I believe that the statement "Soaring is Dangerous" may be useful
statement to say to certified pilot but it certianly isn't what you
want to say to a 14 year old's Mom just before they take an intro
flight.

The statement "Soaring has it Dangers/Risks as does any Activity" is a
better statement, better still the statement that "the pilot has huge
amount of control in how risky a flight is or is not" is even better.

An indepth statistical analysis would take the 12 combination's of
variables i listed above (accidentally posted as michaelcase")
compared to other activities. However has Tom has already mentioned
it is difficult to get accurate numbers especially when you start
talking about incidents without injuries.

But it is useful to compare it to other activities since this is no
standard Risk level scale. It would be nice if we could says Soaring
rated a 6 on risk scale. But even then we would compare it to other
how other activities rated on the same scale. The benefit is it helps
pilot realize that they need to be diligent to keep it safe and helps
uninformed people make a decision about how much risk they willing to
accept.

The person riding to the airport on their Harley is probably less
likely to consider soaring too risky than the person who drives their
Volvo to the airport.

Brian