Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Increasing numbers of wingsuit jumpers are dying (2016)

nationalgeographic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 275 posts

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

#161

Post by CyberDroiDz »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #64
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…

Not to "umm actually" your excellent story, but rock climbing is not that dangerous. It's about as dangerous as driving, which people do all the time without even thinking about it. Mountaineering is where the danger is there, primarily.

One accidental sweat slip on a 60 foot climbing wall can paralyze you for life.

Trust in your line, I guess.

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

#162

Post by TremendousJudge »

AmVess wrote: post #107

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…

I think there are a lot of parallels with motor racing here. It was extremely dangerous on its early days, and didn't get safer when drivers got more experienced. It got safer when the cars got safer, and we still get deaths anyway (most recently in F1 the death of Jules Bianchi)

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

#163

Post by jly »

amelius wrote: post #152
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…

I've heard that skydiving triggers this experience at some point. The first time it's frightening. The second to fourth time it gives you an adrenaline rush. The fifth time suddenly you think "holy shit, what am I doing?" At least, that's what a friend told me.

Skydiving is actually a very safe and low-risk 'adrenaline' activity, from what I've heard. There are multiple redundancies and you are almost never at the mercy of randomness like with winsuits, climbing, or whitewater rapids. The deaths that do occur are almost always from experienced jumpers that not following recommended safety processes, often in the pursuit of pushing things to the edge. The point is that unlike some other extreme sports, most skydiving deaths are preventable by conservative jumping.

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

#164

Post by Piskvorrr »

cpncrunch wrote: post #29

Proximity flying is just inherently dangerous. Even with power, many people have died. Sparky Imeson, who wrote the "bible" of mountain flying, died from flying too close to terrain. The strange thing is that he was actually flying back to somewhere that he had had an accident in the past (the first time he just got seriously injured, the second time he died). If you look at the accident location, there is a valley a…

...which, of course, defeats the point "I did something insanely dangerous and did not die". Is there a way to increase safety while keeping the feeling of danger? That sounds like a contradiction to me.

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

#165

Post by Piskvorrr »

emodendroket wrote: post #140
sundvor wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many would die of other causes, such as .. car crashes.

Out of any given pool of 1000 people? Probably not as many.

And out of a pool of similar 1000 people? I seem to recall that affluent young men used to kill themselves in sports-car racing in the preceding decades.

Perhaps this is a confounding factor: as Spooky23 notes in a sibling comment, "Cars are engineered to protect all but the most reckless and negligent from death" - but indeed, who else would choose BASE but the reckless and the self-proclaimed immortals?

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

#166

Post by paddy_m »

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…

I ride dirtbikes and ski regularly. I wear all the protective gear and am satisfied with the risk/adrenaline profile. I am often looked at as an adventurous risk taker, but I think people often underestimate other risky activities which impart nowhere near as much adrenaline. Case in point, I was in Thailand last winter. Tourists who otherwise aren't adventurous ride scooters freely because everyone in Thailand does. They ride scooters wearing flip flops without a helmet. The worst was when I was at a bar with an otherwise boring couple, we wanted to go to another bar so they suggested that I get on the back of their scooter, all three of us. They weren't hammered but had been drinking and had little overall two wheel experience. Riding on a scooter in the first place isn't particularly fun, riding with two other people on a scooter is downright dangerous, why risk it. I hired a tuktuk.

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

#167

Post by Piskvorrr »

WalterBright wrote: post #31

Flying is not natural for humans. Our instincts are wrong, and our senses misinform us. This is well known among pilots, and why one has to fly regularly to keep the license, and why a large part of pilot training focuses on trusting the instruments rather than your body.

Typing on a keyboard is not natural for humans, and yet here I am doing just that, having gotten here in unnatural ways: by car, train, and bicycle. I don't think flying is any more unnatural than any of the myriad things that we do each day.

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

#168

Post by chadgeidel »

e40 wrote: post #146
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…

In my 30's I drove a motorcycle, the crotch rocket variety (Kawasaki 750). I had a few very close calls, then decided I had had a good run and a lot of fun, but it was time to hang it up. I could see the writing on the wall: keep doing this and I would have a serious accident, that would either leave me dead or seriously injured. I was, at the time, planning a family, and to this day miss riding but think it was abso…

Rode a sportbike all through college. I was - of course - a hooligan and rode with a bunch of other hooligans. After few of the folks in our group died (I didn't see the accidents, just heard about them) I stopped riding with them and slowed down. I recently got married and just gave up riding completely.

I think I'm a pretty safe rider, but the odds are just against me.

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

#169

Post by itsdevlin »

cylinder wrote: post #129
cvsh wrote: post #4

Probably because it's the most dangerous thing you can do short of actually attempting suicide

How are there so many people willing to do something so insanely stupid? I looked at the BASE fatality list. Vast majority of the names and nationalities are of European descent and/or nationality. Are adventure sports (risk taking for thrill) a white European thing? Do you have to have a sort of arrogance and privilege to disrespect risks like this? I personally have no desire for any of this stuff, as I'm quite awa…

About half are American, mostly from middle-class backgrounds.

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

#170

Post by zdkl »

lillesvin wrote: post #157
lorenzhs wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's nothing valid about it, it's a misspelling and a grammatical mistake.

It's language evolving. When the misspellings/misinterpretations of "a napron" and "an eekname" became common enough we got "an apron" and "a nickname". If anyone — especially native speakers and others with a high degree of mastery of English — claims to have difficulty understanding "I'd of stayed home" then they're most likely being deliberately obtuse or needlessly contrarian.

Or you know, we like to read sentences without getting cerebral SEGFAULTs
Post reply on HN