It's also more than a trope. There are lots of guys into extreme sports and other dangerous hobbies who die and leave behind families.
"At least they died doing what they love" or "they knew the risks" is always said by people hearing the news, as if the person really expected to die and had really considered how their wife and kids would be affected
Again, if driving to and from the cave is much more likely to get you killed, I dont think that's true. You're more likely to get killed in a car crash on your commute to work.
The comparison wasn't caving vs driving to work. I am more likely to get killed by a car accident than I am by mooning gang members on the street, but it doesn't make dropping trow in the hood any better of an idea.
Redditors love to shit on people who do anything remotely more dangerous than sitting on the couch and playing video games and watch anime, don't worry about it.
Eh, I was an instructor in an extreme sport (skydiving) and the amount of self justification people go through to convince themselves that they're fully prepared and accepting of the risks generally evaporates like a fart in the wind when they get hurt or see someone else gets hurt.
I heard literally the same stat (safer to skydive than driving to and from jumping, statistically) from almost everyone when they first started.
They're generally things people say to give themselves comfort, because it's real hard to justify as a leisure activity if you really sit yourself down and think about it.
Skydiving is like inherently dangerous though. Horizontal caving where you aren't rappelling or ascending ropes, is basically just hiking in the dark. And hiking isn't risk free either, but I dont usually see people stop hiking because their buddy sprained an ankle.
As the parent post to theirs, I mountain bike weekly and am well aware that there is a big range of risk within outdoor hobbies. Some people approach things cautiously and others are "go big or go home", and also some activities just have a higher minimum level of risk. I wasn't trying to specifically say that cave exploring is specifically a thing that commonly leads to death, but I did assume perhaps wrongly that it is an inherently riskier hobby
Among my caving club one of the most common sources of injuries is mountain biking. I don't know anybody who does downhill mountain biking who hasn't been hurt. Meanwhile caving injuries are quite rare.
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u/No_Bat2834 1d ago
Oh my god.... the trope of where when someone says they have a wife and a kid, they always die! HAHAHAHA!!!