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From: apengell@axion.bt.co.uk (alan pengelly)
Newsgroups: rec.skydiving
Subject: Re: Fatality In Colorado
Message-ID: <1991Mar27.091124@axion.bt.co.uk>
Date: 27 Mar 91 08:11:24 GMT
References: <2020013@hpfelg.HP.COM> <2020014@hpfelg.HP.COM>
Sender: news@axion.bt.co.uk
Reply-To: apengell@axion.bt.co.uk (alan pengelly)
Organization: British Telecom Research Labs
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A similar incident happened in th UK a year or two back. The student
in this case was Richard Branson of all people. Fortunately he did
not get away since the instructed had noticed throughout the descent
that Branson kept going for his cutaway. But had he gone in it would
have been his own fault. 

When a first time jumper goes out on the static line, they are alone.
Once they've gone there's nothing really that can be done should they have a problem. The thing that concerns me is that incidents such as the 
Colorado fatality are all too common - by that I mean that some people
have an inability to save themselves. I've often wondered if such people
could be weeded out early on. The process of natural selection in the
big wide sky is a bit severe. 

It's not an easy problem. At my local DZ we had a middle aged  woman who
both myself and the JM's thought was a crater waiting for a grid reference.
It was totally subjective. One day she did have a problem, but she
handled her emergency procedures perfectly. Another guy who was very
confident and brash came within 2 seconds of killing himself after
getting disoriented after an unstable exit dive.

Some insights to the problem came from a friend of mine who gave up skydiving
some years back after an incident. He had to cutaway from a mal, but spent
a long time doing nothing before pulling his reserve at about 700'. The CCI
asked what on earth he had been thinking about. What he said was quite
strange. It was something like `..I was shitting myself, I wanted to go home,
I did'nt want to be where I was, I wish I had'nt done this jump, I'd
better pull the reserve..'. I think he made the right decision in quitting.

Just some food for thought.

Alan