"nimbusgb" wrote in message
oups.com...
The most dangerous part of any "dangerous sport", whether sailing,
scuba-diving, climbing etc, is driving in your car to get there....

major_rant

At the risk of being 'kill filed' by many .........

I have to take issue with this, it's the dumbest, most ill informed
stupid statement anyone could use in connection with any even partially
'extreme' sport.

In my nearly 50 years I am thankful that I can count the number of
friends, colleagues, relatives and aquaintances killed in motor
accidents on the fingers of my hands. Sure a few have spent periods
recuperating from severe injury and I dodged the bullet once or twice
in my youth including having driven into a moving train at high speed.
I walked away! The same cannot be said of the sports I have
participated in, I have, on average known at least one person for each
of my nearly 50 years that has been killed whilst participating in a
'hobby'.

Gliding, Power flying, Sailing and a few other assorted sports I dont
participate in have all claimed an uncomfortable number from those I
have known. Their skill levels at their chosen pastime ranged from
novice to vastly experienced, like the pilot with over 20000 hours of
gliding time. These people 'participated' for only a couple of hours on
the weekends whilst they spent many, many times that in their cars. In
my 1000 plus hours of gliding I have had at least 3 'close calls' with
the grim reaper and I have been present and witnessesed several
untimely deaths. I spend about 500 hours a year in my car and I can
honestly say ( touch wood ) that in spite of having an extremely heavy
foot I have not had a serious scare in the past 10 years and possibly
200 000 miles of motoring.

Well I lead an adventurous life as a sprog in the army, still regularly
freefall parachute, fly planes, sail my boat, go solo scuba-diving, go solo
ski-touring, - but to me my most dangerous perceived activity is driving my
car - because I have to rely on the competence of others, whereas in
individual adventure sports I rely only on myself. I have far more scary
moments driving on a motorway due to totally incompetent manouvres by idiots
than I ever have sailing/climbing/parachuting/sailing where I can rely
entirely on my own preparation and planning.