Watched a participant jump to his death

[Rach3]

If everyone else jumped off a bridge...

FAYETTEVILLE, W.Va. - Thousands of people watched a participant jump to his death from a bridge during a popular festival Saturday when his parachute opened too late, a sheriff said.

Brian Lee Schubert, 66, died of injuries suffered when he hit the New River, 876 feet below the New River Gorge Bridge, officials said. After the man's body was recovered and taken to a local funeral home, jumping at the festival resumed, said Fayette County Sheriff Bill Laird.
...
The sport of BASE jumping involves parachuting off buildings, antennae, spans and earth. Since 1981, there have been at least 100 BASE-jump fatalities around the world,

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061021/ap_on_re_us/bridge_day_death

 

[Evo]

After the man's body was recovered and taken to a local funeral home, jumping at the festival resumed, said Fayette County Sheriff Bill Laird.

Ok, once the dead guy is out of the way we can get back to having fun!

 

[mattmns]

Base Jumping looks so crazy! I would put that on my list of things to do before I die; maybe I should put it closer to the end of my list

 

[Stevedye56]

I don'y know about you but after one person died, I am quite certain I wouldn't jump... Althought I would like to try skydiving someday. If I get a chance and get good id try base jumping but there's no was id ever just base jump with no experiance. Its all timing. So much could go wrong

 

[Moonbear]

Ahhh, now I understand why they charge a "property tax" on cars in this state (and in some counties, they even charge it for dogs!) to fund the education system. Apparently, the education system is desperate for help.

 

[Moonbear]

Base Jumping looks so crazy! I would put that on my list of things to do before I die; maybe I should put it closer to the end of my list

Yeah, put it RIGHT before you die.

 

[Stevedye56]

Yeah, put it RIGHT before you die.

Thats what id do

 

[mattmns]

I don'y know about you but after one person died, I am quite certain I wouldn't jump... Althought I would like to try skydiving someday. If I get a chance and get good id try base jumping but there's no was id ever just base jump with no experiance. Its all timing. So much could go wrong

Ohh, no question about that. There is no way I would do it out of nowhere. I think I would most certainly go skydiving first.

 

[Danger]

maybe I should put it closer to the end of my list

I would have considered this an instance of evolution in action, except the guy was too old already. Maybe it was just senility in action.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

When I heard an expert base jumper defend his sport as safer than driving because many more people are killed in auto accidents than base jumping accidents... Okay, that settles that: Darwinian sport.

I once saw a woman base jump from a cliff for her 40th birthday. The chute failed and she dropped like a rock, and died. The logic in jumping from a cliff just didn't work for me anymore after that.

 

[Rach3]

When I heard an expert base jumper defend his sport as safer than driving because many more people are killed in auto accidents than base jumping accidents...

A fascinating, information-free statistic. It's really quite impossible for the tiny, loony community of base-jumpers to outperish the ~1 million auto deaths per year, unless they each died thousands of times over, per year, from jumping accidents alone. So the statistic basically assures us that, the average base-jumper only kills himself hundreds of times per year or fewer.

Now that's a content-free statistic!

 

[moo]

I would put that on my list of things to do before I die; maybe I should put it closer to the end of my list

This made me literally "LOL".

I heard an expert base jumper defend his sport as safer than driving because many more people are killed in auto accidents than base jumping accidents...

I'm with Rach3 on this one. By this standard, even suicide is safer than driving. Of course, some drivers I've seen...

My personal sentiments are much the same for all parachuting sports. I just can't see any reason to jump from a perfectly good airplane, bridge, cliff, etc...

moo
__________________
moo (moo') adj. Of no practical importance; irrelevant, such as a moo point (i.e. a cow's opinion).

 

[russ_watters]

My personal sentiments are much the same for all parachuting sports. I just can't see any reason to jump from a perfectly good airplane, bridge, cliff, etc...

Well, iirc, you'd have to do normal skydiving something like 100 times (or was it 1000? Can't remember right now) a year for the risk to equal the risk of dying in a car accident.

Base jumping just cuts out all of the safety margins normal skydiving has.

 

[Stevedye56]

Well, iirc, you'd have to do normal skydiving something like 100 times (or was it 1000? Can't remember right now) a year for the risk to equal the risk of dying in a car accident.

Base jumping just cuts out all of the safety margins normal skydiving has.

Yeah, because you're just throwing the parachute out. You would have to hope that you have good timing, because there's so little time to react than in skydiving.

