward, and that is something I can say is well earned. Just the thought of ONE error or miscalculation will kill me is enough to keep me on the ground. I have a life outside of BASE, I have a family, pets, bills, a future. I think to be good enough to WS something that pushes the limits you have devote your life to it. Someone like me would have to give up a lot to live that life style. And when you give up your life, well, you are doing excactly that. And in the end, you give up your life to give up your life. Who are we to judge? I think a lot of people lose sight of our beginnings and the decision we make to jump. When we go in, it's our own fault. The BFL is full of lessons to be learned. I may be wrong, but isn't that why it was started to begin with? Just because someone has a thousand minutes of WS proxy flights doesn't mean they are the experts. I keep reading that the experts are the ones going in. To me, an expert is not only good, but smart also. I have been jumping since '06 and have half the jumps someone else has who started the same time as I, and I would've never thought it, but some of those guys that I have met and sat and had a beer with have gone in. Why? Not one of them where equipment issues. It wasn't experience. It wasn't an impossible jump. It was simply pushing it one more time. The very first BASE fatality I saw was in '88 and it was because he was pushing it. He should've never jumped in those winds. As for the others, maybe they should've only did two flips instead of three, or waited until he had a better exit, either way it boils down to pushing it. And for what?

All of this reminds me of "The Bridge to nowhere." Just watching the video knowing that those guys are about to go in and at the same time hearing about these "experts" pushing it and going in, I can't help but wonder if these guys knowing that just one mistake will kill them. I can't help but wonder who is the expert? The guy flying a moderate line, knowing he needs room for error, or the guy pushing it?

When a new jumper arrives on the scene and is in a hurry to get his number, all hell breaks loose, and everyone gets all over him for pushing it. The experienced jumpers tell him that all kinds of bad can happen for pushing it. Yet, the "experts" are going in for the same reason. When jumping off a cliff and flying straight out and away wasn't enough, they started turning in and proxy was born. Ask the average lay person what they know about BASE and they will bring up "wing suits", so when a new jumper enters the scene, they have a goal of WS proxy. They fly the easy lines and then the moderate lines and then the killer lines. Even if a new jumper doesn't get into WS, and they jump the easy objects, then the moderate objects, then the killer objects, they have the same thing in common as the WS proxy flyers. They are pushing it. All in all, bottom line is, WS or not, in my own opinion, an expert is less likely to go in compared to someone that is pushing it. I think the definition of an expert has been misplaced. Someone who has a lot of experience, yet, pushes it, in my book isn't an expert. An expert is someone widely recognized as a reliable source of technique or skill whose faculty for judging or deciding rightly, justly, or wisely. Is it wise to push the limits? Who are the experts? I think the experts are the ones not pushing it to the point of no return.

If I can relate any of the to river guiding, I consider myself an expert river guide. I've made thousands of river trips and haven't killed anybody. Yet I see other guides trying to run that line that is bad ass and someone's daughter dies. I've made wise decisions in my rafting career and have seen "experts" kill people. Why? Because they are pushing it. I watched an "expert" river guide die because he was pushing it.

No disrespect to any of the dead here. I'm just saying the experts, by definition, are not the ones going in.

but BASE isn't a sport.

unless you're racing egos.

True, and of course a very easy argument to make. Just like it's dangerous to drive a car or bare back hookers.
But in truth it's a fools argument. We know BASE can be done safely. When did it become so acceptable to continually jump with zero margin for error?

Because those who is good at it produce incredible videos, and get all the fame. Attention attention Im here, look at mee is a very human thing, and what to do when nobody looks at you doing your safe smart jumps?

Everybody need to feel good at something and get some attention or feedback. Thats why some of the jumpers die,,,,, they just want to bee seen, and be a hero for second or two

Those who is good, is on the roll and can play safer within their skills, but it will always be those hungry ones, who need to bee seen

It is more relevant than you think.
A group of tourists saw some turtles hatching and decided to help them hatching and get them started toward the sea (before they were ready). Well the seagulls saw them and swooped in, ate them all.

