Most dangerous Job/Sport/Hobby

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Comments

  • I'd say that being a trawlerman has to be the most dangerous occupation. Working in rough seas where if you fall in the water during the winter you'd die from hypothermia in minutes.

  • Here are some things to think about when reviewing these statistics. The numbers themselves may be accurate, I don’t know, but the basis behind any analysis can be flawed.

    Let us take BASE jumping. They quote 9 deaths annually in Norway. Why is that, when Norway has got a population in that particular region of just 20,850? (National population estimated 5M.) If we compare it to Wales, population estimate 3M, should we expect 6 per year?

    I see on the BASE jumper’s website http://base-jumping.eu/base-jumping-fatality-list/

    100 recorded deaths, their location and their reason. The time period is 1981 to 1991, across the whole world.  4 were recorded in the UK, and none in Belgium, Ireland or Netherlands.
    Does this make BASE Jumping in the UK safer than Norway? Er, no. The jumps in the UK are terrifyingly short. There are some buildings in London, some very short cliffs in Cheddar or elsewhere, and some High Voltage pylons near to the Severn Bridge. I don’t recall seeing any cliffs or skyscrapers in Belgium or Netherlands. So is it safer to jump off a short building in Belgium? References to the European Commission may have validity at this point.

    In Norway the cliffs are nothing if not huge. They are also well known within the BASE brotherhood. So people travel to jump them.

    -

    I was always told that one of the most dangerous activities was cave diving. The Vicar asserts that proper planning prevents p poor performance. Yes, but when it goes pear shaped, the thing about cave diving is that you CAN’T just float up and get a rescue. That’s what you do when Open Water diving. Even in a wreck you may have to back track to get out, and that could mean turning around in an impossible space. With cave diving you are combining the hard work of caving, with navigating unexplored underwater passages in pitch black and zero visibility. The underwater river could go into spate. Radios don’t work. Rescue is pretty much impossible.

    http://www.cavediver.net/forum/showthread.php/4759-Cave-Diver-fatalities

    Varying statistics appear: 1:1125 dives, or 1:14 cave divers die doing the sport. Apparently an experienced cave diver is 39 times more likely to survive a dive than his counterpart from 26 years ago.  I recall being told that the death rate was 1:3 cave divers around that time.

    -

    On another note, I don’t see any entries for some other hazardous activities:
    -golf (primary risk is lightning strike, secondary risk is unconnected heart failure)
    -angling (risks again are lightning, contacting overhead power with carbon fibre rods, and finally drowning)

    I’m off to play with numbers....

  • Here's an interesting consideration for you. This is factually accurate, I know because I was there. In 1984 to 1986 Maggie's second army, ie the construction business, went down to the Falklands to build her a brand new strategic airfield. Or civil airport as it was called. In that 2 year period the average number of employees on site was 2000, and we went through about 7500 in total, most of them surviving the experience, just employee churn. The total number of man hours was estimated for the period, and the UK accident rate utilised as a basis for calculating how many coffins we needed to take. The answer was 6. Interestingly, in the two years that I was there we indeed suffered 6 deaths, but not all needed coffins, as 2 were lost overboard on the transit sailing to South Africa. Arguably, they don't count. Arguably, 2 others don't count as they were off-duty and alcohol related. The remaining 2 were definitely on site.

    Just a question, what's the death rate for the Army infantry? What about SAS? How specific do we want to be?
    In construction, there are sub divisions. Motorway cone washing is dodgy. Those guys can't get life assurace or mortgages. They all know someone who's not there now.

    In today's traffic conditions, the live carriageway of any highway is a very dangerous place to work.  An Oxford University study ranked it as the 16th most hazardous occupation in the UK.  In 2005 HTMA reported 5 deaths and 12 major injuries - more than twice the number of fatalities of any of the previous five years.  And all the fatalities were caused by workers being struck by oncoming vehicles.Between 2003 and 2008, 11 road workers were killed and 104 were seriously injured on motorways and major routes in England (Source – Highways Agency)
  • Please

    Next time you drive through a set of road works, if it says 50 limit, please go at the speed limit, even if you can't see anyone. They may be up ahead, just setting it out, or waiting to walk across the live motorway with a 6 foot square sign. The road is narrow and you need space to be able to have some reaction time.

