What Sports Have The Greatest Risk Of Death?
It is not a particularly cheery topic, but death comes to us all. You could be the fittest you’ve ever been and in the prime of your life, only to forget to look both ways and be hit by a bus when crossing the road. Even so, there are some activities that tend to be more likely to result in injury, or even death, than others. The participants know that they are putting their lives in danger by taking part but choose to do it anyway. Some are sports that you won’t be all that surprised to see on the list, whilst others might give you pause for thought.
There are plenty of questions to be asked about why people would take part in such sports in the first place, of course. If you know that there is a chance that you’re going to die, wouldn’t you choose to something else? Isn’t crown green bowling or competitive crochet more interesting, given the likelihood of dying as a result is minimal? Adrenalin junkies get their kicks from living on the edge, so there is nothing that they want to do more than to push themselves to the extreme, with dangerous sports giving them the chance to do just that.
The Sports
Any sport can be dangerous. You might be walking down the fairway, striding towards the green after hitting the perfect nine-iron, only to be struck in the back of the head by a golf ball belonging to the person playing behind you who has grown impatient at waiting for you to get out of the way. The thing is, we’re not interested in dangerous sports. Broken legs and arms aren’t fun, but they also aren’t life-threatening in the majority of cases. That isn’t true of these sports, which put people’s lives at risk on a regular basis:
Base Jumping
When it comes to the world’s most dangerous sport, it is perhaps not all that surprising that a sport in which participants jump from fixed objects and then deploy a parachute in order to land safely turns out to be at the top of the list. What many people might not realise is that it should actually be written as B.A.S.E. jumping, given that ‘base’ is an acronym of the four fixed objects from which you can jump. They are buildings, antennae, spans and earth. Spans is talking about things like bridges, whilst ‘earth’ is the likes of cliffs.
Following the jump, participants usually enjoy a small free-fall before deploying a parachute, which is designed to slow their descent as they come in to land. You might well have seen people wearing so-called ‘wingsuits’, which put material between the legs and under the arms to act as the chute. The problem is, jumping from such heights without adequate time to have your descent slowed to a safe level is, unsurprisingly, an extremely dangerous thing to do. According to Oxford University scientists, there are 43.17 deaths per 100,000 participants.
Part of the reason why base jumping is so dangerous is that there is no time to deploy a reserve chute if the first one fails. It is very much all-in on the first attempt, which is why many countries around the world have made it illegal to base jump there. Of course, the result of this is that many people will practice it illegally, without the necessary medical teams or safety personal on-hand in the event that something goes wrong. Some might not call it a sport, but it is fair to say that it is absolutely one of the most dangerous things you can do.
Swimming
On the one hand, you might not think of swimming as being a particularly dangerous activity. Most of us learn to swim from quite a young age, wearing floats on our arms and graduating to being able to dive down and pick up a foam brick from the bottom of the pool. It is an activity that millions take part in on a weekly, if not daily, basis, so it is hardly surprising that there will be eyebrows raised at its inclusion on this list. There, are, however, numerous different variations to the straight-forward pool swimming that most of us will do.
Even if we ignore the possibility of some awful tragedy befalling someone, such as their hair getting trapped in a pump of something similar whilst swimming in a local pool, there are dangerous variations of swimming as an activity that we have to also consider. Whilst it might not be for you, the idea of taking part in an endurance swim will appeal to some people, for example. Then there are those that choose to go open swimming, where the likes of the strength of the tide can make a massive difference to their personal safety.
According to those Oxford University boffins, 1.77 people out of 100,000 will die swimming. That means the odds of death are 1 in 56,687. If you were to look at a specific form of swimming away from the gentle pool swimming that we know of, that might well go up considerably. No, you’re not all that likely to drown if you get in the pool on holiday or do a couple of lengths in your local swimming baths. Nor are you at too much risk if you take your lilo into the sea on holiday. Go for a long swim or an open one, however, and you just never know
Cycling
If you’re honest with yourself, you probably expected to see something like boxing or professional wrestling high up the list. Whilst they’re both sports that absolutely come with danger attached, the reality is that they are both legislated extremely carefully in the modern era. Though you still put your life in the line when you pull on a pair of boxing gloves, the chances are high that you will be well protected by the gear that you wear as well as the rules and regulations that are put in place to protect participants where possible.
The same is not as true of something like cycling, which is a sport that anyone with a bike can engage in. If you think that cycling is an incredibly sedate sport, the chances are high that you’re thinking about when you and your partner take the kids for a nice ride along the waterfront, or when you use your bike to commute into work and stick to the cycle paths. In reality, though, cycling puts a lot of the people who engage with it as a sport in a precarious position, especially if they’re having to share the space they ride in with cars.
