Total Motorcycle Community Forums

Hondagirl wrote:wow. That must have been an amazing experience. How accurate can you be when landing? I always imagined not that precise with skydiving but in the vid it looks like you planned a very exact spot to land.

Welcome back, good to see you again.

Definitely an amazing experience! Apparently, some of the skydivers out there can be incredibly accurate. Since I was in a tandem setup, I was mostly just a passenger and hopefully not too much of a PITA to the instructor.

One of the things that has me the most concerned when I start diving on my own - is way up there - you can't recognize a damned thing. Its a good thing the instructor knew where we were going because I for sure didn't!

wow, bigger balls than me man, and I got big ones

Oh, thanks, AC DC going off in my head now. Statistically, between 16 and 30 people have died skydiving every year for the past three years. That's with 300,000+ skydivers performing over 3,000,000 dives.

Compared to riding a motorcycle, I suspect its actually safer... Or even safer than driving a car, maybe. Of course, if the instructor decided it was his day to die, I was going to be going with him...

RhadamYgg wrote:Compared to riding a motorcycle, I suspect its actually safer... Or even safer than driving a car, maybe.

Quite likely. I assume 100% of skydivers have some sort of formal training by a professional (and no cases of "Skydiving's cool, I'll go buy a chute, charter a plane, and see how it goes."). I dunno what the latest stats are, but I'll bet a tiny percent of motorcyclists have taken the BRC (or the equivalent in their countries).

Grey Thumper wrote:

RhadamYgg wrote:Compared to riding a motorcycle, I suspect its actually safer... Or even safer than driving a car, maybe.

Quite likely. I assume 100% of skydivers have some sort of formal training by a professional (and no cases of "Skydiving's cool, I'll go buy a chute, charter a plane, and see how it goes."). I dunno what the latest stats are, but I'll bet a tiny percent of motorcyclists have taken the BRC (or the equivalent in their countries).

There was a 10 minute formal training for the tandem jump, but that is more of a passenger. In order to proceed you have to do 2 more tandem jumps and several hours of training. Those next two tandem jumps - you get more control, but you have the instructor right there on your back.

I suspect no DZ "Drop Zone" will allow you to jump without the license - self-regulated, but in their own self-interest to make sure. I suspect that no licensed skydiver would sell a parachute to a non-licensed person. I can't say that for sure.

How exactly did this new hobby go over with the Missus? "Hon, this whole motorcycle thing is starting to feel a bit too safe, so . . . "

Oh man...I don't think I could ever talk myself into doing that. My son and husband want to, but they're doing it without me...
Still, I bet it was amazing!

Grey Thumper wrote:How exactly did this new hobby go over with the Missus? "Hon, this whole motorcycle thing is starting to feel a bit too safe, so . . . "

She isn't too thrilled about it. Occasionally I hear muttering about raising 4 kids by herself...

The problem is really the appearance of risk vs the actuality of risk. I research everything I do to death. In the case of motorcycling, even factoring out barhopping, riding on Friday and Saturday nights I found that the risks in motorcycling are higher than driving a car. Just not astronomically so - as it may appear to people outside the hobby. I'm absorbing the risk mentally, and with higher life insurance. Insurance doesn't replace me, but at least it can temporarily address the financial burden.

With Skydiving, it is different. The perception of the risk is far higher than the actuality. There are risks and when bad things happen, like with motorcycling they tend to be of the fatal variety. What happens in skydiving are two major factors: People's innate fear of the activity (similar to most people's reaction to giant spiders or snakes) combines with the relative rarity of fatalities and their publication in the media to reinforce the idea that skydiving is high-risk. An activity only undertaken by people with a death wish.

Of course there is a common theme that motorcycling suffers from the same problems. It seems everyone has a horror story about a fatality or their first attempt to ride and falling over and being scared, etc. Then the relative infrequency of fatalities means that for every motorcycle fatality there is a news article - while the 4 or 5 times as many fatalities in cars/light trucks/etc go relatively ignored except under exceptional circumstances (i.e. entire family killed in accident, drunk mother in accident with 5 kids in the car - some of which died).

Even so, I want to jump again - at least to the point where I can perform a solo dive. With the tandem I'm left feeling that I was a passenger rather than a diver.

Thumper wrote:Oh man...I don't think I could ever talk myself into doing that. My son and husband want to, but they're doing it without me...
Still, I bet it was amazing!

It was a great time! A number of friends and families were out there supporting their braver members who were skydiving. Who knows? After watching you may decide that it looks like fun for yourself to try.

RhadamYgg wrote:
She isn't too thrilled about it. Occasionally I hear muttering about raising 4 kids by herself...

The problem is really the appearance of risk vs the actuality of risk.

I hear you. When people learn that I ride (or scubadive, for that matter), they're curious, some even wish that they did it too, but pretty much everyone assumes that both activities are a lot riskier than statistics indicate.