> it's totally 'not cool' for experienced jumpers to ask for a gear check
Wow. What I'd do after I check my gear, is ask a buddy to check mine and I check his. With a checklist.
Wow. What I'd do after I check my gear, is ask a buddy to check mine and I check his. With a checklist.
In reality, most new jumpers will ask for a gear check for the first few jumps after finishing the training and then stop.
There really isn't a need for a checklist, it isn't hard to remember what to check. The problem is that people are either too lazy, too embarrassed, too complacent, or just too stupid to do the checks (and practice emergency procedures).
Recently, at 10,000 feet up (on the way to 13,000) I asked a 15 jump beginner in a friendly way if she was going to check her handles and practice emergency procedures. She answered that she already did. I sat behind her and watched all the way up, and she had not done these things in the plane which is common safety procedure. I then said, no, I mean in the plane. She ignored me and then went on to jump without checking anything. This is actually pretty common. People don't like to be told what to do.
As a student, all your gear is double checked on the ground and just before exit. Even when you're jumping solo - if you don't open your parachute, your reserve will automatically deploy (there's a little computer that will fire the reserve if you're not open by a certain altitude)
Once you're a licenced jumper and have shaken off the 'student' label (meaning noone insists for a gear-check) - you could choose not to enable your AAD (automatic altitude deployer) and kill yourself.
To get to that stage, you've probably invested $3000+ and a lot of time. Not the most efficient way to suicide.
He has described that there is a whole group of people who want to die, but do not want to kill themselves. They often aren't (fully) aware of this nature of themselves.
These people often are very attracted to risky behaviour, and are seen pushing boundaries in extreme sports - skydiving, motorcycling, etc.
But, of course, that doesn't mean that everyone - or even a large number - in these sports are like this.
In the plane, no gearcheck - but he did take a stack of selfies. About 10 seconds into the jump, his helmet flew up - it hadn't been attached. Instead of breaking away and pulling, he deathgripped me and tried to reseat his helmet over and over.
We broke off and tracked away from the guy - when he deployed - he'd obviously been unstable - and had about 15 line twists, which he proceeded to slowly undo - while drifting up the jump run, before finally getting a flying canopy well below the hard-deck.
I tried to be as kind as possible to the guy, suggesting less selfies, more gear-checks and revisit some of the basics, but he just shrugged it off.
There were also 2 coaches in the plane that said nothing about the phone on the run up - wtf.
I'm really really surprised by these comments. Maybe it's a cultural thing but for sure where I live everyone checks at the very least themselves before jumping.
For me it's like saying "sure you won't remember to fasten the seatbelt on your car, ride after ride, once you are an experience driver?". Well, you can be damn sure I will ;)
For me, its simple. I want to live. Checking my gear/wearing my seatbelt increases my chances for survival if something goes wrong.
If it takes 5 minutes to make sure you'll live another day, would you not take these 5 minutes?
Some people like risky activities because they don't want to live. It's a cultural thing.
What I am surprised at is the fact that the parent literally says "I don't believe you" regarding something that I experience myself all the time.
It's like they internalized that doing so is not only rare -which it might be in their country- but just not at all possible!!
> Seatbelts are the perfect example - in my experience, a lot of experienced drivers don't bother
See that's quite my point. I don't doubt that people might not use the seatbelt where you live. But if you told me you "don't believe" that the vast majority of people use it here when I see it with my own eyes every day... Then I'd be indeed very surprised.
(As a side note seatbelt usage here in Switzerland is reported to be ~94% by the European transport safety council)
I'm not sure about this example. All around the world tons of people don't fasten the seatbelt (and many more wouldn't do it if there weren't fines).
I wonder if there are really a lot of people who are sensitive to the risk of a fine but not the risk of injury or death.
A popular accessory in some countries is a seat-belt "buckle" without the belt. You use it to silence the "seat belt unfastened" beepers.
Consider my upbringing. I'm not a pilot, but my father flew combat in WW2 and Korea. He was a stickler for always following the safety procedures to the letter - and flew for 20 years without a scratch. In 1963 he had seatbelts installed in the family car, and we wouldn't move an inch until the belts were on everybody. I'm the same way, and seatbelts have saved both my life and others in my family.
I'm not dying to look cool. And my family sure wasn't cool in the 60's with the seatbelts.
I've also worked on flight critical designs for Boeing. There one learns a lot about arrogance and complacency causing disasters.
I've never done sky diving (why jump out of a perfectly fine plane? :-) ), but the culture & attitudes you describe sound scary. Well, at least people have fun and selfies (and, unlike a careless pilot, they (most likely) only endanger themselves). /s
My pilot father recounted a story once where he was going through the landing checklist. He was interrupted by the controller on the radio, then continued with the checklist. He'd skipped lowering the landing gear, which is a deadly mistake (he was informed of this by the ground).
Thereafter, whenever he was interrupted while doing the checklist, he started it over.
There's a relatively common personality type where telling people to do something is the best, most consistent way to get that person to do the exact opposite thing. The more you try to nag at such people, the more obstinately they resist, even doing counterproductive actions out of spite.
If they want to be safe they will. If they have a death wish, I'm not getting on a plane with them. I'm more than happy I've never encountered this sort of behaviour.