 

[moo]

Well, iirc, you'd have to do normal skydiving something like 100 times (or was it 1000? Can't remember right now) a year for the risk to equal the risk of dying in a car accident.

Lol, yeah but I'm more oriented toward increasing the risk of living. Maybe it's just a personal quirk...

moo

__________________
moo (moo') adj. Of no practical importance; irrelevant, such as a moo point (i.e. a cow's opinion).

 

[russ_watters]

Lol, yeah but I'm more oriented toward increasing the risk of living. Maybe it's just a personal quirk...

Well to me, decreasing your risk of dying also decreases your risk of living. Ie, most things that are worth doing involve some level of risk.

 

[russ_watters]

Ok, found it: odds of dying skydiving (per dive) 1 in 75,000. ( http://www.skydivecsc.com/skydive/skydiving_statistics.php )

One-year odds of dying in a car accident: 1 in 6,500 ( http://www.reason.com/rb/rb081106.shtml )

So I was off by an order of magnitude - to equalize your odds of dying in a car and dying skydiving, you'd have to jump eleven times a year, not 100.

Anyway, yeah, I know this thread was about base jumping - I'm just saying, everyone needs to try skydiving once...

 

[moo]

Well to me, decreasing your risk of dying also decreases your risk of living.

Ah, so no backup chute for you then? Ya must be a hoot at Russian Roulette parties. I'M KIDDING!

Ie, most things that are worth doing involve some level of risk.

Some things, but it's the level of risk and "worth doing" we disagree on here. Risking death for less than 3 minutes of fun just doesn't happen to meet my personal criteria. I do however, wish you the best of luck at it.

moo
__________________
moo (moo') adj. Of no practical importance; irrelevant, such as a moo point (i.e. a cow's opinion).

 

[Danger]

By this standard, even suicide is safer than driving

That's one of the funniest things that I've read all year.

Get yer mitts off my medal, you little twerp.

 

[Moonbear]

Ok, found it: odds of dying skydiving (per dive) 1 in 75,000. ( http://www.skydivecsc.com/skydive/skydiving_statistics.php )

One-year odds of dying in a car accident: 1 in 6,500 ( http://www.reason.com/rb/rb081106.shtml )

So I was off by an order of magnitude - to equalize your odds of dying in a car and dying skydiving, you'd have to jump eleven times a year, not 100.

Anyway, yeah, I know this thread was about base jumping - I'm just saying, everyone needs to try skydiving once...

Okay, I'm not seeing the logic here. I should try skydiving because less people die doing that than in car accidents? What about other serious injuries? And, I'm still pretty certain the odds of being injured or dying from skydiving are MUCH higher if I actually jump from the plane than if I stay here with my feet firmly planted on the ground.

By the way, that's a rather dubious comparison of statistics there. You're comparing the risk of dying per jump to the risk of dying in a car accident per person. Completely different methods of calculation.

Now, for car fatality statistics, the number of people getting into a car sometime in their lifetime is probably pretty close to the entire population, minus a few Amish perhaps. So, the 1 in 6500 people dying in car accidents is probably pretty close to the number of people getting into cars dying in car accidents. But, according to that first site you linked to, there are only about 25,000 active skydivers (I can't find a statistic for the number of people jumping in any given year to match to the number of fatalities), but in 2004 there were 24 skydiving fatalities in the US. That would put the risk a bit closer to 1 in 1000 skydivers dying in a giving year.

If you're going to calculate the risk by number of jumps, rather than by number of jumpers, like in the site you linked to, then you'd need to calculate the number of car trips made in a year by each member of the population, not the number of people getting into cars anytime in the year. If you calculate it that way, the risk would be much, much, much, much lower. At a bare minimum, most people get into a car at least twice a day to get to school or work or a store and then back home again, and of course there are people who make dozens of trips a day, shuttling kids back and forth to all sorts of activities, running errands to multiple locations, working as delivery drivers, etc. And, well, there are also newborn infants who don't go much of anywhere in cars for a few months, other than the occassional check-up at the pediatrician's office. So, even if I made a very conservative calculation that everyone makes two car trips per day, that's 2 trips/person/day x 365 days/year = 730 car trips/person/year. Multiply that by the population (I'll stick with the population given for the year in your link that has the number of car fatalities). 291,000,000 people * 730 car trips/person/year = 212,430,000,000 car trips/year. NOW you can make a comparison to the number of skydives per year. 212,430,000,000 car trips/year divided by 45,000 car fatalities/year = 4,720,667 So, there's a risk of 1 fatality in 4,720,667 car trips per year. Far better than one fatality in 75,000 jumps, and I'm fairly confident that my estimate of car trips per day is an underestimate.

