nimbusgb wrote:
I spent 30 years in South Africa, this Easter long weekend will have
cost between 1500 and 2000 lives on the road down there. I still lost
more people in 'hobbies' than road accidents in all the time I was
there and that includes the 2 that I lost to armed car hijacks.

The thing to remember is that a car wreck is infrequently fatal and
quite often little more than mentally traumatic. Aircraft crashes,
scuba accidents, man overboard and freefall parachute failures tend to
be a little less forgiving than the padded, belted, ABS, ESP and crush
zone protected vehicles that we drive.

I dont want this thread to get out of hand, I am not some super safety
concious nutter. I honestly think that the health and safety regs in
the UK are right over the top and that people should accept more
responsibility for their own lives.

I do believe that you have to either '**** or get off the pot'. How can
you call something an 'extreme' sport and then say that its safer than
driving! Exteme is 'out of the ordinary' and driving is what millions
of 'ordinary' people do every day.

Extreme sports are a marketing ploy. The label "Extreme" sells. Extreme
sports are not neccesarily extreme because of the risk but frequently
because of the effort and level of difficulty. Think ultra marathons,
extreme fighting, the Tour de France, or the Vendee Globe. On the other
hand, anything can be "extreme" if you take great uncalculated risks,
including driving. Those guys never live long and frequently don't win
at what ever they are doing.

I agree that the biggest risk most people take every day is driving. I
have lots of friends who have been injured and some killed involving
cars. On the other hand, I have had none killed in the pursuit of
sports yet. Sometimes they get a little banged up but "bones heal and
chicks love scars". Dying playing a sport is stupid. Of course I hang
with sensible, intelligent folks. Can't say the same for them though.

Gary
Still skiing, climbing, sailing, kayaking, yadda yadda yadda..... at an
extreme age!

"Gary" wrote in message
news:4Zx0g.28111$7a.2295@pd7tw1no...
I agree that the biggest risk most people take every day is driving. I
have lots of friends who have been injured and some killed involving cars.
On the other hand, I have had none killed in the pursuit of sports yet.
Sometimes they get a little banged up but "bones heal and chicks love
scars". Dying playing a sport is stupid. Of course I hang with sensible,
intelligent folks. Can't say the same for them though.
Gary

Seems different people perceive risk differently. I too have lost far more
friends and aquaintances in flying/gliding accidents plus quite a few with
permanent spine and/or leg damage, than in motor accidents, including
several years when I was competing in motor sport and the 60's when we
rarely bothered wearing crash helmets on bikes. I've now got to the age
where most friends are falling off their perches with cancer or heart
attacks.

Graham.

Ric,

For what it is worth, I agree with you.

Cars are scary because you have to rely on others. In the US most of
those "others" have no more "training" than I do, which is to say none.
Diving, on the other hand, involves substantial training and I am
usually diving with someone with a similar level of training.

One can argue the basis for establishing safety "statistics".
Commercial airflight is far safer than cars right? But those statistics
are based on a "per mile" basis. When viewed on a per trip basis cars
and airplanes are much closer together. Pick your stat to make your
point, each is valid in its own right. But neither is "better" or
"righter" than the other.

Perhaps one should view safety from a different basis, based upon a risk
/reward assignment - r/r. Once upon a time I drove for fun, no more, it
scares me and is boring. My reward is zero so my r/r = infinite.

If I scuba dive my risk if finite and get great reward so my r/r =
acceptable.

Ditto sailing. Ditto hunting.

I tried skiing. At my advanced age (50+)the risk of debilitating damage
is greater than I care to take. So I don't do it, my r/r is to high.

This is subjective, but so are all of life's value judgments.

If you love driving, have at it.

Howard



Ric wrote:
"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.

My dad still skiis regularly. He's 75. As you say, perception differs.

On Sun, 16 Apr 2006 20:40:32 UTC, Gary wrote:

: I agree that the biggest risk most people take every day is driving.

Doesn't come close to smoking ... though I grant you that's not most
people any more.

About 3000 people in the UK die in road accidents each year. Assuming
that almost all the population uses roads in some way, that;s 3000 out
of 60 million, which is 1 in 20000. Of the 5000 or so glider pilopts
in the UK, about 5 die flying annually which gives a death rate per
annum of 1 in 1000.

However ...

1) A significant number of the gliding deaths occur for natural
reasons. The medical requirements are less onerous than for power
flying and pilots with conditions which disbar them from power may
choose gliding instead. This means gliding is safer than the
comparison above might suggest

2) Most glider pilots spend much less time in the air (around 20 hours
per annum on average) than road users spend on roads (average mileage
is 10000 or so, which at 50 mph is 200 hours). This means glding is
more dangerous than the comparison above might suggest.

I don't see any point in pretending that flying, sailing and so on are
"safe" activities. For a start, there is no such thing as a "safe"
activity, and these hobbies are without doubt much more dangerous
than, say, rambling or golf. However ...

1) That still doesn't mean they are particularly dangerous

2) The odds can be improved greatly by not being plain bloody stupid.
The British Gliding Association publishes accident reports, and from
those it's quite clear that "being plain bloody stupid" is the
principal cause of most accidents.

