Why are so many BASE jumpers dying?

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/activities/aerial-sports/why-are-so-many-base-jumpers-dying/

by oska • 10 years ago

59 96 10 years ago

nationalgeographic.com

s_q_b• 10 years ago

...because it's hard to jump off a cliff and live?

Zuider4• 10 years ago

This seems to be the key paragraph:

"Most beginners who die appear to be making variations of the exact same error, according to Webb. “They jump off a cliff, get flying, and for some reason there's just this human reaction to try to hug the air like a big, gigantic beach ball,” he explains. “By hugging air you feel as if you're creating or catching more lift than you actually are. What ends up happening is your suit can only grab so much air, and it starts to stall. When it starts to stall, it loses lift, starts to drag, and then, splat."

manarth8• 10 years ago

That's an interesting point, which has a fairly obvious solution: train wingsuiters to find the stallpoint - and even stall their wingsuit - in controlled conditions, where they can safely recover from a stall.

underwater• 10 years ago

Can they really recover? There's really no margin for error when they're a couple of dozen feet off the ground.

sebcat2• 10 years ago

People fly at max glide too close to terrain which leaves them with no options. If people instead flew fast, they could transfer that speed to lift if they find themselves in the corner, but if you're at max glide you can't really do much.

Of couse, the main problem is people not flying within their limits, or giving themselves a good margin, but that's proximity flight by definition.

throwawayReply• 10 years ago

For pilots instrumentation was useful. Are there airspeed indicators for wingsuit fliers and do they have stall speed estimates?

With modern Bluetooth it feels like it ought to be possible to design a wingsuit HUD to help with this.

Poiesis• 10 years ago

With all due respect, there is no way in hell I would trust Bluetooth with my life.

manarth8• 10 years ago

"Are there airspeed indicators for wingsuit fliers"

Yes: there are devices that can be mounted to skydiving helmet, and provide audible feedback (using different tones to communicate information such as airspeed). FlySight is one example.

"Audibles" are common practice throughout skydiving: usually two, mounted inside the helmet, next to each ear. They're usually set to beep at certain altitude thresholds: e.g. 5000' (break away from the formation), 3500' (deploy your parachute), 2000' (cut-away and deploy your reserve, if your main canopy is malfunctioning).

The GPS devices have to be outside the helmet in order to receive signal, and they're typically used for communicating performance data rather than safety alerts.

"it ought to be possible to design a wingsuit HUD"

Recon announced their Flight HUD in 2012 [1], but I don't know whether it succeeded as a product. I don't know of anyone using it.

[1] https://www.engadget.com/2012/10/18/recon-instruments-offeri...

amirmc2• 10 years ago

Not really a key paragraph. The article states that jumpers of all abilities are going in (dying). This is just one possible reason related to novices.

Zuider4• 10 years ago

The article states that stalling the suit is the primary reason for novice fatalities. As the sport becomes more popular, the majority of new practitioners will be novices making mistakes that an experienced jumper would not make.

dahart14• 10 years ago

I was a little surprised by that quote since this is something you learn in skydiving class, and everyone's getting basic skydiving certification in order to start BASE. You learn on your first day that if you hug the beach ball, you will flip and fall with your back down. The easy to remember analogy is a falling leaf -- leaves always fall concave (edit I mean convex) side down; cupping the air is completely unstable.

Anyway, you're right, it's an important piece, and I'm sure the hugging the beach ball thing might become an instinct response that overrides your training and happens very quickly when it becomes obvious that you're going to collide in 0.5 seconds. But, the article also immediately follows that with 'but that doesn't explain why the best flyers are dying'.

The singular reason people are dying is because they're pushing the boundaries of proximity flying, not because beginners are accidentally stalling once they're too close.

estefan• 10 years ago

leaves always fall concave side down

That explains it. They fall convex side down...

dghughes• 10 years ago

Or like the diheadral angle of airplane wings, anhedral ("negative dihedral") isn't as common.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dihedral_(aeronautics)

manarth8• 10 years ago

"this is something you learn in skydiving class…You learn on your first day that if you hug the beach ball, you will flip and fall with your back down"

This is true of the first 20 or so jumps, before achieving your "A" licence or equivalent: you're taught a belly-down arch.

