[longerthoughts]

I'm an experienced skydiver - one death per year is an insanely low bar for any drop zone. Lodi is notorious for incidents and I would never jump there.

Skydiving seems insanely risky because it's scary but it's statistically not particularly risky [0], especially for conscientious skydivers at well-run drop zones. The calculation on "calculated risk" changes dramatically once you start blowing off safety protocol, which are what keep the sport relatively safe.

[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9859333/

[rcurry]

This. I used to jump at a DZ in the Midwest that has been in operation for like thirty years and had, I think, only one fatality. But we had great safety people in charge and were really careful with students.

My first jump there was a static line solo and they gave an hour long classroom session followed by time in a hanging harness practicing emergency procedures and malfunction recognition.