Skydiving: The Risks and Safety Issues
January 23, 2011 by Skydive Website
Filed under Sky Dive Information
If you are searching for a sport that can truly give you a thrill, then skydiving is at the top of the list. However, before you venture out and begin experimenting with this sport it’s a good idea to know about the risks and safety issues involved with diving out of a plane thousands of feet above the ground. There are risks involved with any sport that you participate in regardless of what it is. However, when you are considering a sport like skydiving, which people do simply for the sheer thrill of it, the risks can be much higher.
The risk factor of any sport is measured by the probability of something happening coupled with how serious a person can be injured if something goes wrong. Each of these has separate categories that make it easier to judge the risks. These are listed below.
Probability Categories:
• Very Unlikely
• Remote
• Rare
• Very Likely
• Frequently
Severity Categories:
• Minor
• Insignificant
• Critical
• Catastrophic
When you are talking about something like skydiving in which you jump out of a plane thousands of miles in the air and you’re free falling toward the earth at amazing speeds, the severity of an accident would fall under the catastrophic category. However, the probability would fall under the rare category because all of the safety issues that are put into place for this sport make accidents very few and far between.
When you are accessing the risk associated with skydiving you also need to consider the follow things:
• Training
• Experience
• Quality of gear
• Technology used
Being able to recognize a problem before it occurs will help to reduce your risk factors. Knowing and being able to execute emergency procedures when something goes wrong will also reduce your risks. You must have full knowledge of your equipment in order to have more control over the situation and lower your risks when skydiving. That’s why it’s imperative that you go through a training course before you venture out on your first jump.
It’s up to the individual person to decide whether or not the safety issues associated with skydiving outweighs the risk. In other words, if you feel like the safety issues that are addressed and put into effect for this sport are good enough to protect you from the risk, then you consider it to be safe enough to do. However, if you feel that the risks are just too great and the safety issues are not enough to protect you, then you consider it to be too risky for you personally.