When you advance past your A-licence, and especially when studying for your FS1 qualification (Formation Skydiving), you're taught variations of that arch, which are much flatter and even concave, in order to adjust fall-rate, so that you can stay in formation, with everyone falling at the same speed.

You also figure out very quickly that those slower fall-rate body positions are much less stable in the airflow…but that's why we practice.

amirmc2• 10 years ago

The singular reason people are dying is because they're pushing the boundaries of proximity flying, not because beginners are accidentally stalling once they're too close.

Well put. As noted in the article, the margins for error (esp in wingsuit BASE) are becoming ever tighter.

finid• 10 years ago

Isn't that like playing Russian roulette? I'm sure it's fun and exciting, but that comes with a major risk.

oneloop3• 10 years ago

Hahaha I just made a comment exactly like yours. I think we'd get along.

wavefunction• 10 years ago

I have a feeling that the ability to share 'experiences' via the internet and especially video of such experiences leads individuals who are adrenaline junkies to push the limits beyond what might be safer. The desire and push to "one-up" each other.

"How close can I come to the cliff-face? How close to the ground can I skim? I've seen others who have gone this close, can I go closer?"

It's right there in Sat Dex's narration. "Today you fly with me." In that phrase is both the sharing of the experience and the central-ness of that experience to the individual identity of the jumper.

I was watching the Philando Castile facebook live video shot by his girlfriend and watched him get shot live, half-way across the country. What a queer and unsettling feeling to be sitting in my house and know that a human being is dying at that same moment so viscerally...

Theodores• 10 years ago

I have a feeling that the ability to share 'experiences' via the internet and especially video of such experiences leads individuals who are adrenaline junkies to push the limits beyond what might be safer.

It is not just adrenaline junkies that like to show off for their fans on social media, it seems that everyone is at it and the 'disease' is getting worse as time goes on:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_selfie-related_injurie...

"See also: Darwin Awards"

idunno246• 10 years ago

I know somebody who recently trained for base, and skydiving, they don't allow you to carry cameras until you have a bunch of hours specifically to prevent this from rookies. Not that these are all inexperienced, but it's a risk the community acknowledges.

manarth8• 10 years ago

In the UK, you aren't allowed to skydive with a camera until achieving a "C" licence - minimum 200 jumps. That's a common requirements for many overseas dropzones too.

Most BASE courses won't accept you without a minimum of 200 jumps either.

pessimizer• 10 years ago

The biggest takeaway from the story for me is that Facebook is now micromanaging censorship so finely that it's now deleting anti-wingsuit posts.

narrator• 10 years ago

Getting angry about anything, even your friends dying, is no longer allowed.

I sometimes go to http://voat.Co and poke around when I want to remember what the Internet used to be like. It's one of the few forums that doesn't have a blanket ban on expressing anger.

What's funny is that it's very Californian to never express anger. East coast culture is more direct. People will say to each other that they don't like something the other person did or are upset or angry at the other person. On the west coast, especially California, it's really important to be nice, so people will just cut off contact when they've been offended or decided they don't like someone rather than confront them. Those California social values seem to have migrated online.

jerf• 10 years ago

This is why you can't leave culture to corporations. It is very difficult for them to resist the short-term calculus of "removing every post that is slightly negative to the brand", because Facebook doesn't want to be associated with rage or anger or anything negative. But what's left isn't culture anymore.

I think they've still got at least another year or two before this becomes really obvious to the mainstream, but Facebook is definitely headed in a dangerous direction right now. Not to culture; it will survive. It can't be killed even if you want to kill it. (You can hurt it, but not kill it.) But to Facebook. The appeal of a space where you can't say anything that is negative that might be associated with Facebook isn't great to start with, but when you realize that it's Facebook that has sole control over what it considers negative you also get that helpless feeling. Most people aren't going to analyze this... they're just going to realize they don't feel good when they use Facebook, either because their posts are getting censored or because they are subconsciously self-censoring, and operant conditioning will lead them away.

It's becoming more obvious every week that Facebook's instinctive reaction to everything is to control it with a heavy hand.

justin_vanw• 10 years ago

They jump off of things.

Not to be too glib, but if it was, 'safe' nobody would be interested in watching them do it. If many didn't die doing it, well that is what safe means.

For example, my 12 hour video "United Flight, Coach, Extreme Red Eye" got way less views.