 

[moo]

Get yer mitts off my medal, you little twerp.

Lol, no need to worry you old geezer. My attempts at humor are sometimes feeble (no offense), nay, occasionally downright geriatric (again, no offense), and as this train of thought is getting a bit old (sorry) I should probably retire it (sheesh, I really am sorry) before it expires (uh... er... ah, never mind...).

moo
__________________
moo (moo') adj. Of no practical importance; irrelevant, such as a moo point (i.e. a cow's opinion).

 

[Ivan Seeking]

By the way, that's a rather dubious comparison of statistics there. You're comparing the risk of dying per jump to the risk of dying in a car accident per person. Completely different methods of calculation...

,,.So, there's a risk of 1 fatality in 4,720,667 car trips per year. Far better than one fatality in 75,000 jumps...

Thank you.

 

[Danger]

Lol, no need to worry you old geezer. My attempts at humor are sometimes feeble (no offense), nay, occasionally downright geriatric (again, no offense), and as this train of thought is getting a bit old (sorry) I should probably retire it (sheesh, I really am sorry) before it expires (uh... er... ah, never mind...).

Stop...

<gasp>

You're killin' me here...


Hey, wait a minute...

 

[moo]

__________________
moo (moo') adj. Of no practical importance; irrelevant, such as a moo point (i.e. a cow's opinion).

 

[russ_watters]

Okay, I'm not seeing the logic here. I should try skydiving because less people die doing that than in car accidents?

Huh? No - you should try skydiving because it is fun. I didn't mention that and was only addressing the main objection to skydiving (that it is dangerous).

What about other serious injuries?

Well fortunately, most other injuries from skydiving are minor. The error margin simply doesn't allow medium-to-serious inuries.

And, I'm still pretty certain the odds of being injured or dying from skydiving are MUCH higher if I actually jump from the plane than if I stay here with my feet firmly planted on the ground.

Certainly, but that is why I said most things in life involve risk. Your life would be far safer if you never got out of bed, but that isn't a good reason to do it.

By the way, that's a rather dubious comparison of statistics there. You're comparing the risk of dying per jump to the risk of dying in a car accident per person. Completely different methods of calculation.

No, I compared per person per year for both assuming an average driver and by calculating how many jumps you'd need per year to equalize the skydiving risk with the driving risk. I did normalize the skydiving stats as best I could, converting the per jump to per person per year given a certain jump frequency. Obviously, the driving stats depend on how much a person drives, but that's a tougher stat to use. All in all, I think the the way I compared them is a pretty fair way to do it.

Now, for car fatality statistics, the number of people getting into a car sometime in their lifetime is probably pretty close to the entire population, minus a few Amish perhaps. So, the 1 in 6500 people dying in car accidents is probably pretty close to the number of people getting into cars dying in car accidents. But, according to that first site you linked to, there are only about 25,000 active skydivers (I can't find a statistic for the number of people jumping in any given year to match to the number of fatalities), but in 2004 there were 24 skydiving fatalities in the US. That would put the risk a bit closer to 1 in 1000 skydivers dying in a giving year.

Yes, but aren't you making the mistake you were just pointing out to me above with cars? It depends on how many jumps you make. Ie, Odds per skydiver are only relevant if you are an average skydiver and there is a wide variation between the median and mean for skydivers: the vast majority of skydivers do it only once.

If you're going to calculate the risk by number of jumps, rather than by number of jumpers, like in the site you linked to, then you'd need to calculate the number of car trips made in a year by each member of the population, not the number of people getting into cars anytime in the year.

If you calculate it that way, the risk would be much, much, much, much lower. At a bare minimum, most people get into a car at least twice a day to get to school or work or a store and then back home again, and of course there are people who make dozens of trips a day, shuttling kids back and forth to all sorts of activities, running errands to multiple locations, working as delivery drivers, etc.

No offense, Moonbear, but it seems like you are trying to argue your way out of a perfectly relevant statistic. Yeah, I certainly understand that your risk of dying per car trip is a lot lower than your risk of dying per skydive, but that is comparing apples to oranges. It actually sounds to me a lot like the gambler's fallacy. If you wake up every morning and consider your odds of dying in a car accident that day vs your odds of dying skydiving that day, you'll choose driving every day --- and end up far more more likely to die in a car accident because you haven't considered how driving every day weighs into the odds.

