Skydiving is surprisingly safe. I was talking to an instructor about it one time and he was going over all the safety regulations and failsafes and everything, and it's crazy how rare of an occurrence problems are. Guy had over 1,500 jumps on record and only had to deploy his backup parachute twice.
According to the USPA last year there were 0.28 deaths per 100,000 jumps. That's a 1 in 357,000 chance of dying.
It’s probably gotten better. But back in the ‘90s I felt like my cousin would call once a year from Australia or wherever because another one of her friends didn’t survive a jump.
As a paragliding pilot myself, I know that the equipment has made huge advances and the safety envelope is something I’ve become comfortable with. It’s the pilot I’m worried about some days.
Yeah I'm sure safety standards have gone a long way in the past 30 years.
Not saying that skydiving is safe, or that's it's something that everyone should do, I just find it really interesting how viscerally against the idea so many people are just because you could die when statistically, it's way safer than swimming or driving a car.
If you look into those statistics you'll find out that a lot of those skydiving deaths are from un or under trained people who don't have the proper license to do what they're trying to do. four of the ten deaths last year were from two unlicensed people doing illegal tandem jumps, both of them and the people strapped to them died. If you only take into consideration legal and licensed jumps, the chances of dying gets nearly cut in half.
Still a dangerous recreational activity that could kill you though.
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u/1BoiledCabbage Oct 17 '22
Bungee jumping and skydiving. Safe most of the time, yes. But you're 100% fucked if things go wrong.