SubiculumCode• 10 years ago

fewer, not less

grondilu• 10 years ago

Can't help but think of Franz Reichelt:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBN3xfGrx_U

Daviey3• 10 years ago

When sport parachuting first started it was horribly dangerous with techniques and equipment mostly adapted from military procedures. As the sport grew in popularity, technology and training advancements made the sport what I would consider safe.

BASE jumping is starting to go through this maturity process. When the sport first started, there was no known procedures and people died from 'silly things', which were easily avoidable..

There also wasn't purpose designed BASE equipment, people were using modified sport skydiving equipment.

Now that BASE is going through this process, equipment and training is improving. There is quite a lot of peer pressure to not even start BASE jumping unless the person has a few hundred skydives... and even then, more people seem to be doing First Jump Courses, with experienced BASE instructors.

However, some parts of BASE seems to be trying to grow too fast and use the technology advancements from skydiving too soon.

Proximity BASE is really mental. It's super impressive to see, but a significant majority of recent deaths and injuries have occurred from this. This is why there has been a re-emergence of high death statistics.. The traditional BASE statistics were starting to reflect massive improvements in safety.

One of the respected BASE instructors did a really useful talk here.. and it contains a bunch of advice which is pretty portable to general life: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2O-Dpw0Yfc

cromulent2• 10 years ago

True. I would say that the equipment has been really good for a long time now. I can't think of a fatality in the last 10 years or so that was caused by gear failure, although there have been packing errors.

The sport is very unforgiving of mistakes, obviously. Only today I saw a video of someone about to do a rollover without their legstraps on. Luckily the same guy as in your video noticed and yelled at him to stop. Fatality avoided.

Most of the recent spate of deaths though don't follow any particular pattern apart from the wingsuit being the common factor.

tedmiston2• 10 years ago

To further complicate the issue, many died while working to create “content” in the form of films and Instagram photos for their sponsors.

That's an incredibly complex ethical decision for the brand. I think Clif is doing the right thing by pulling out of sports with very low margins for error.

jsprogrammer• 10 years ago

The right thing was not sponsoring. Pulling out is just limiting personal liability.

tedmiston2• 10 years ago

That's easy to say but it's not like they started sponsoring when things became riskiest.

hanoz• 10 years ago

tl;dr: because they're now doing it in wingsuits.

Spooky23• 10 years ago

A: More people are jumping of the sides of things.

This is pretty dumb in general, and particularly so when you aren't a skilled skydiver. Serious accidents are pretty common even among experienced military paratroopers.

mseidl• 10 years ago

Skydiving and Base jumping have very little in common

dahart14• 10 years ago

I think most everyone watching the sport has been predicting a higher death rate, it's quite unsurprising, and why is not a mystery -- but this article was very well done IMO. It's clear from the explosion of wingsuit videos that the risk factor is dramatically higher, and that the videos themselves are going to be a factor in luring more people with less experience to try it. It looks amazingly fun, and very tempting if you're already or willing to start skydiving.

I personally feel very lucky to have passed through the skydiving phase of my life alive. Every jumper I knew personally except one is dead now. Some died in the most crazy unlikely ways, and a bunch of them died together in a plane crash after a weekend boogie. Skydiving is super dangerous, and BASE is even more dangerous, and wingsuit BASE trying to buzz the ground within inches -- How are so many BASE jumpers NOT dying??

clueless1233• 10 years ago

I strongly disagree with your statement. Skydiving is NOT "Super Dangerous". 1. it is highly regulated.. you actually need a license to practice it. 2. Statistically is a not more dangerous most outdoor sports.

3. Anecdotally, I've been a skydiver for over 20 years, in that time I've seen very few deaths. (much less than other adventures sports)

The old saying goes. Skydiving is not inherently dangerous, but it is terribly misforgiving of your mistakes.

dahart14• 10 years ago

At least twelve people I used to know would say skydiving is super dangerous, if they were still alive. I don't disagree with you, but you're expressing (as well as disagreeing with) an opinion and subjective language.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say exactly. You've disagree but not clarified. Are you saying skydiving is safe? It is objectively, demonstrably not "safe". Unless you define safe to mean it's possible to do once without dying.

