It's more active jumpers over their jumping career than just people who try it once. It varies wildly jumper to jumper based on the types of jumps done (cliffs are more deadly than bridges) and how often. Most people jump for a period of 3-6 years and quit.

My wife and I were pretty active jumping in the era of wingsuit videos on YouTube. In her first year we had one good friend die and 9 people we'd met or hung out with a short time. It is basically comparable in danger to spaceflight.

Didn't expect to find one here at Hacker News. 698... so you must have started around the early 00:s or thereabouts?

Unfortunately I share your same statistics: I was very active in the early 2010:s and in that period I lost about 10 friends/acquaintances. Since then even more people I've hung out with are gone.

So yeah: wingsuiting is dangerous. But BASE itself can be done "reasonably" safely I think: personally I was always more fond of slider down (low) stuff, like buildings, and in my mind that's a safer sport than wingsuit BASE.

Yeah 2000 was first BASE jump. There are a few on here. Brendan W and a few others pop up on these threads.

probably depends on whether you're buzzing mountains and not deploying a chute till 1000ft.

in this vid he's jumping out at 10k ft which makes it closer to skydiving.