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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)

#261

Post by sundvor »

sundvor wrote: post #79
base698 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

I guess my point was to try to see through the attractive headlines, to compare base number deaths to a baseline. Looking at http://www.allcountries.org/uscensus/129_death_and_death_rat...

For the age group 25-44 we have 269.8 male deaths per 100k, vs 114.8 female ones - or a total of 192.0 per 100k regardless of gender, or nearly ~2 per 1000.

Looking at http://base-jumping.eu/base-jumping-fatality-list/ , which might be a bit dated, I see 26 fatalities listed for 2015 world wide. I tried to find how many base jumpers exist, and ended up on a forum where it was speculated upon. Perhaps 3000? In which case we have a mortality of ~9 per thousand , no age group discrimination.

So.. from that perhaps naive collection I see a 4-5x increased risk of dying if being a base jumper compared to just being average. However one can ponder if it would help fight depression and such. And, looking at death rates for 45+ , cancer then becoming a major killer with obesity certainly being a factor. How many lives does the fitness regime of base jumping save?

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

#262

Post by emodendroket »

lillesvin wrote: post #252
emodendroket wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely agree, but I can't see how that contradicts anything I just said. Using "of" here is not an example of "language evolution" any more than confusing "to" and "too" is.

It most certainly is evolution. Among other things it shows a change in how "would have" is analyzed by speakers (into "would of"). They wouldn't actually be writing "would of" if it wasn't coherent with their analysis of the parts. (I feel like I shouldn't need to say that the analysis is of course subconscious, but now I did anyway.) Re-analyses like this aren't exactly uncommon. Here are a few other examples with…

What analysis could plausibly link the word "of" with this usage?

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

#263

Post by manarth »

dahart wrote: post #242
manarth wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since nobody needs a license to get in a canoe, you may expect a higher percentage of people who are unprepared for the risks of canoeing to die doing it Breaking down the numbers, the skydiving fatality rate is a reported 1 in 101,083 jumps. To normalise that to a per-year rate, we can take the USPA rate of 350,000 participants conducting 3,000,000 skydives per year [1]. That gives a mean of 8.6 jumps per year for e…

Wrong. USPA has 35k participants, not 350k. http://test.uspa.org/facts-faqs/safety Decade 2010-2015 Average fatalities per year 22.3 Average membership per year 35,189 Fatalities per thousand members 0.63 You didn't bother reading my comment? You just shared the same link I shared and discussed above. Those two links you shared are both examples of failures of statistics. They are comparing the risk of a single jump…

I did read the comment, and reposted the same link to identify it as the source of the canoeing stat.

My reference to 350,000 participants is this text [1]:

  The United States Parachuting Association has nearly 35,000 members.

  It estimates that about 350,000 people complete more than
  3 million jumps in a typical year.
3,000,000 jumps / 350,000 people = 8.57 jumps per person per year (approx).

  It doesn't even pass the smell test that football could
  be more dangerous than skydiving.
The perception of football as "safe" can be attributed to its popularity: many people play football, therefore it's viewed as normal, just like driving.

[1] http://adventure.howstuffworks.com/skydiving8.htm

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

#264

Post by perilunar »

dahart wrote: post #247
caseydurfee wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For some perspective here, the maternal mortality rate in the USA is 28 per 100,000 births. So skydiving is about 50x safer than giving birth.

If not dying every time I jumped resulted in a new human being born, I might agree, but the death rate of births is a net negative. :P Joking aside, that's an interesting comparison but a bit difficult to really put side by side in a way that's fair. Skydivers jump on average around 90 times a year, which is why they die about 1 in 1,600 per year. Mothers only give birth once per year and on average less than 2 times…

>but the death rate of births is a net negative

That’s a seriously interesting point. Maternal death rate is 280 micromorts. Infant death (neonatal + perinatal) is about 1% in modern countries (10,000 micromorts), for a net of -989,700 micromorts, or +0.99 lives (not counting multiple births, etc).

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

#265

Post by barrkel »

lillesvin wrote: post #249
barrkel wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's only a difference in the written word. In the spoken word, it's still "I'd've".

Yes, that's what I'm saying. They're pronounced the exact same and now the written language is starting to exhibit that very thing.

The language isn't changing along your suggested dimension of change.

People have been misspelling homonyms since the beginning of the written word. Variance in homonym spelling decreases over time, though. "I'd of" is no more likely to supplant "I'd've" than "their" is "they're" - i.e. it's just a weak signal that someone is ignorant.

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

#266

Post by Zigurd »

bartread wrote: post #254
Zigurd wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could list 100 things people should not do that are less flamboyant but waste more life and more resources. I'm not saying "Give up on reducing dangerous behaviors." I am saying there are more effective priorities.

Quite: cigarettes, alcohol, bad driving, and cooking whilst drunk and passing out with the stove still on[1] kill way more people annually than BASE jumping and I don't see anybody banning them. [1] I'm obviously not 100% sure about this last one but it seems likely.