Your perceived safety level depends on how you measure it. You can measure deaths per participant, in which skydiving compares favorably to some other sports. You can also measure deaths per participation-hour, which some people feel is a much more accurate and fair way to measure, and in that case skydiving looks a lot more dangerous.

No matter how you measure it, and no matter what license and training you have, skydiving is quite risky. I have a USPA C license, and every single person I've known who died skydiving had a D license (more than 500 jumps).

joeyspn4• 10 years ago

Skydiving is known for being very safe. Safer than american football, boxing, scuba diving, motorbike racing, and many other sports [0]

[0] http://www.besthealthdegrees.com/health-risks/

dahart14• 10 years ago

Whoa there buddy, slow your roll.

I used non-specific and subjective language.

Please tell me how skydiving ranks against boxing per participation-hour.

EDIT: The comment above used to say "stop spreading lies". That's why I said "slow your roll", I was being called a liar for expressing my opinion.

Now that he edited his comment, mine looks bitchy. But maybe you can stop downvoting me anyway?

dahart14• 10 years ago

Skydiving is known for being very safe. Safer than american football, boxing, scuba diving, motorbike racing, and many other sports [0]

BTW, after looking at the reference you provided, it's clear that skydiving is more dangerous than every other activity you just quoted, you got it backwards.

Scroll to the bottom.

  Parachuting Mortality rate: 0.1754 (/100 participants)
  Boxing Mortality rate: 0.0455 (/100 participants)
  Mountain hiking Mortality rate: 0.0064 (/100 participants)
  Scuba diving Mortality rate: 0.0029 (/100 participants)
  American football Mortality rate: 0.0020 (/100 participants)

oneloop3• 10 years ago

Does it make me a bad person that I have no sympathy for these people? You're doing something quite dangerous, did you expect to survive every time? As a society we don't often show sympathy for people who die playing Russian roulette....

Daviey3• 10 years ago

Yes, you are a bad person.

I assume you equally have no sympathy with people that die on non-essential car journeys that have crashes. Motorcycling, biking, scubadiving?

You, walking down the street are equally playing Russian roulette.

oneloop3• 10 years ago

When I'm walking down the street I'm playing Russian roulette? You are either completely numerically illiterate or so motivated by whatever ideology you're coming from that you'd go as far as uncritically parrot this such a laughable false equivalence.

Lets consider just traffic-related accidents for simplicity. About 17 deaths per 100,000 people per year worldwide. Assuming that a person "walks down the street" twice a day, that's means that when you walk down the street the probability that you'll die is 2.5*10^(-7). By comparison the probability of dying from Russian roulette is between 1/6 and 1/2, depending the rules you're playing by. You've just made a mistake as big as 6 orders of magnitude. This alone should get you banned from HN.

fauria• 10 years ago

I already sent that a couple days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12405048

woliveirajr• 10 years ago

I thought HN prevented submiting the same link twice. Doesn't it?

striking2• 10 years ago

If something doesn't get enough attention within a certain period of time, it can be submitted again. Likewise, if it's been a while since HN has seen it, it can be submitted again.

joeyspn4• 10 years ago

The answer is rather simple:

- Popularisation of the sport thanks to social media and silly videos with fancy dubstep music.

- BASE jumpers trying to push forward the sport.

- Irresponsible companies sponsoring pro jumpers in order to film "even more difficult yet" maneuvers.

Personally I tried to get into BASE some years ago, but after watching a russian documentary with explicit and horrible scenes [0] made me seriously think.

People in social media only get to see the successful jumps but not the dark side of the sport...

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/SkyDiving/comments/1etupz/russian_d...

cromulent2• 10 years ago

It's more complex than that. It's difficult to find a pattern, that's what everyone is casting about for. Two people died last month after slipping on the exit, for example.

goldfeld• 10 years ago

Maybe this is just the year of humanity finally facing our hard reality ahead.

vorotato• 10 years ago

I think the big problem is they keep hitting the ground.

smoyer2• 10 years ago

It's not like start-up founders and other types of entrepreneurs aren't also risk takers - different people get their adrenaline rush in different ways. The difference is that if (when?) you fail, you've lost your money (or someone else's if you're funded).

justinator2• 10 years ago

losing your money (or someone else's money) != dying.

smoyer2• 10 years ago

Exactly ... There are many ways an adrenaline junkie can get their fix that doesn't risk life and limb.

