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Increasing numbers of wingsuit jumpers are dying (2016)

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Re: Increasing numbers of wingsuit jumpers are dying (2016)

#101

Post by manarth »

base698 wrote: post #39
eternalcode wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it not banned?

It is in the land of the free. It's generally not banned in Europe, so most BASE jumpers who are active spend at least a few weeks a year there. About 10 to 20 die world wide in about a population of 1000 or so active jumpers. It can be done relatively safely but the group isn't big enough to regulate effectively and most BASE jumpers are hostile to anyone mentioning the idea.

  It is in the land of the free
I'm aware that BASE jumping is banned in US National Parks (and it's been argued that this increases the risk [1]), but it doesn't seem to be banned generally in America (see Perrine Bridge, or Bridge Day, for example [2]).

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2015/may/22/did-rules...

[2] http://www.nerverush.com/base-jumping-locations-plan-jump/

Re: Increasing numbers of wingsuit jumpers are dying (2016)

#103

Post by __s »

base698 wrote: post #43
chrissnell wrote: post #16

I had a close call this summer whitewater rafting on the Upper Animas River in Colorado and it has caused me to re-think every serious risk I take and has changed me in a big way. I was participating in a multi-day trip run by one of the local guiding outfits through the Upper section of the river, a much more difficult and serious undertaking than the Lower Animas, which is frequently run by average day-tripping tou…

Eight or nine years ago, I lept off a tower from about 800 ft. After opening the parachute and scanning for my landing area I turned towards it to the left, which was slow and felt off. "Maybe I'll turn to the right and come around from the back", at which point the parachute collapses and spins violently from behind. I reach up and grab the left riser, the strap that connects you to the harness, and stopped the spin…

Just a nit, because I spent years not realizing this due to my accent, but it's "I'd have" not "I'd of". It sounds like "I'd of" because "I'd've"

gz on surviving the fall so that you could have random people correct your grammar in the future. Glad to hear you kept with it-- people are surprisingly risk adverse yet will ignore passive danger

Re: Increasing numbers of wingsuit jumpers are dying (2016)

#104

Post by manarth »

kobeya wrote: post #72
KGIII wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They said safer than BASE jumping, though they didn't capitalize it. BASE jumping is jumping off stuff, not out of stuff. It is an acronym. Building Antenna Span Earth, I think.

I'm aware of what BASE means. Grandparent post was comparing BASE jumping to wingsuit skydiving out of airplanes and helicopters. Parent said that BASE jumping off of mountains could be safer. I called bullshit.

  [Base Wingsuiting] is safer than regular base jumping provided
  you don't try to strafe tree and hilltops and cliffsides
Safer because a wingsuit can allow you to track much further away from the cliff you've just jumped off, which means that a typical deployment issue - where the parachute opens off-heading, therefore inducing a turn - doesn't immediately steer you back into that cliff.

A wingsuit can give you freer air for deployment, which increases the margin for error, but wingsuit BASE seems to be aimed at proximity flying.

Re: Increasing numbers of wingsuit jumpers are dying (2016)

#105

Post by c3833174 »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #68
_tulpa wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should it be? It's not like poeple don't understand the risk - especially by the time they get to the point where they can actually do it. What about all the other 'extreme' sports where death and/or serious injury is a possible outcome?

> Why should it be? Because someone one has to clean up the mess . And it wastes the coroners time. I'm not saying I agree that it should be banned, but those seem like two obvious angles.

People get injured all the time while just walking/climbing and have to be helicoptered out, one august week in the alps has probably enough deaths to cover yearly wingsuits deaths.

Re: Increasing numbers of wingsuit jumpers are dying (2016)

#106

Post by delhanty »

pipio21 wrote: post #97
delhanty wrote: post #69

Six hours late on this thread and I can't see anyone calling out GoPro and friends: >Five days earlier, the GoPro star Uli Emanuele, 29, died when he crashed in the Dolomites of his native country, Italy. Freedom for these people (mostly young men) to die is one thing. But part of GoPro's profits are knowingly built up by a quasi-suicide cult. That's not that different from dealing heroin.