And, well, there are also newborn infants who don't go much of anywhere in cars for a few months, other than the occassional check-up at the pediatrician's office.

Sure. Everyone is different, of course.

So, even if I made a very conservative calculation that everyone makes two car trips per day, that's 2 trips/person/day x 365 days/year = 730 car trips/person/year. Multiply that by the population (I'll stick with the population given for the year in your link that has the number of car fatalities). 291,000,000 people * 730 car trips/person/year = 212,430,000,000 car trips/year. NOW you can make a comparison to the number of skydives per year. 212,430,000,000 car trips/year divided by 45,000 car fatalities/year = 4,720,667 So, there's a risk of 1 fatality in 4,720,667 car trips per year. Far better than one fatality in 75,000 jumps, and I'm fairly confident that my estimate of car trips per day is an underestimate.

So if I make the same number of jumps as I do car trips in a year, those are my odds. How is that helpful if I only jump once a year, but I drive 730 times per year? See, if you ask yourself the risk every time you get into the car but don't ask yourself the risk again at the end of the year, you'll think you're being safer than you really are. Your odds of dying at a certain activity depend on how many times you do it!

Here: if all you are looking for are personalized numbers, here's something you can take to your odometer: the odds of dying per passenger mile in a car are .8 per hundred million. I drive about 15,000 miles per year, putting me at a yearly risk of dying of about 1 in 8,300. That's comparable to what I said above.
http://www.nsc.org/lrs/statfaq.htm

For my risk of dying skydiving, I didn't do it last year so my risk was zero, but the year I did it, there are two ways to calculate it: by person or by dive. Since I know how many times I dove (once), there is no reason to use the less accurate odds per skydiver, which assumes every skydiver is average. And for that, it was 1 in 75,000.

 

[russ_watters]

Moo mentinoed Russian Roulette - Moonbear, the logic you are using for cars works for Russian Roulette: since the odds are 1 in 6 this time, you may as well. And since they'll still be 1 in 6 next time, you may as well again. And again, and again, and again...

Obviously, 1 in 6 odds aside, Russian Roulette is a bad idea because the overall odds are additive -- as are the overall odds of dying in a car or in skydiving. So to know how much the overall risk is, you need to consider how many times you do the activity.

 

[Moonbear]

For my risk of dying skydiving, I didn't do it last year so my risk was zero, but the year I did it, there are two ways to calculate it: by person or by dive. Since I know how many times I dove (once), there is no reason to use the less accurate odds per skydiver, which assumes every skydiver is average. And for that, it was 1 in 75,000.

Then why did you even make the comparison to driving? Your post implied that sky diving was safer than driving by comparing unrelated statistics. I tried to illustrate how they compare if you make them a bit more related. But the main point still is that there really is no valid comparison. I still prefer the odds of staying on the ground over skydiving at all. If I could avoid getting into a car and still do all the things I want to do in life, I'd avoid that too...except my alternatives here would likely be riskier (biking or walking on winding mountain roads with no shoulders and a lot of inexperienced college students driving on them seems a lot more dangerous than being in a car with those same bad drivers on the road, simply because the car encases me in a more protective shell than a bike would if they hit me...that doesn't mean walking or biking is more dangerous than driving, just that it's my perception where I live). One shouldn't choose to do something simply because the risk of death is lower than for something else they do all the time. Some risks people take out of necessity, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't avoid other risks if they have the choice to do so.

I also find the comparison to staying in bed humorous too. Most of my deceased relatives have died in bed. That sounds a lot riskier than even skydiving.

 

[Danger]

Your life would be far safer if you never got out of bed

You have obviously never met Sheila...

 

[NoTime]

You have obviously never met Sheila...

No, but I think she has at least one relative
Unfortunately, we have gone separate ways so something else has to do me in now.

I find this entire thread rather amusing.
After all the risk of dying is 100%.
Why not enjoy the ride.
I doubt anything you do is riskier than breathing.

I'm quite amazed to still be around after all these years.
Just one example and hardly my closest call, when I returned from a trip to San Francisco, I turned on the news to find the highway I had traveled up and down maybe 50 times in the previous three days had pancaked from the earthquake.

I can't say that base jumping is my idea of a fun sport but, I have no complaints with those that do.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

I find this entire thread rather amusing.
After all the risk of dying is 100%.
Why not enjoy the ride.

To a large extent I agree, however, there are calculated risks, and then there is stupidity.

Do you wear a seat belt?

