The big question is always, "How dangerous is skydiving?" In 2012, 19 people died in parachuting accidents in the United States, or roughly one person per 100,000 jumps. Look at the US Skydiving Incident Reports to get an idea of the types of problems that lead to fatalities. If you make one jump in a year, your chance of dying is 1 in 100,000.
How does the fatality rate in skydiving compare to other common activities? Since most adults in America drive cars, let's compare skydiving to driving. Roughly 34,000 people died in 2012 in traffic accidents in the United States ref. If you drive 10,000 miles per year, your chance of dying in a car wreck in any given year is something like 1 in 6,000. In other words, we accept a higher level of risk by getting into our cars every day than people do by occasionally skydiving. The fatality rate for skydiving is 0.006 per 1,000 jumps, according to the U.S. Parachute Association