Youtube could very well be the Tourists helping them out before they are ready.
Take care,
space

theres three things that bother me with the current discussions, (this is a cross post with another discussion on another platform, so some of it maybe doesnt really fit the original thread, sorry for that...)

1. i read that "experts are going in" over and over again, but i honestly think thats not true. i think this is because people dont want to talk bad about the lost friends, or derogate their level of experience, its hard and it doesnt really feel right, but the 5 of those 19 this year (is it 19 WS fatalities now?) that i knew personally, some of them have been close friends, had either very low overall base experience, just came back from a long break, had only one year of wingsuit experience, less than 100 wingsuit base, etc... although it kind of hurts, but i cannot really consider any of them an expert. and of the rest of these fatalities this year i have strong doubts that i would consider them experts.
when someone says wingsuit base expert i think of robert, james, matt and a few other people, sorry if i didnt include someone in this list but ill stick to the people that i know personally because you cannot convince me into thinking of you as an expert because of some videos on the internet. besides that i know plenty of jumpers with very high jump numbers, wingsuit jump numbers, and very long time in base that would NOT consider themselves "expert".
to put this into context, who comes to your mind when you think about an expert base jumper? the people that i can think of have jump numbers in the 4 digit range and a long time in the sport. so why would we think of someone with 300 WS base as an expert? (besides the discussion of how many of those have been proximity)

2. the self-clapping-on-your-own-shoulder that some people do by stating why they dont proximity fly. fine! but in my opinion it doesnt add any value to the discussion. you seem to be the ones that already understood what its about, or you just want to publicly calm yourself down that you will grow old and wount die base jumping. fine.

3. base is not difficult! base is incredibly easy, as so is wingsuit base, especially with the newer generation of suits. i cant count how often i heard "flys like on rails" or even said it myself (just compare wingsuiting with freefly for example)
the skill in base comes into play when things go wrong during the jump, or before the jump when it comes to decision making where it is not really clear what to do. it requires experience to make good decisions and good planning when its not a black or white situation, it requires a long time to get to know yourself. to know your gut feeling. this is the hard part. so base is easy, growing old in this sport is kind of difficult i suppose.

all the jumpers that i consider experts above started with really crappy stuff by todays standards. like learning to play darts with rusty nails. so it took them a long time to fly good and in a controlled manner, and that gave them time to build up experience. the newer generation suits fly so good and are so easy to fly that its so comforting and convincing that your in control. dont get me wrong, i think its a good thing! but this way jumpers (especially new jumpers) get bored by flying straight out and turn left or right (or down) because it is easy to do, while still lacking the experience and good judgement i was talking about above. ive been there! and i had my fair amount of close calls, luckily always found out that i had a bad flight/day/whatever before beeing too close and finding out too late.
a very high percentage of jumpers show up at the FJC with the goal to do WS base, and they pick it up rather soon after the course.
i think the media coverage (and youtube) add quite a lot to this, but before youtube there was skydivingmovies.com, and if youtube wouldnt have come along another site/portal would be filled up with WS base videos.

so nothing to do about youtube, but i absolutely dislike stuff like the "growings" epictv series that shows how to prepare for brevent. i dont know the guy, i just think its bad move to make a tv show out of the fast way and display how easy it is...
we need the oposite of this, we would need a show about someone that does it the "right" way, to show a proper progression. but honestly i dont think it would help a lot... but i would love to see other people putting up their fuckups, especially good pilots to show that its not all easy going, to show the moments that require skill and experience.

to really reduce the fatality rate a paradigm change in WS base would be necessary, but i really dont think it will happen. the stuff you can do in a big wingsuit is quite limited, because its a tool with the sole purpose of flying good/fast/far. to keep it interesting the easiest way to achieve this is to go closer. lets take a jump like brento for example, without a wingsuit there so much stuff one can pull off there, aerials, tracking, even freefly, rw, other fun jumps, etc. in a big and easy to fly wingsuit, well, what options do you have on brento?
so what options do we have to keep it interesting in a wingsuit besides going closer? opening new alpine stuff is a nice approach, but that requires other skills that not many jumpers bring with them. i really liked the artistic wingsuit stuff, maybe going for speed, distance or height would be a nice challange.

but nothing is going to change because even though im wise assing about this here now, i like to fly wingsuits and its fun to fly "close" to something, its just the purest feeling of flight a human can achieve right now.

ah, yeah, finally back to original topic!
i already held countless hours of safety-speeches in my carreer, most of them were ignored, but i made it to talk some people out of stupid shit so i will continue , if only 5% is heard im fine with it!