 

[russ_watters]

Then why did you even make the comparison to driving? Your post implied that sky diving was safer than driving by comparing unrelated statistics.

Huh? I'm starting to wonder if you are screwing with me here. You are the one who is trying to compare the per-event odds for each. Saying one is "safer" than the other is too imprecise because it depends on if you are talking per event or overall odds. I am saying that the per-event odds are irrelevant because the more times you "play" the more likely you are to "win" and my calculations show the overall likelyhood of "winning" given reasonable assumptions about how often people "play". Let me try to re-explain my point as simply as I can:

--------------------------------------

Fact: If you are a typical driver who goes skydiving once a year, you are eleven times more likely to die in a car accident than in a sky diving accident.

Logical Conclusion: It is reasonable (ie, not reckless) to go skydiving once a year because doing so does not substantially alter your overall risk of death.

I used driving as the example because the statistics are easy to find and it is something that is relatively risky, yet people still choose to do it. Call driving "safer" if you want, but the fact of the matter is that even if you skydive ten times a year, you are more likely to die in a car accident than in a skydiving accident.

 

[Moonbear]

Huh? I'm starting to wonder if you are screwing with me here. You are the one who is trying to compare the per-event odds for each. Saying one is "safer" than the other is too imprecise because it depends on if you are talking per event or overall odds. I am saying that the per-event odds are irrelevant because the more times you "play" the more likely you are to "win" and my calculations show the overall likelyhood of "winning" given reasonable assumptions about how often people "play". Let me try to re-explain my point as simply as I can:

--------------------------------------

Fact: If you are a typical driver who goes skydiving once a year, you are eleven times more likely to die in a car accident than in a sky diving accident.

Logical Conclusion: It is reasonable (ie, not reckless) to go skydiving once a year because doing so does not substantially alter your overall risk of death.

I used driving as the example because the statistics are easy to find and it is something that is relatively risky, yet people still choose to do it. Call driving "safer" if you want, but the fact of the matter is that even if you skydive ten times a year, you are more likely to die in a car accident than in a skydiving accident.

I think we're on two completely different tracks here. I thought you were making a different argument entirely. At this rate, yeah, of course driving is a lot more risky, at least for me. I actually drive daily; I have zero risk of dying in a skydiving accident, unless you count the miniscule chance of a skydiver landing on me while I'm out walking somewhere. I don't think that justifies skydiving as being safe though, or safer than driving. If I went skydiving as often as I drive, I'd probably be dead already.

But, then, you do realize your argument is sort of like saying you need to buy however many million lottery tickets in order to win. But, that's just the probability. In reality, someone can buy just one lottery ticket and have it be the winner. If it's your chute that tangles up, you're just as dead if it's your first jump or your 75,000th jump. If there's no need to participate in a risky activity, why do it? It does increase the overall risk. If people could avoid driving, they probably would too. I already avoid unnecessary driving. I don't just drive aimlessly out in the country for fun, I only drive when I need to get someplace. So why would I jump out of a plane if I didn't need to? Why would I even get IN a plane if I didn't need to? Not many people die of being gored by bulls every year, but that doesn't mean I'm going to jump into a bull pen just for fun and try arguing it's not going to increase my risk of death much because it happens so infrequently.

 

[3trQN]

Skydiing is a pretty safe sport these days. Dropzone has a list of fatalities in the sport but i don't think it extends to BASE jumpers.

"The excitement a gambler feels is proportional to the size of his bet, and the probabillity of him winning" In Skydiving & BASE jumping you bet with your life, it doesn't get much more exciting than that.

 

[NoTime]

To a large extent I agree, however, there are calculated risks, and then there is stupidity.

Do you wear a seat belt?

If I'm flying an aircraft, then yes.
I don't like banging my head on the ceiling.

If you're driving the car, then yes.
Chances are you'll just slam on the brakes and just run into whatever is in your way.

If I'm driving a car, then NO!
I'll be busy avoiding what's coming at me.
That's worked more times than I care to count.

I'd be dead now for about 45 years if I had been wearing one.
Once on a mountain road that flooded after a cloudburst.
I would have been skewered by the tree branch though the drivers seat.
The other on a steep downhill that iced over in July.
I would have been sliced in half by the steel guard wire that almost cut the roof off.
Good thing about that "almost" was the 400' drop I ended up hanging over.

Fortunately, seat belts didn't exist then.

Am I stupid?
Perhaps.
I'm also still alive.

Can seatbelts save your life?
Sure.
Can they kill you?
Yep.

That's the thing about statistics.
Your results may vary.