Lots of differences with heroin. I have been volunteer in a Spanish org called "proyecto hombre" that help people with drugs. People on drugs are almost non human in order to take a dose, they will kill you,or steal and they really don't care because the only thing they care about is their next dose. Once you have recovered the person it looks like another one, like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I also did BASE in the pas…

>...like airplanes, is possible because someone quasi suicided

I agree with some of that. Progress and freedom have costs.

Where it gets problematic for me is when there is a promoting entity that doesn't have skin in the game [0].

Also, maybe drugs weren't the best analogy:

What about MMA (mixed-martial arts)? Would the UFC be tolerated if the death-rates matched wing suit jumping?

Also, one-way trips to Mars: Are those people and entities promoting the idea planning to go to Mars themselves?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skin_in_the_game_(phrase)

Re: Increasing numbers of wingsuit jumpers are dying (2016)

#107

Post by AmVess »

The most telling fact is that there is no clear bias of experience in these accidents. This simply means that the method is wrong. For sure, this is a bit like calling water wet, but people will continue to turn themselves into high performance lawn darts until they change their approach to safety.

I think a lot of them don't fully appreciate how little room for error there is. They fly at around 150 MPH which is 220 feet per second. Once someone has realized there is a problem, they have gone 55 feet. Once their body and flight suit have reacted to that problem, they could easily be well past having traveled 300 feet. This is assuming perfection in body and suit. It's radically easy to blow through 600+ feet before your mid/body/suit can come up with a survival plan if you are even a little bit panicky.

Quite a few deaths are from impacting terrain. By this I mean in transit terrain, meaning that they flew into something like the talus or a giant rock and didn't have enough time to avoid it.

Quite a few more deaths are from inability to deploy the parachute in time.

Re: Increasing numbers of wingsuit jumpers are dying (2016)

#108

Post by mulletbum »

kbart wrote: post #94
j_s wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's gotta be safer ways to get an adrenaline rush. I was suprised to see no mention of VR as a potential alternative anywhere in the thread. I suppose realism still has a long way to go!

I doubt VR will ever replace dangerous sports. You get adrenaline rush precisely for the fact that you realize it's dangerous with a real potential of getting killed or wounded and the fact that you get away with it. Sitting in an armchair with no such potential consequences might get you some thrills but it's nowhere close to the real adrenaline rush. I don't actively pursuit this feeling, but driving motorcycle reg…

This is why I always wish I went into game development. Maybe it can't be the same thing, but the experience can still be extraordinary. Even playing a game like Kerbal Space Program makes you feel like an astronaut. I can't imagine how good virtual reality can get.

Re: Increasing numbers of wingsuit jumpers are dying (2016)

#109

Post by ge96 »

kbart wrote: post #94
j_s wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's gotta be safer ways to get an adrenaline rush. I was suprised to see no mention of VR as a potential alternative anywhere in the thread. I suppose realism still has a long way to go!

I doubt VR will ever replace dangerous sports. You get adrenaline rush precisely for the fact that you realize it's dangerous with a real potential of getting killed or wounded and the fact that you get away with it. Sitting in an armchair with no such potential consequences might get you some thrills but it's nowhere close to the real adrenaline rush. I don't actively pursuit this feeling, but driving motorcycle reg…

Also that feeling of falling, when you jump out of a plane that's the scariest part in my experience the initial drop. Then when the parachute is open, you look up at these thin nylon strings holding you up.

Re: Increasing numbers of wingsuit jumpers are dying (2016)

#110

Post by iaskwhy »

dvcrn wrote: post #32
chrissnell wrote: post #16

I had a close call this summer whitewater rafting on the Upper Animas River in Colorado and it has caused me to re-think every serious risk I take and has changed me in a big way. I was participating in a multi-day trip run by one of the local guiding outfits through the Upper section of the river, a much more difficult and serious undertaking than the Lower Animas, which is frequently run by average day-tripping tou…

Nowhere near that close for me and a lot more soft, but still one of these “oh shit” moments was when I decided to go swimming when waves were bigger than usual due to a coming storm. It was all fun until I realized I wasn’t able to swim back to the shore to where I can stand. Every time I tried, a wave knocked me further into the ocean and my leftover stamina kept dropping. I was freaking out and had no idea how to…

I've been in that situation myself, a wave luckily brought me closer to the shore as I was about to quit and then I could just run to safety. I'm much more aware of dangerous zones in beaches nowadays. I recommend everyone to see a few of these videos: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=how+to+get+out+...
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