What did you think about Mike Manuels letter in Parachutist?

He thinks the USPA should not include any hook-turn landing deaths in the incident reports. He also writes that if you take the intentional hook deaths out of the statistics, the sport is getting safer.

He called upon skydivers to petition the USPA for this purpose.

What do you think?

I thought he makes a valid point but I can't quit thinking that if you applied that logic to the whole sport, we are all doing something pretty stupid, albeit fun, in jumping from the dang plane to begin with. Is it fair to say that we shouldn't count all fatalities on the grounds that skydiving is stupid to begin with?

I think his reasoning is backwards. He wants less people to die from hookturns by not talking about them. That is not a way to teach people that they can be dangerous. I believe the more focus is put on bothced hookturns, the more people will learn to give them the respect they warrant. I'd even go so far as to wish USPA would write about all the accidents in the sport which doesn't end in a fatality, but 'just' injury. I think a lot of people would be surprised at the amount that would surface. I believe any accident, fatal or non-fatal, can be learned from, and not reporting the non-fatal ones takes away a good basis for more learning. Just my 0.18 kroner.

Let's only talk about fatalities where the person in question was inconscious. Anything else would be human, or equipment failure, so people don't need to learn from that. 'Hey, look at me! I live in a bubble!' :o)

Espen ALF#1

I knew this would come up..I , and a bunch of my friends (yeah..I have some..invisible ones..).. have already lost our minds over that one..If it would have been posted here it would have been considered a troll for sure. A friend of mine got so pissed he allready sent in a responce to Parachutist.. I wonder how many responses trhere will be..

hilarious (read earth calling mothership..helllooooooo..anybody theeeerrreee)

Like my friend that sent the letter in said.. 'why not take the incidents out of the incident report'

..sigh...

- - - Noshi T

ok...replying to my own post.. that 'my friend' is NOT the guy that wrote the letter to Parachutistto take out the hook turns, but a friend that sent in a responce that hopefully will be posted in the next parachutist..

Now thats a virtual beer...

- - - NunAnn

I see you get the point.

Espen ALF#1

Running with that, if the skydiver was conscious at any time after becoming aware of skydiving, it should be excluded. Hearing about skyding and deciding to try it was obviously an error in judgement. So there.

I am at the complete other end of the scale. We need to include all deaths in our accident totals, including those from aircraft accidents. Ignoring nearly half of all fatalities some years is misleading, and can result in us focusing on the wrong problems.

Tom B

That's the spirit I want to see! Now, what if the person fell off a barstool in his/her locals bar, while watching the X-games on ESPN? Should that be excluded as well? It could be that the barstool was slippery from the previous patron, but that would boil down to poor judgment when sitting down on a wet barstool. So, yes, let's exclude that one too. Anything we've forgotten now? Skydiving should get pretty safe when we're done, eh?

Espen ALF#1

You know, if he had posted that letter here instead of sending it to Parachutist, most of us would have assumed it was a troll.

Well, that idea is actually at the crux of the problem with the landing deaths over the last few years in my opinion and hopefully USPA and the skydiving public at large can start to change that soon.

'Landing' incidents should NOT be taken out of parachutist. If anything they should be more specific about landing incidents!

Here's my problem - Parachutist along with USPA and specifically Glenn Bangs over the last few years has been spouting the same IMO irresponsible bs - 'Hook turns kill. Look at all the hook turn deaths. If no one did hook turns skydiving would be much safer.' Why is this a problem you ask - well, its a problem because they aren't specific enough. And in my experience Joe Blow skydiver does not make the mental correlation between 'Hook turns kill' and 'Low turns to landing kill'.

Semantics you say. NO. I've had the 'pleasure' of hearing Glenn Bangs speak to my regional safety meeting twice. Each time he quoted statistics saying there were *some #* of hook turn deaths, that hook turns kill, yadda yadda... I've seen 100jump wonder boys walk out of those meetings saying 'Wow, lucky for me I don't do hook turns - I'm safe because I don't do hook turns.' But IF you actually go back and look at the incidents a majority of the so-called 'hook turn' deaths were performed by people never known to make a 'hook turn'. These are *low turn to landing* deaths - and each and every one us is at risk to make the kind of mistakes that leads to this, NOT just the 'hook turners'.

My point - by being MORE specific about the landing deaths you create more awareness of what's actually going on. (Which is a lot of people pounding into the ground after making low turns to landing under canopies that are not as forgiving of a mistake as their old F111 canopies - and also a few botched high performance landing attempts.)

So leave the incidents in! Just make a point to say 'low turn to landing to avoid power line', or 'low turn to landing to get into the wind', or 'botched high performance landing attempt', etc instead of the standard 'jumper made a hook turn'....

bsbd, tsw d16909

PS: I love high performance landings...I've also made a couple *hook turns* and they are not fun...

Ill take that and run with it..for a few yerds anyways.. Otta curiosity..

How many (%) of all 'hookturndeaths' during a year are. made my the hookturn/surf croud and how many (%) are made unintetionally , by people that doesnt know how their canopy will react (avoidance)..until its too low.. Seems to me that the latter is way way way more common than the former Seriously..

- - - NunAnn