A colleague reconed it was squash due to heart attacks. Quick search does not give conclusive answer. So what is most dangerous sport

1. Highest fatalities regardless of number of participants.
2. Highest fatalities per 1,000 (or million) of paticipants.

My thoughs are 1. Angling and 2. Basejumping

Do you mean dangerous, as in engaging in the sport can cause death (basejumping), or do you mean people die from natural causes whilst doing it (i.e. fishing)? – (i.e. not actually dangerous, but people die doing it)

Russian Roulette?

Though I guess that is more of a hobby than a sport.

Both. Any fatality counts be it directly related or not. Recon 1. will be more indirectly related and 2. directly.

“Though I guess that is more of a hobby than a sport.”

It can’t be a hobby surely? A hobby is some thing you do repeatedly 🙂

It has to be Tiddlywinks FTW

Golf. Lots of fat old men play so I’m guessing there will be plenty of heart attacks.

watching telly – favoured pastime of the nearly deads

2. Formula 1 24 deaths per 800 drivers

Equestrian Cross Country?

Golf. Lots of fat old men play so I’m guessing there will be plenty of heart attacks.

Your logic is ok, but it’s not a sport

😈

Horse riding should be fairly high up!

Mountaineering

Both. Any fatality counts be it directly related or not.

Surely sleeping is therefore the most dangerous activity one can engage with. Sleeping probably accounts for half of all deaths!

**** I’m never going to close my eyes again….

I’m going to go for cycling as being right up there.

SBZ, a decent shout, though is it not about 150 fatalities per year cycling. Still think Angling…..

And Geetee, not activity, sport.

Mountaineering

Depending on the type of mountaineering it could be very low or very high fatality rate per participant.

Climbing 8000ers is pretty risky.
Mountaineering in Scotland really isn’t.

Your logic is ok, but it’s not a sport

If the OP gets away with angling as a sport then golf counts too!

cave diving?

i think the death rate was something like 1 death per 3 dives at one stage.

eople die from natural causes whilst doing it (i.e. fishing)? – (i.e. not actually dangerous, but people die doing it)

Don’t over 200 people* die each year because their carbon poles touch overhead power lines?

*Made up statistic

I’m going to go for cycling as being right up there.

Cycling as a sport – as in fatalities during competition? Or cycling as an activity – including recreation and transportation. I ride a mountain bike, but I’ve never involved myself in anything even faintly regarded as ‘sport’ so if I were to die doing it it wouldn’t be a sport related death. Deaths on the road involving cyclists are measured something like 35 oper billion miles cycled, so the percieved risk is high (perhaps for the individual the number of scares and near misses are high, and rare deaths are reported widely) but the actual risk is low. By comparison a tiny fraction of motoring deaths are reported even locally, so driving feels a lot safer than it is.

or do you mean people die from natural causes whilst doing it (i.e. fishing)

There were some bullshit stats out a while ago about how fishing was more dangerous than boxing (put about by a pro-boxing lobby) but they were pretty flawed as they were including industrial accidents – trawlers etc in the figures, and even then they were still wrong. The danger with fishing is it takes place on or near water, so falling in the water is the risk, not the boredom.

Risk of death wise, 200 miles on a motorcycle = one day on the front line in afganistan

http://www.medicine.ox.ac.uk/bandolier/booth/Risk/sports.html

Provides a breakdown and respective risk of death

Interestingly, pregnancy looks to more dangerous than anything we’d do as a sport…tell that to the missus next time you strap on your hang-glider

http://www.hse.gov.uk/education/statistics.htm#death

I thought Rugby was fairly high up the list if not top?

lol at table tennis being higher than rock climbing 🙂

Fishing comes top of the “highest number of people who die doing it” category, simply because it can only be done in the presence of water but fully clothed, a lot of people go fishing and therefore a lot of people drown while fishing.

cave diving seconded.

mountain biking: get it wrong = chance of broken wrist.

cave diving: get it wrong = dead.

http://www.medicine.ox.ac.uk/bandolier/booth/Risk/sports.html

Provides a breakdown and respective risk of death

Interesting that rock climbing in below table tennis in that list 😮

Interestingly, pregnancy looks to more dangerous than anything we’d do as a sport…tell that to the missus next time you strap on your hang-glider

http://www.hse.gov.uk/education/statistics.htm#death

I’m sure horse riding was often touted but I’m not sure if it was a specific discipline. I’d guess eventing/xc was fairly dangerous.

Skiing might also figure.

It would depend on how you judge it though. Injuries, serious injuries or death make it dangerous. A few cuts doesn’t make a sport dangerous.

Your logic is ok, but it’s not a sport

Helps to understand what ‘sport’ is before you decide what it isn’t 🙂

chugg08 – That list doesn’t look like it is comparing eggs with eggs.

It seems to say that only there were only…

1.7 million instances of recreational cycling between 1997 and 2006 in Germany, causing 19 deaths. But there were…

2 million instances of sky diving in the USA in 2006 alone
57 million instances of skiing in the USA in 2002/3 (one winter)

Seems unlikely!

Looks like they are comparing instances for some of the data with total population who participate for other data. So a cyclist in Germany has a 1 in 92,000 chance of dying due to cycling over a 10 year period but a skier in the USA has a 1 in 1.5m chance of dying each time they go skiing.

These are not the same thing.

(also the raw data looks dodgy, e.g. the population number for swimming, cycling and running in Germany are identical!)

I’d doubt that is is possible to actually find the data needed to definitively say what is the most dangerous sport. So yeah we can speculate away.

Climbing Everest? 1 in 8 who reach the summit don’t make it back IIRC.

jfletch – I know, some of the figures look questionable…but unless someone can find a better source its all we have at this stage.

I didn’t compose the figures merely used t’interweb to find the pages.

chugg08 – Id say the figures (from the first link) were worse than useless, they were miss-leading. The HSE link is a lot better since a) I trust them and b) their figures seem realistic.

Bowling Greens – they all now should have a defib machine and a chill room for storing the deceased*

* Not based on any factual truth

Groovy comparative risk animations – click the tabs and reveal the danger!

Micromorts

Shocking to see how much safer childbirth is in the UK than in the USA

Formula 1 24 deaths per 800 drivers

Possibly up there, but motorsport as a whole, including 1000’s of weekend warriors on trackdays?

Also, a per minute/hour figure would be fairer, eg basejumping is dangerous and only takes a few seconds/minutes, cave diving takes hours but similarly dangerous?

Per activity would make more sense I would think – per ride, per match, per jump, per race

My guess would be basejumping (fatality rate is about 1%) and road racing (220 fatalities at the TT since it started)

Hmm looking at that list, with Base jumping rated highest with 9 from a population of 20,000 ish, I doubt there are many more Kite surfers and there have been more deaths than that in that period, there were three in two weeks last summer in Tarifa.

So per head, Kitesurfing must be up there and it is dangerous.

Equestrian Cross Country?

I’d guess this. Also ice climbing/rock climbing and base jumping.