Skydiving Accident Prevention and Training
James Hunt
The danger in skydiving has decreased noticeably over the years.
One detail that shocks a lot of non-skydivers is that most
skydiving losses are attributed to jumper mistakes. From time to
time such errors are made while dealing with an otherwise small
mid-air crisis, and even on occasion, while flying underneath a
fully-inflated parachute. Hardly ever is it actually a case of a
correctly maintained, packed & deployed parachute failing to
open.
If a skydiver experiences a malfunction of his main parachute,
then foolishly waits too long before initiating his reserve
deployment sequence, his perfectly good reserve parachute may
never have time to fully inflate before impact. If this happens,
it certainly can be said that his parachute failed to open.
This is not to suggest that properly operated modern parachute
equipment never independently fails. It most certainly can, and
sometimes does. However, seldom are such failures the random &
comprehensive equipment failures the "parachute failed to open"
lines suggests.
In fact, a good number skydiving accidents could have been easily
prevented, and few cannot be traced back to some serious human
blunder.
In recent years, advanced canopy designs have led to many
fatalities associated with daring maneuvers known as "hook turns"
and "swoops". As with flying high performance aircraft, the
risks associated with these kinds of crowd-pleasing, show-off
maneuvers are great.
If a jumper misjudges the altitude at which the final diving turn
is initiated, or begins leveling-off for their landing too late,
the jumper may impact the ground while the canopy is still diving
at a very high rate of speed. This is often fatal, and has left
the skydiving community often bemoaning the ironies of a skydiver
dying under a perfectly good parachute. Many skydive centers have
wisely banned the practice of low hook turns.
This type of fatality can also occur when a jumper mistakenly
turns his or her canopy too sharply, too low to the ground -- as
when maneuvering to avoid an impending collision with another
canopy* or ground structure. (*another avoidable scenario is mid-
air collisions between skydivers flying under canopy)
In an effort to reduce these kinds of avoidable accidents,
student training centers have re-written their training syllabus
to include more intensive canopy piloting techniques.
James Hunt has spent 15 years as a professional writer and
researcher covering stories that cover a whole spectrum of
interest. Read more at
www.skydiving-central.info
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