    And don't think that those crash cushion lorries are like having an impact with a feather bed. When hit from behind, the IPV driver typically needs hospitalisation and 3 months off work for the physical damage. The mental damage is permanent.

  • Roadworks! I couldn't injury anyone at roadworks if I was a trained sniper! there's never anyone there

  • RicFRicF ✭✭✭

    Blisters. Read every word. Valid points.

    🙂

  • I reckon that anyone caught speeding through roadworks should be made to stand inside the "safe zone" for 30 minutes. For information of the unenlightened, that places your feeble frame of intantly destroyable skin, bone and blood a mere 4 feet away from the live traffic.

    Can an engineer please calculate the kinetic energy carried by a 1500kg car travelling at a mere 50mph? What about a 40T truck?

    What is the stopping power of a 1m high plastic road cone? (Clue: it's zero).

    If I was harsh and vindictive I'd say that culprits should go out on a debris cleansing duty after a fatal incident. But I think that may be too much. The people that do that duty are what we call "Battle hardened".

  • The most dangerous thing I have ever done, and I still go on doing, is surfing.  I have nearly drowned once and got pulled up a rock face once.  I am always wary, constantly sussing the conditions and the currents.  Respect the sea. image

     

    Workwise, Blisters you have my respect!

  • I have been loking on the internet.  In 2002 57 million people died.  5% from AIDS/HIV, that is 2.35 million people (Manchester and Liverpool, ans everywhere in between).

  • RicFRicF ✭✭✭
    Nick Windsor 4 wrote (see)

    I think if you do a dangerous hobby it's your concern and good luck with it. A dangerous job, well you have a choice, so don't do it, it's not going to be worth it in the end. We all have a duty to family to keep ourselves away from danger

    Some people will do anything for money. They want money more than they want life itself.

    Its like when the character played by Clint Eastwood asked the bounty hunter why he did it, the bounty hunter said "just making a living", Eastwood replied, "Dying ain't much of a living".

    🙂

  • A friend took a job truck dring in Iraq. Huge pay, high risk.



    I think Blisters makes some very good points about standing next to cones when cars fly past at high speed. I used to have a v poor attitude to driving through roadworks but when they brought in average speed cameras I changed (am ashamed it was that that changed my behaviour) It's one speed camera I'm pleased exists. It's hard to ignore the temptation to speed when the rest of the traffic is flying past. This makes me ..and everyone else



    I think many people doing high risk jobs do them for either money or the thrill seeing. There is a difference between road construction, nursing (believe this is good job to get assaulted in!) and diving/mountain rescue as cause or motivation
  • Stevie  GStevie G ✭✭✭✭

    How huge pay are we talking "OW", and can I say that;s a very apt name for this thread!

    100k a year? More?

    Can't do a lot with that money when you're dead.

  • kittenkat wrote (see)

    Saying that people just do dangerous jobs because of the money is bollocks in many cases. Go and actually talk to people who save other people's lives and expect a few punches when you accuse them of money grabbing.

    Sheesh!

    Kittenkat speaks wise words.
    Construction work in general terms is something that you do if you are practically minded. Pride in the job is what matters. The majority of people really don't understand the huge emphasis that we put on safety management. Safety is no Accident is one of the best slogans posted around the sites. It's also flogged into people so much that you start to believe it. And then you start to implement it. There is a difference between common sense and paperwork. Though people perceive my role to be paperwork, I'm a total cynic at heart and would rather see common sense and pride in the job. Impractical management suggestions and Cover Your Arse risk assessments are no replacement for competence.

    It's not the money. It's what we do, because otherwise someone else would have to do it, and they wouldn't be as good. Same as in any job.

