My quick online google says there are on average 30 Americans killed a year skydiving. Another google suggested that there are about 8,000,000 person/flights per years. If 817 die in a year, that is a bit more than 1 in 1,000,000 chances of dieing in the US in a plane crash.
The actual question was put to Jeeves "The big question is always, "How dangerous is skydiving?" Each year, about 30 people die in parachuting accidents in the United States, or roughly one person per 100,000 jumps. Look at the US Skydiving Incident Reports to get an idea of the types of problems that lead to fatalities. If you make one jump in a year, your chance of dying is 1 in 100,000.
"How does the fatality rate in skydiving compare to other common activities? Since most adults in America drive cars, let's compare skydiving to driving. Roughly 40,000 people die each year in traffic accidents in the United States [ref]. That's 1.7 deaths per 100 million vehicle miles. Therefore, if you drive 10,000 miles per year, your chance of dying in a car wreck in any given year is something like 1 in 6,000. In other words, we accept a higher level of risk by getting into our cars every day than people do by occasionally skydiving. You would have to jump 17 times per year for your risk of dying in a skydiving accident to equal your risk of dying in a car accident if you drive 10,000 miles per year."
Great, and I drive a lot more than 10,000 miles, and a quater of that is on ice and snow." I think I should take up skydiving. I hate to think what the odds are of getting killed driving fast at night on drugs while trying to not spill my drink while lighting a smoke and listening to AC/DC.
