Some one searched for Chances of dying while skydiving and my blog came up as hit #2…

Then I wanderer about the link forest. looking for link trees and found this article. From “Living the Risky Life?” by Gene Charleton, beginning with this:

A Risky Day
Few of us think of ourselves as risk takers. Skydiving, bungee jumping or street luge are not in the vocabularies most of us use to describe our daily activities. Yet we live with risk all day, every day, without jumping out of airplanes or off bridges, or zipping down the street on our backs. Most risks we take are unseen among the minutiae of getting through the day. They’re there, but few of us spend a lot of effort thinking about them.

Most of us live our lives as if we could escape from risk by being careful. Engineers look at risk differently.

But…the money quote I like is:

Through the looking glass Risk is often in the eye of the beholder. Here’s an example:
which is riskier, skydiving or commuting to work? Here’s what the numbers say: About 350,000 sport parachutists make about three million parachute jumps each year in the United States. About 30 of them die in accidents. That works out to one death for every 100,000 jumps. If you make one parachute jump each year, your chances of dying are about 1 in 100,000.

On the other hand, more than 40,000 people die each year in traffic accidents. That’s 1.7 deaths for every 100 million vehicle-miles driven. If you drive 10,000 miles a year, your risk of dying in a traffic accident is about 1 in 6,000. You’d have to jump 17 times in a year before your odds of dying in a skydiving accident equaled your odds of dying in a car crash. So why do so many people consider skydivers to be danger junkies while these same people happily risk their lives on the way to the office? People’s perceptions of what is risky and what is not are colored by how they see themselves in relation to the risk.

Oh, and it you drive about 20K/year….think of the odds…

So, all of you ground pounding “legs” out there will get in your car, but think I’m crazy? The joke is on you: I know what it’s like to hurtle towards the earth with others, making formations while going 120+ mph, yet all reaching the ground safely to begin to concoct the “jump lies” we will tell while drinking the free beer from the first timers (name the “first” and someone had to buy a case or beer/soda) just after the sun sets and we pack gear up before heading home; To meet people from all over the world, just because they were in the area of the drop zone you’re at, and they came by to get some air time, not because it was a special event; To be able to say “I can trust them with my life” and really know you can and that you mean it. Yes, and there’s lots more interesting things I’ve had happen in the 28 years worth.

Come Oct, there will be some video posted of two big ways. No one got hurt and we made a record….

Just thought you might like to know…and here’s the USPA drop zone locating page.