    If you've got to do some repair work on the motorway, for example changing all the light bulbs on a mile long stretch, you have to set up the safety system in stages. Advance lights to 50 for 2 miles. A team of 4 in 3 trucks to pre-lay the signs on the  verge, and walk them across 3 lanes to the centre. Back around the junctions.
    3 trucks then (traffic flow permitting) stop in Lane 3 with just big F-OFF lights to set out the initial taper. Then it's deemed to be a bit safer, and the main drag of cones can be placed. Back down to the next junction and up again. Then you can do the other side. Radio the all clear. After that the 2 guys in the lighting truck can get on with their work. Each column takes 5 minutes, so that's a lot to make a full shift.
    Then your cone guys can go through a repeat dance to clear the road. When it's finally and fully clear, they drive it all to confirm and radio to get the 50 lights turned out. Most of this work is done between 9pm and 5am.

    If you don't see anyone actually inside the closure, you might spot a cone lorry going the other way. Of course, it might just be that the road is closed because it's protecting you, the motorist, from hitting some hazard in the verge or hard shoulder. Mostly, the works are advertised on the Highways Agency website. Obviously this excludes those occasions when some tit has fallen asleep and wiped out a few barrier beams on the central reserve. I suppose that it's better than wiping out a few families heading southbound.

    There's a lot of work near us at the moment putting in concrete central reserve barriers. It's a slow job, but the big advantage is that they don't need to be repaired.

  • Blisters- In the US if you speed past road worked your fine is doubled. So they have cottoned on.

    1-14 for cave divers is about spot on actually. Even this weekend I was in GB cave on mendip and it was nearly flooded and we got out just in time. Had to shuffle on backs through a foot of water with your lips nearly pressed on the top of the tunnel that was just wide enough to fit down. Seems daft and its scary but the buzz afterwards, looking back is amazing. Plus its usually a lot to do with camaraderie as well of experiencing these near misses. It's the close knit community that is appealing. You will find that in most extreme sports and this is another pull for people.

  • I've just come back from a week's skiing in Chamonix including a couple of days of ski touring at the end.  the avalanche risk at the time for the touring was 4/5 due to heavy snowfalls earlier in the week but we were with a mountain guide who's advice you have to trust but we were fine.  but during the week we heard of at least 5 deaths in the area - 2 were at least due to incompetence and stupidity, the others due to falls or avalanches.

    as a skier of nearly 30 years you accept that the sport can be dangerous when you go off-piste and away from resort areas - that's part of the thrill in going where the crowds aren't - and you take all necessary precautions but at some time shit might happen.  

    our guide had had a bad fall doing some extreme skiing - she accepts the risks and tries to minimise them but she knows that the chances of being killed as a mountain guide is very very high as it's a dangerous environment and a number die each year in mountain accidents.  a guide we climbed Mt Blanc with died in an avalanche about 4 years ago.   

    mountains are risky places - I guess it's the open air equivalent of cave diving in some ways!  I'm much easier in the mountains than caves and while I can see the attractions of cave diving it's not for me!

    and if you want a truly barmy sport - even our guide agreed on this - look at wing flying.  basically it's base jumping but with a winged suit that allows you some "gliding" properties.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wingsuit_flying.  loads of YouTube vids of it around.

    thrilling - sure. highly dangerous - you bet.

  • See I said Skiing originally. It doesnt appeal to me at all because falling over a lot is painful image but I know a bloke who is paralysed now because of Skiing. Believe it or not he was hit by a skiing instructor so hard it paralysed him, so its not just the obvious that get you!

  • I've had my share of skiing falls including fractured elbows (both arms at different times) and a broken jaw when I hit a rock face first (low speed tumble as well!) and I needed a helicopter rescue to the local hospital for surgery (thank dog for great insurance that covered all my costs).   yet in nearly 30 years playing rugby I never broke a bloody bone!!

    I just make sure I minimise the risk skiing as much as possible - like not bloody falling over!!!  but it can happen even to the best skier

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