Ahhh, I love the internet. I just found the definitive answer.
I went to AskJeeves and typed in “what is the most dangerous sport” and found the solution to your query:
Messin’ around with Mrs. Jeeves while I’m at work.
I once had my knee specialist tell me that soccer had by far and away the most injuries of any sport, but then he added, “You’ve got to remember more people play it than any other sport in the world.”
Which I suppose is true. He did say that speaking for himself soccer players were the athletes he saw the most of. He said he had heard that percentagewise, it fell to skiing although he had heard volleyball was one of the top ones too.
I can understand skiing, but volleyball?
Not exactly a sport, but young aspiring race car drivers make the news somewhere practically every week. I knew two who died on public roads before ever competing on the track.
I can’t resist quoting the “Dilay Telegraph”'s obituary for the singer Nico.
I can’t resist quoting the “Daily Telegraph”'s obituary for the singer Nico.
Horse racing. A jockey has the only job I know of where an ambulance follows you while you’re working.
I am an long-time alpinist and have never heard any serious climbers refer to mountain climbing as a “sport.” There is no objective scoring system per se, nor any competitors. Most purists also object to calling rock climbing “sport climbing,” considering it a lame marketing gimmick by non-climbers hoping to popularize or otherwise cash in on a way of life.
A long time ago on this board someone posted the following statistics, which I found interresting enough to make a local copy of:
code:Activity # Fatalities per 1,000,000 exposure hours
--------------------------------------------------------
Skydiving 128.71
General Aviation 15.58
On-road Motorcycling 8.80
Scuba Diving 1.98
Living (all causes of death) 1.53
Swimming 1.07
Snowmobiling .88
Passenger cars .47
Water skiing .28
Bicycling .26
Flying (scheduled domestic airlines) .15
Hunting .08
Cosmic Radiation from transcontinental flights .035
Home Living (active) .027
Traveling in a School Bus .022
Passenger Car Post-collision fire .017
Home Living, active & passive (sleeping) .014
Residential Fire .003
This is taken from the Bicycle Helmet Statistics page, which quotes it from "Failure Analysis Associates, Inc." whatever that is. I guess "general aviation" includes small airplanes flown by amateurs, making them more dangerous than airlines.
So, judging purely by fatalities per exposure time skydiving is the most dangerous. But on the other hand it’s difficult to do more than half an hour of skydiving a day, whereas it’s feasible to do 8+ hours of flying…
[sub] sheesh, what’s happening to the GQ - the signal to noise ratio is getting absurd[/sub]
excellent link popup. My guess is that base jumping is a least ten times more dangerous than parachuting in general, however as you said the jumps only last a short time.
Related question - do people wear safety helmets bull riding?
Regarding cosmic radiation, we are generally protected from cosmic radiation by a thick layer of air. At airline altitudes, the radiation is measurably higher. This leads to slightly increased chance of getting cancer. It’s a bit strange to translate that to “fatalities per exposure hour” figure, I think they mean that if you are exposed to radiation for an hour, the probability of death by cancer per hour is increased by this amount.
Hey, this sport seems pretty dangerous to me.
http://www.extremeironing.com/~eib/ei/homepage/main.php
According to the Insurance Institute, drivers of hydroplanes have the riskiest profession, period. According to the report, 1 out of every 22 that participate in this activity will die because of it. To put it in perspective, it would be the same as approximately 70 pro football players dying a year. I have been a interested observer of the sport for years (they race in Seattle every year) and death seems to be considered part of the sport. As a big NASCAR fan, there have been too many deaths there too.
'Twould seem logical but not necessarily.
In Australia the most dangerous sport (in terms of total fatalities, not as a % rate) is simply rock fishing.
Well woolly, anybody STUPID enough to want to go fishing for ROCKS probably deserves to die.
How do they get on the hook anyway???
Well, the most dangerous game is human beings.
I knew a Russian guy who died human-hunting. He had a nice bed.
According to this piece in today’s paper 20 AFL umpires have been seriously injured in the last 3 years.
I thought the ‘White Maggots’ would have been more likely to have been injured by feral Collingwood supporters piffing their smuggled Bundy’n’Coke cans at them.
Mind you, knowing the Collingwood mob, the cans would’ve been empty anyway, and they’re not renowned for the accuracy of their hurling.
I personally think that the most dangerous sport is cordless bungee-jumping.
It’s not universal but is increasingly common as well as torso body armor, AKA “bull proof vests.”