Shaking the vending machine until it falls on you. Not sure if that should be ameliorated or not. It could be a key element of human evolution.

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

#267

Post by TremendousJudge »

amygdyl wrote: post #230
TremendousJudge wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

No. I have been a serious F1 fan for closing on four decades and I must implore you and anybody else who might be tempted to discount to present values the hope that you express, to consider just how far motorsports* the physical environment and envelope of racing has been altered:. - magnesium (not alloy!) monocoque body shells were ruled out. - as were countless rare or highly expensive materials that created paper…

So, you're agreeing with me? F1 got safer because the cars got safer, not because the drivers drive more safely (safety measures were pushed by drivers though)

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

#268

Post by dahart »

manarth wrote: post #263
dahart wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wrong. USPA has 35k participants, not 350k. http://test.uspa.org/facts-faqs/safety Decade 2010-2015 Average fatalities per year 22.3 Average membership per year 35,189 Fatalities per thousand members 0.63 You didn't bother reading my comment? You just shared the same link I shared and discussed above. Those two links you shared are both examples of failures of statistics. They are comparing the risk of a single jump…

I did read the comment, and reposted the same link to identify it as the source of the canoeing stat. My reference to 350,000 participants is this text [1]: The United States Parachuting Association has nearly 35,000 members. It estimates that about 350,000 people complete more than 3 million jumps in a typical year. 3,000,000 jumps / 350,000 people = 8.57 jumps per person per year (approx). It doesn't even pass the…

You've used an unsourced figure from a website that used faulty logic to evaluate the risks of skydiving relative to driving, in an intentionally misleading way.

You've done some calculation based on this unsourced number, while ignoring the mortality rate that the USPA publishes.

The USPA themselves says the annual risk of mortality is 0.63 per thousand members. That's about 1 in 1600.

You are off by an order of magnitude. It's no wonder you think skydiving is safer than canoeing, but it is not true.

The stats we have are for members and excludes non-members. But one thing you might be missing is that non-members jump an average of once. At least 90% of the 3.2 million jumps are repeat jumps by members, members comprise the bulk of the statistics anyway.

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

#269

Post by manarth »

dahart wrote: post #268
manarth wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did read the comment, and reposted the same link to identify it as the source of the canoeing stat. My reference to 350,000 participants is this text [1]: The United States Parachuting Association has nearly 35,000 members. It estimates that about 350,000 people complete more than 3 million jumps in a typical year. 3,000,000 jumps / 350,000 people = 8.57 jumps per person per year (approx). It doesn't even pass the…

You've used an unsourced figure from a website that used faulty logic to evaluate the risks of skydiving relative to driving, in an intentionally misleading way. You've done some calculation based on this unsourced number, while ignoring the mortality rate that the USPA publishes. The USPA themselves says the annual risk of mortality is 0.63 per thousand members. That's about 1 in 1600. You are off by an order of mag…

I agree that the reference to 350,000 is unsourced - the article claims that number comes from the USPA, but I can't find any relevant data on the USPA site.

  non-members jump an average of once.
  At least 90% of the 3.2 million jumps are repeat jumps by members
That was the figure that I was struggling to source, but 90% feels high to me. At 90%, that gives a mean of 82 jumps per member per year, which feels high to me (although my experience as UK skydiver may be skewed by the amount of time we spend on the ground waiting for the skies to clear!)

It would be useful to see a more complete breakdown of the jump stats and fatalities, because it might indicate the riskier elements of skydiving (my gut feel says swooping or high wing-loading), but I haven't found a data breakdown that detailed.

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

#270

Post by 659087 »

bartread wrote: post #256
659087 wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've managed to have a somewhat clean track record in my two years in the sport, with only two broken bones ... > It does, and most BASE jumpers that I know / have met / have taught 2 years in the sport, already broke yourself twice, and already "teaching" other jumpers? Don't forget to burn some sites on youtube and facebook, to complete the package. Remember - if you didn't get any likes for it, the jump never ha…

"Watching people discuss BASE on a tech forum feels like watching technology being discussed on a knitting forum." I'm not so sure: BASE is expensive. Think about the demographic in here: tech workers, probably a lot of them doing reasonably well financially, and probably quite a few are outdoorsy. Any of these hobbies is expensive when you really get into them: BASE, mountain-biking, motorcycling, climbing, skiing,…

Except, I wasn't talking about whether or not people could afford to do it (though, BASE is only expensive if you make it expensive - or get arrested), or whether it was likely that some people in the tech industry were jumpers (I know for a fact that many jumpers work in tech).

I was talking about the actual content of the many cringeworthy comments coming from people who were clearly trying to sound informed on a subject they don't understand. Like a knitting circle discussing cryptocurrency.

I see it constantly when anything about flying comes up as well. One or two actual pilots will show up, and 500 people who did an intro lesson or got to take the controls in a friend's plane once, will start trying to share their vast knowledge of the finer points of powered flight.

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