 

It absolutely is a numbers game.
If you think you have a 99% chance of surviving your line and you are an enthusiastic wingsuiter, then you'll probably die within a few months. If you decide to go for a 99.9% probability of surviving each jump, then wingsuit base will probably kill you.
In order to have an 80-90% chance of surviving your wingsuit base habit (extraordinarly dangerous for most of society but fairly standard for risk-management sports), you'll need to ensure a 99.99% chance of survival at each jump.
How many proxi-wingsuiters work within this margin of error?!!! It is perfectly normal to be seeing this rate of failure in my opinion.

PS To whom it may concern; is there any chance of a Go-Pro section in the Base Statistics page? It would be very interesting to know how many victims were filming their flight/jump.

Just guessing, but I'm thinking 95+% of all base jumps are done with a camera. And even higher when we are talking about Legal wsbase. So this would be largely meaningless, I'm curious how many had OTHER cameras pointed at them.

Given how badly everyone is bollixing up the BASE analogies, I think we should leave the innocent guns and turtles out of the discussion from now on.



Sorry 434, I love ya man, but BASE is not "as safe as you make it."

BASE is never safe. Never. BASE is very dangerous no matter how safe you try to make it. Period. Some people just work extra hours to make it more dangerous than it is to start with -- or they get caught up in a "moment" and purposely or inadvertently go deeper into danger than they notice until it's too late.

"Safe BASE jump" and "conservative BASE jumper" are both oxymorons and if you think otherwise, you're going to learn otherwise at some point unless you're really lucky.

You know, like me. I should have died on more than one BASE jump but didn't because I was lucky -- basically everyone who's been doing it for a while can say the same for themselves.

My own motto about BASE, or riding motorcycles in L.A. traffic or anything else really dangerous is:

"Don't push it when doing it all is pushing it."

And sometimes, even that is not enough to keep you above room temperature.

That is the way of it.


44

I think that one big issue could be the number of people getting into the sport (or being helped into the sport) before they actually can even wrap their heads around what they are getting into. If you don't have a good understanding of what you are getting into, it is very easy to genuinely believe that you know what fuck is going on.One of the scariest moments for me in BASE was looking back at what I wholeheartedly "knew' were my abilities as a jumper, and having no fucking clue how clueless I really was. Looking back and seeing all of the many angles that I was completely unaware of and how they could have ended me, is super scary. There are many of these "variables" that we still realize or discover everyday regardless of experience level, (new ways to die) but there certainly are a whole lot of them to get to know before stepping into the sport. I would consider myself quite conservative overall. But honestly, looking back at the beginning of my base career, I can say that I genuinely thought I was prepared for every jump. (there were many that I was. There were many that I knew I wasn't and walked away from. And there were a few absolutely stupid ones that I only realized were stupid looking back on them.) The ability to evaluate oneself is the most important skill in this sport. You need to have all the info/knowledge possible to obtain about the sport, so that you can even begin to know what the hell it is about BASE that you need to evaluate yourself on. Otherwise virtually NOTHING else translates from gay skyjumping and motocross or extreme fishing or whatever the hell qualifies you as a badass. Sure some are quicker than others, but the knowledge still needs to be there. Knowledge can come quickly, but understanding takes a long time. (still trying to figure out how not to exit on my back ;-)

My last swiss trip was 2011. A good friend that had a "couple" base jumps and few hundred skydives was set on joining for that trip at the time. After strongly suggesting it not be a good idea to plan on jumping in the valley with (2 or 3) jumps, I said that I would not go along on the trip. I decided to not go to swiss stay and jump in (random european country with many jumpable bridges at the time), or would go but only if additional rig was left back. Last day of that trip, with a bunch of grown ass bad ass base jumpers crying in the pub over the friend gone that day, put things into perspective for the jumper. He came up to me and said "I get it"... "I don't want this for you guys..."