3) What the hell. You're a long time looking at the lid.

Ian
--

Gary,

I think an excellent book on this subject is "Deep Survival". It
discusses "who lives, who dies, and why" in regards to "extreme sports.
The arguments made in it are quite interesting and apply to this topic.

It seems that generally what kills people, more often than not, is poor
decision making, inadequate training/skill and improper preparation.
All of those qualities are just as applicable to driving as to sports.

I don't think the argument can be made "objectively" that driving is any
more or less dangerous than anything else unless you are willing to
theorize an individual who's training/skill, preparation and decision
making skills are objectively equal for each endeavor. Then comparing
that individual in each activity would make sense. The problem with
this is that measuring such things is almost always impossible.

Instead, people resort to statistics of entire populations. For
instance, mortality rates of bowling are significantly higher than
scuba. Why? Because more people who bowl are at greater risk of heart
attack and stroke. The sport itself is not really more dangerous, just
the population practicing it.

When one tends to look at the statistical averages, one ignores the
population's (and consequently the individual's) training/skill,
preparation and decision making abilities I think this isn't really a
"fair" comparison, but it does at least give you some relative sense of
the danger in terms of the population, which is what insurance agencies
(the folks who compile this information) really care about.

While I do believe that any activity has some danger (including driving)
I think more often than not the real level can not be truly,
scientifically determined for the individual. So, while boating may be
dangerous, whether it is more so than driving really comes down to who
is doing it at the time.

Robb



Gary wrote:
nimbusgb wrote:

I spent 30 years in South Africa, this Easter long weekend will have
cost between 1500 and 2000 lives on the road down there. I still lost
more people in 'hobbies' than road accidents in all the time I was
there and that includes the 2 that I lost to armed car hijacks.

The thing to remember is that a car wreck is infrequently fatal and
quite often little more than mentally traumatic. Aircraft crashes,
scuba accidents, man overboard and freefall parachute failures tend to
be a little less forgiving than the padded, belted, ABS, ESP and crush
zone protected vehicles that we drive.

I dont want this thread to get out of hand, I am not some super safety
concious nutter. I honestly think that the health and safety regs in
the UK are right over the top and that people should accept more
responsibility for their own lives.

I do believe that you have to either '**** or get off the pot'. How can
you call something an 'extreme' sport and then say that its safer than
driving! Exteme is 'out of the ordinary' and driving is what millions
of 'ordinary' people do every day.

Extreme sports are a marketing ploy. The label "Extreme" sells. Extreme
sports are not neccesarily extreme because of the risk but frequently
because of the effort and level of difficulty. Think ultra marathons,
extreme fighting, the Tour de France, or the Vendee Globe. On the other
hand, anything can be "extreme" if you take great uncalculated risks,
including driving. Those guys never live long and frequently don't win
at what ever they are doing.

I agree that the biggest risk most people take every day is driving. I
have lots of friends who have been injured and some killed involving
cars. On the other hand, I have had none killed in the pursuit of
sports yet. Sometimes they get a little banged up but "bones heal and
chicks love scars". Dying playing a sport is stupid. Of course I hang
with sensible, intelligent folks. Can't say the same for them though.

Gary
Still skiing, climbing, sailing, kayaking, yadda yadda yadda..... at an
extreme age!

In article ,
says...
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.

Not actually true though if you think about it.

Climbing, and alpine climbing in particular, you can be killed just by
being in the wrong place/wrong time. Serac collapse and rockfall are the
main causes. Climbers have a term for this: "objective risk". It means
if you choose to do this particular route, you can do everything right
and still come to grief.

Not true of Nimbus's sport either (mine also at one time). There are
glider pilots who have been knocked out of the sky by other aircraft,
typically other gliders in crowded thermals. Wrong place, wrong time. I
even know a glider pilot who was struck by lightening.

Sailing.....maybe less of a case to make, but a friend of a friend was
drowned when out in F9 when the maximum breeze forecast was F6. Wrong
place, wrong time.

At an order of magnitude driving and climbing involve something around a
1 in 10,000 annual risk of being killed. Alpine climbing is a lot higher
(back to "objective risk") as is gliding. Sailing is lower. Climbing and
sailing don't have reliable participation figures so precise figures
aren't obtainable.

Hardly surprising as they are full of beds. I think I can see a pattern
forming.


There is data also which show that more people die in bed than anywhere
else. Surely they should carry a warning? As should hospitals, where lots
of people die.

"Stefan" wrote in message
.. .
In article ,
says...

For
instance, mortality rates of bowling are significantly higher than
scuba.

Evidence? I seriously doubt that is actually the case.

The statement also assumes causality. 'Mortality rates OF bowling' is not
the same thing as 'mortality rates WHILST bowling'.

"Rob Cullen" wrote in message
...
Hardly surprising as they are full of beds. I think I can see a pattern
forming.


There is data also which show that more people die in bed than anywhere
else. Surely they should carry a warning? As should hospitals, where lots
of people die.

Very often, Doctors and nurses are close at hand when people die. These
people are clearly dangerous.
Do you think the police should be notified?