I'm a semi-pro skydiver, and we frequently see stats comparing our
sport to other forms of aviation. Many of those stats make skydiving
actually look safer than other forms of aviation, but you gotta take
that with a grain of salt when it's a skydiving publication.
see http://www.afn.org/skydive/sta/stats.html
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FAI/IPC Techical and Safety Subcommittee Congress
Helsinki, Finland, October 1993
Global research on safety in parachuting 1991. Replies from 35
countries of 62 were received. 26 had exact counts, nine had only
estimated numbers.
Total of 245 162 jumpers made 4 848 025 jumps. 74 died, which makes 1
fatality per 65 513 jumps. Preliminary research gives ratio of 1:64
091 for year 1992.
Experienced jumpers (over 250 jumps), who cover 24% of all jumpers,
made half of all jumps, but were involved only in 35% of accidents.
Students cover 48% of all jumpers, but they made only 17% of jumps,
and were involved in 38% of accidents.
Human error was cause of 92% of fatalities. Approximately 75% of
victims would have been saved with AAD. RSL/Stevens system might have
saved 35%. If all jumpers would had used both AAD and RSL, amount of
victims might had decreased from 74 to 20.
In 75% of accidents reserve hasn't been used at all or it had been used too low.
Swiss research on cut-away failure
Most cut-aways were done by those with 1-100 jumps experience, they
had made 0.23% of all jumps. People with over 1000 jumps had least
cut-aways, 0.1%. Also jumpers with competition experience had less
cut-aways. Half of jumpers who did cut-away felt stressed afterwards.
77% said the situation was what they had expected. Many were surprised
of spinning and g-powers under malfunctioning main. Most common, 70%,
reason for cut-away was packing failure. Probability for reserve use
was 1:500 in Switzerland.
Death ratio per 100 000 landings in:
charter flights 0.18
general aviation 1.4
soaring 1.6
parachuting 1.4
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Taken from Dan Poynter's Parachuting: A Skydiver's Handbook 6th edition.
1991
121,900 people made 2,440,000 civilian jumps in the US.
25,000 active skydivers average approx. 100 to 125 jumps/year.
Approx. 97,000 students graduate the First Jump Course and make a jump each year.
Approx. 300,000 student jumps/year, 1.9 million experienced skydiver jumps/year.
1987
29 fatal parachuting accidents in the US.
Yielding a fatality rate of 1/75,000 jumps, or 1/3,800 participants.
Comparisons
Hang Gliding: 1/2,308 hang gliding flights.
Accidental Deaths: 1/2,582 (91,000 out of total US pop. of 235 million in 1983)
In a recent year over 140 people died scuba diving, 856 bicycling,
over 7,000 drowned, 1154 died of bee stings, and 80 by lightning. In
1982, 43,990 people were killed in highway accidents, 1,171 boating
fatalities, 235 airline deaths, and 1,164 light aircraft general
aviation fatalities.
Student injuries run about 2%. So out of 90,000 students, 1,800 can
expect to be injured.
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From the table printed on page 13 of the April 1990 issue of
Parachutist. Here is a comparison of the risks of participating in
various activities. It was put together by the U.S. Hang Gliding
Association using data collected from various air sports organizations
and melding it with data from the National Safety Council and other
sources.
Activity Participants Fatalities Rate per 100,000
per year participants
All accidents 230,000,000 96,000 42
Traffic Fatalities 162,850,000 46,000 28
Power Boat Racing 7,000 5 71
SCUBA 300,000 140 47
Mountaineering 60,000 30 50
Boxing 6,000 3 50
AIR VEHICLES:
Air Shows 1,000 5 500
Homebuilt 8,000 25 312
General Aviation 550,000 800 145
Sailplane 20,000 9 45
Balloon 4,500 3 67
Hang Gliding 25,000 10 40
SKYDIVING 110,000 28 25
It says the skydiving stats are for 1988, and it implies that the
other figures are for 1989.
You can also get fatality stats from just about any almanac or "fact book".
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I wouldn't mind seeing something more recent or perhaps performed by
an organization that doesn't have a vested interest in skydiving.
That last stat from Parachutist comes out great for skydiving because
we have so many one time only participants (tandems). So our fatality
per participant looks really low. I think fatalities/injuries per
landing is a better stat to compare the relative safety of different
forms of aviation.
Dan |
