Increasing numbers of wingsuit jumpers are dying (2016)

Perhaps because:

> And it wastes the coroners time.

means it does affect them (the tax payers)?

Personally, I think as few things as possible should be banned/restricted. If things directly impact other peoples lives, then sure, but if its indirect or minimal, then perhaps not. Its a difficult balance though (but in general, I'm in the "the less government involvement in the peoples lives the better" camp).

2016 was by far and away our worst year on record. We lost newbies, heros, and damn near all levels in between. Since then, a few sites have taken a more locked-down approach where we used to be welcome, and as a community we've made progress to band together to push education and conservative decision making over 'dude that was so sketchy.'

A lot of people have brought up the why - why do people do this when they know it's so dangerous? Well, that's a question that everyone needs to make for themselves, but for me it's quite simply that it's the only time I've found my mind to be quiet. It forces me to be present, assess everything in a level of detail that is unparalleled in any other time in my life, and quiet down every other distraction.

Also, it's beautiful. Being in the mountains, on top of buildings, out on bridges, climbing antennae, all with some of your closest friends? It's incredible. There's absolutely nothing on the planet like that level of adventure.

With all that said, it's fucking dangerous. I've managed to have a somewhat clean track record in my two years in the sport, with only two broken bones, but I have probably 20 of the people on the Base Fatality List still in my phone, four of whom I'd call great friends. It's fucking awful losing friends like that, but it's who we are. If they wouldn't have lived a life like this, would they have been them?

A little while back I had the lightning strike closest to my family, when we lost Ian. Here's his story:

https://vimeo.com/167054481

I'm sorry, but you've heard wrong. Skydiving is super dangerous, relative to other sports. Less than wingsuit flying, but more death per participant than most other sports.

There's an unfortunate infographic that's made the rounds that makes skydiving look relatively as dangerous as football, but they made a mistake with the numbers and left people with an incorrect and extremely misleading impression. A lot of people are now saying that skydiving is "as safe" or "safer" than football, and that is flat out false. I hope nobody is motivated to skydive thinking it's super safe, because it's not.

> There are multiple redundancies and you are almost never at the mercy of randomness like with winsuits

For a single jumper, there's one redundancy - a spare chute - and they fail and/or tangle at about the rate of 1 in 800 jumps, from what I recall.

For a BASE jumper, there's no redundancy, they don't normally have a spare.

Almost everyone who jumps more than a few times does formation jumping or other group activities, if not get into BASE or wingsuit. Formation jumps put you at the mercy of other people, which are less controllable than mountains or trees. I stopped formation jumping after a couple of bad ones where I had close calls that were other people's mistakes.

Most of the people I knew during my time skydiving are now dead, more than a dozen people.