Pretty interesting article on BASE jumping over at Outside Online, including detailed explanations of why people die BASE jumping (38% are no pulls where for some reason or another the jumper fails to deploy the chute) a list of the top ten most deadly sites (Lauterbrunnen, Switzerland has racked up 28 fatalities); and, a cool but macabre timeline of some of the most spectacular deaths of the sport (in 1991, a guy rode a jet ski off of Niagra Falls, but his chute failed to open and he drowned).
Outside describes BASE jumping as "an incredibly risky pursuit that has claimed at least 180 lives since 1981," and attributes their statistics to the online magazine Blinc, which maintains the official BASE jumping fatality list or BFL - an accounting of the who, when, where, and how people have died participating in the sport.
While the deaths are spectacular - they're really not that numerous, averaging six per year. I understand that there are vastly more skiers/riders/surfers/climbers/etc. risking life and limb than BASE jumpers, and so the comparison is a little off kilter, but those sports are pretty dangerous too and people die from them regularly.
Hell, lots and lots of people die doing things they love every year, like smoking, driving drunk, eating shitty food, and commuting to work. Sadly,
five hundred kids a year die from accidentally shooting themselves or getting shot by their friends or siblings. I guess you could say, having a loaded gun in a house full of children is an "incredibly risky pursuit" like 84 times more risky than BASE jumping.