I am lucky I survived my first several jumps, and I regret having not listened to the "experienced guys" earlier on. But for some its not even egos, just legitimate ignorance. With the high number of super experienced guys lost, the ignorant newbies (like myself) should be jumping off some local freestander for the nect 5 years or reading every single post on this forum until their eyes bleed. (from reading)

Again, I'm an idiot. But at least every few years I look back and see what an idiot I've been.

Cheers

i think people are missing the point. its good to try to help guide people, and give them advice. but incidents stemming from people who shouldnt be getting into base jumping seem to be a unfortunate side effect of having an unregulated sport.

it can be similiar to swooping, people see it and love how its looks, but few heed the warnings of experienced jumpers because they want it now. a person has to have the personality to be able to take a step back and look at their progression by themselves objectively, if that isnt present then either they get woken up by a scary event or close call, or they end up in the dirt.

why do basejumpers and skydivers always seem to be the biggest wuffos?

what for you fly close, what for you turn low.

People think it's all about misery and desperation and death and all that shite which is not to be ignored, but what they forget is the sheer pleasure of it. Otherwise we wouldn't do it. After all, we're not fucking stupid. At least, we're not that fucking stupid.

Base can be done safe, but we all know we have to push our limits to know them right? Thats where most is in hurry to prove something for themselves and others.

We are far beyond the stage where knownledge and gear is an factor anymore, so it is only up to each person to know their talent and skills. I will continue to say base is as safe you make it until I die. I never had any near death experience during my 500 jumps, but I had sniveling canopies, pilot chute delays, off heading, linetwists, lowpulls, deepshit lowpulls, windy antennas where i ended up facing the fucking antenna, etc, but it was all good, since i managed to get out of with skills and the limit on my side. It is up to you and no one else.

Freeskiing and freeclimbing is in my eyes far beyond base in being a dangerous sport, but base is easier. God sak it is just to be stupid enough or got enough balls to step over the edge. You cant do that in other high risk activities.

Baby turtles can do little to affect their chances of survival. They hatch, they head for the sea to escape danger and some (lots) get picked off along the way. The continuation of the species depends on how many survive so a surplus are produced expecting wastage. Wingsuit BASE isn't required for the continuation of the species. Humans can affect their chances of survival when it comes to any risky activity.

I raced your moms ego, Chuck

If you can't do the time, don't do the crime.

I´m guessing as well but I´m guessing that your guess is pretty far off... At least I personally mostly only nowadays jump with a gopro if I´m opening a new jump (and even then only if I remembered to take it with) and even there I only wear the gopro for the fact that it actually is nice to look at the new flights on rainy winter days. Also I can see this tendency very much in the group I jump with, it is not rare at all that we are all on top of a nice big WS jump and none of us has a camera with us.

I think 387% of all basejumps are done with camera.

Seeing as for every person who doesn't bring one on a jump, there are at least a dozen who take a minimum of 3 up to 5 GoPros on various sticks, mounts and bits of ductape to compensate

 

Yeah my analogy is pretty shaky, but it does work. 1000 turtles heading to sea for sure have no control over the attrition rate. Might be 20 - 80%, who knows - definitely not the turtles!
But does a proxi-wingsuiter doing 1000 jumps really have that much control over whether their margin for error is 0.1% or 0.01%. This 0.09% difference in certitude makes a huge difference. It means that this wingsuit flyer goes from having a very good chance of survival (90%) to a very poor chance (the jumper will probably die). How many wingsuiters know their skills well enough to take such a tiny difference into consideration.

I would say that proxi wingsuit flying does not function long-term for most flyers. Maybe those few who would pass all the cognitive selection tests to become fighter pilots have the necessary skills, but let's face it most of us don't. Not everybody can become a fighter pilot but absolutely anybody can buy a wingsuit!!!

Anyway, being a mediocre tracker I have nothing to worry about because recent statistics prove that it is 100% impossible to die tracking, even with mediocre skills!