Just curious: roughly how many /military/ people die in simple training or
practice jumps (non-combat or test flights) per year? Not many, I'd guess.

Civilian 'for-fun' jumpers do not have a particularly good record.

--
OK, Colorado, let's bean Boston.

Almost every year, NYY or Beantown. Boooooring!



Numbers for 2005 from USPS website
http://www.uspa.org/about/page2/relative_safety.htm

962 USPA members had injuries requiring medical attention.
27 Fatalities
2,200,000 jumps

Not too bad statistically. Also, in recent years a large percentage of
fatalities have been caused by judgemental errors or mistakes made during an
attempted high-performance landing rather than equipment failure.

Most news reporting of skydiving fatalities plays on the average person's
fear of heights/falling by using descriptive terminology like "plummeted to
his/her death" or "parachute failed to open" no matter what actually
happened. Sensationalism sells news. Many of today's deaths occur after the
jumper is under an open, normally functioning canopy.

BSBCU, TP