So how many skydiving deaths are normal?

[Sam_Stone]

@Machine_Elf

AIUI, motorcycling has a fatality rate about 20 times that of driving, on a per-mile basis. Mikemike2’s link suggests that the per-hour fatality rate for general aviation is about 20 times that of driving. I suspect average speeds for driving/riding are slower than for flying (since we sometimes ride/drive on city streets), so here’s my pedestrian approach to risk comparison:

If you fly 100 miles, that takes one hour and incurs X risk of fatality.
If you drive 1000 miles, that takes twenty hours and incurs the same risk of fatality.
If you ride a motorcycle 50 miles, that takes one hour and incurs the same risk of fatality.

So on a per-mile basis, GA flight has about half the fatality risk of riding a motorcycle.

On a per-hour basis, GA flight has about the same fatality risk as riding a motorcycle.

I think there are a number of factors that you can eliminate to vastly reduce your motorcycling risk. I think few people pilot a plane with training and licensing, but the same can’t be said for riding a motorcycle. Alcohol is another factor: few people will pilot a plane drunk, but alcohol is a factor in a large number of motorcycle crashes.

Overall, I suspect that for a person who is licensed, sober, and working to mitigate risk, motorcycling is likely safer than piloting a small plane.

You can always slice and dice statistics to make your point, or to convince yourself that no matter how dangerous something may be statistically, the numbers don’t apply to you. For example, a lot of General Aviation accidents involve people flying VFR in bad weather. So you just tell yourself, ‘I will never fly in bad weather’, and suddenly it looks like you are much safer than average. Of course, a lot of the people who wound up crashing in bad weather probably told themselves the same thing. I’ve been caught in bad weather that came out of nowhere, and I have very high standards for conditions I will fly in.

On the other hand, a large number of motorcycle accidents involve young men on powerful bikes doing stupid things. If you are like me, a 56 year old man on a 38 hp KLR 650 primarily tooling around on back roads, the fatality rate is undoubtedly lower.

For that reason, applying statistics to your own personal situation to estimate your own risk is very dicey, but it’s also easy to fool yourself into thinking the risks don’t apply to you.

[Machine_Elf]

People who study risk have noticed that as skydiving equipment has become more reliable, skydivers have engaged in more risky behavior, generally keeping the fatality rate about constant:

@Wikipedia

‘Booth’s rule #2’, often attributed to skydiving pioneer Bill Booth, states, “the safer skydiving gear becomes, the more chances skydivers will take, in order to keep the fatality rate constant”. Even though skydiving equipment has made huge leaps forward in terms of reliability, including the introduction of safety devices such as AADs, the fatality rate has stayed roughly constant when adjusted for the increasing number of participants. This can largely be attributed to an increase in the popularity of high performance canopies, which fly much faster than traditional parachutes. A greater number of landing fatalities in recent years has been attributed to high speed maneuvers close to the ground.

[Machine_Elf]

Related: Cracked has a first-person report from a guy who survived impact after tangling the main and reserve chutes during a tandem skydive.