It is a remarkable statistic, but people are actually 17 times more likely to be killed on a bike than they are in a car. Hopefully you are sensible and wear a helmet when you’re out and about, but in truth it makes little difference if you end up being hit by a car going at speed. In 2014, for example, 35 cyclists were killed per one billion miles travelled, compared to just two people in a car. With cyclists also 23 times more likely to be in an accident in the first place, you can see why getting on two wheels isn’t all that safe.
Running
When it comes to a sport that is accessible to all, running is definitely high on the list. You literally barely even need footwear, if the Australian that ran a marathon in flip-flops is anything to go by. Should you choose to, you can just get on the road and start running, Forest Gump style, seeing where the movement takes you. As with cycling, if you’re running on roads and sharing that space with vehicles then there is always the chance that you might be at risk, but in truth it isn’t the reason running makes our list of deadly sports.
The accessibility and cheapness of running means that people will often take it up as their lives are entering their middle years, perhaps keen to get rid of some of that middle-aged spread that has hit them out of nowhere. The problem is, not everyone that takes up the sport is ready to push their body as far as they do as quickly as they do it. Rather than following a guided programme like the NHS’s Couch to 5K, many people just pull on their trainers and start running, having no idea of how their body will respond to what is happening.
This, of course, leads to physical responses that many people aren’t prepared for, with heart-attacks being top of the list of things that happen to runners. The chances of dying from going for a run are one in 97,455, meaning that the benefits of taking part in a run are probably still better than the risks of doing so. That being said, if you are getting a little older and want to do what you can to stay fit, make sure that you take it easy to begin with an follow a specially prescribed introduction to the sport, rather than just going for it.
Sky-Diving
Given the presence of base jumping on this list, it isn’t all that surprising to see sky-diving here too. What might surprise a lot of people is that you’re actually less likely to die doing this than you are to end up in the mortuary from cycling or running. If you asked most people whether it was more dangerous to go for a run or jump out of a plane from a few thousand feet up with nothing but a piece of material to help you survive, the answer would be pretty unanimous. Mostly, though, sky-diving is about as safe as it’s possible for such a sport to be.
Whilst you are always at risk of faulty equipment, sky-diving entails the use of an emergency chute, which is there to be deployed in case the first one fails. You are also taking your life into your own hands in a literal sense, which means that user error accounts for a good majority of deaths that happen when sky-diving. Generally speaking, however, it is a safe sport that is enjoyed by millions across the planet, with your own health being one of the key factors in whether you’re likely to survive a jump from a plane.
In most cases, the heaviest that someone can be to sky-dive is 15 stone. That is to do with the weight that a parachute is able to carry, yes, but it is also because a lot of the deaths that happen to sky-divers happen due to the likes of a heart-attack or a stroke. The bigger you are, the more at risk of that sort of thing your body is, which is why the seemingly arbitrary cutoff point is put in place. You might still die for some other reason, of course, but the fitter you are and the better shape you’re in, the more likely you are to land safely.
Hang Gliding
An air sport that asks a pilot to fly a non-motorised, foot-launched light aircraft that relies on nothing more than the way the wind is blowing? It isn’t really a major shocker that hand-gliding is on the list when you think about. According to the stats the chances of dying from taking part in hang-gliding are one in 116,000, with the sport having being considered to be unsafe from the very early days of its creation. Whilst modern hang gliders are sturdy in construction and have to meet the criteria of the Hang Gliders Manufacturers Association, that doesn’t mean that they’re risk-free.
Pilots of the aircraft fly in harnesses that support their bodies, allowing them to control the movement of the craft as they fly. Whilst the safety levels have improved over the years, the one in 116,000 deaths statistic is based on the United Kingdom. If you stretch it out to worldwide then it drops dramatically, no pun intended, coming in at one in 1,000. A big part of that is down to training, with UK hang gliders expected to have taken part in much more rigorous training than people in other countries. If you don’t know what makes it dangerous, you don’t know what to look out for.
In the United Kingdom, pilots are trained to stop flying if the weather conditions become unfavourable. That means that if something like cloud suck becomes a real possibility to the wind picks up, they get grounded as soon as possible. It is similar to any sport, insomuch as the risk becomes exponentially greater the less experience you have and the less training you have taken part in. Most pilots will go on a recognised course and earn an International Pilot Proficiency Information card, which is issued by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale.