TheLarch• 10 years ago

I found this article disappointing because there's no advancement of a thesis or journalistic investigation. The author could have tracked down any number of illuminating statistics: number of wing suits sold over time; BASE/wing suit deaths over time; number of live videos posted over time. As the piece lacks either of these, it's almost pointless and thus the author attempts to tie it together with a question, just as you often see in college essays. There's no honest attempt to answer the question. So it's neither an essay nor investigative journalism. It's Reader's Digest. The article cashes in on prurient interest in death without paying anything back.

(To be clear this is an interesting topic to me. I followed Dean Potter for years, back from when he first made his name for slacklining and climbing.)

xiphias• 10 years ago

3:1 for horizontal vs vertical is quite dangerous, I guess the sport will get somewhat safer as this ratio improves, but it will take more material research probably

manarth8• 10 years ago

"3:1 for horizontal vs vertical is quite dangerous"

I would suggest that the danger isn't the glide-ratio, but the proximity to the ground.

Could better materials improve safety? If there were improvements in the predictability and consistency of flight characteristics, that might have a more positive effect, but I can't see improvements in the glide-ratio having an impact on safety.

nadezhda18• 10 years ago

why??? maybe because it's a risky sport???

musesum2• 10 years ago

“Right now, wingsuit BASE jumping is, globally, the hottest thing going for the impressionable, 18- to 35-year-old single-male demographic.”

I used to do free-climbing. The first time that I climbed with ropes was with friends. It was also their first time with ropes. They didn't know how to tie a knot. The first time I repelled off a cliff was with a gold line with partner feeding from below. The knot slipped. I felt a vibration and hands instinctively grasped. I was 4 stories up and hanging on literally at the end of my rope. I was 22.

I started to look at my body as a resource. Climbing helped to fine tune a sense of balance. Kept the mind sharp. Then read that Chris Langton (an A-Life pioneer) had a hang gliding accident. Started to make risk-reward assessments. Changed sports.

ahlatimer• 10 years ago

Your first outing with climbing is like someone going out BASE jumping having never used a parachute before, accompanied by people who had also never done anything remotely akin to skydiving, who also didn't have the foresight to even do some research on how to rig or even put on the parachutes. Yes, that's dangerous.

Climbing has some inherent danger, obviously, but with a bit of knowledge and staying within some reasonable safety limits, the likelihood of dying is nowhere near BASE. I think part of that is that, at least amongst the climbing community, the celebrities aren't wholly people pushing the limits with danger. Sure, we have Alex Honnold, but we also have Tommy Caldwell, Chris Sharma, Adam Ondra, Alex Puccio, and so on, climbers who are pushing the limit in difficulty but not really danger. Perhaps that's because "difficulty" and "danger" are not inexorably linked with climbing. You can have a close-bolted route in good rock with modern bolts that's not particularly dangerous that's still really, really hard. La Dura Dura is the hardest sport climb in the world. I probably wouldn't kill myself on it, even if it's way above my pay grade (assuming I could even reach the first bolt). I don't know that you can do the same with BASE.

musesum2• 10 years ago

Exactly. Trust someone that has survived their 20's. I now ask "So, how many times have you done this?"

I really admire the focus and patience. Back in the 70's, my inspiration was Royal Robins. I like the idea of leaving no trace on the rock. Not sure what modern bolts are like.

rdiddly• 10 years ago

In order of occurrence, starting with the smart-alecky and moving into the actually thoughtful (but still probably seen as trollish):

1) From BASE jumping.

2) For no reason.

3) From incomplete cognitive development (risk assessment, awareness of one's mortality etc.)

4) Because the world economy is sufficiently developed to keep them alive long enough to die this type of optional/discretionary death.

schizoidboy• 10 years ago

A good friend died a few years ago wingsuit BASE jumping in the alps. It hit me hard. He was incredibly smart. He was one of the top guys in the sport. He was careful and deeply researched and understood the physics of wingsuits. Thus why I think the following quote from the article is dangerous because it might give the impression to certain people that they will outsmart the complexities:

"The simple truth is that wingsuit BASE jumpers don’t know what they are getting into, don’t know how to practice the sport safely, and don’t even know enough to know how little they know."

Why are so many BASE jumpers dying?

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