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SafetyScorer

Is BASE jumping safe?

BASE jumping

BASE jumping is among the most dangerous activities on our list. One jump carries a 200 to 800 in a million chance of death in studies from Norway and Switzerland, and wingsuit flying now accounts for most of the dead.

Medium confidence#49 of 53 activitiesUpdated
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Risk of death
about 400 MicromortA one-in-a-million chance of death. It lets you compare the risk of very different activities on one scale.More in the glossary per jump (Kjerag, 1995–2005); 200 to 800 in Lauterbrunnen, 2007–2016
Same risk as odds
about 1 in 2,300 jumps at Kjerag
Non-fatal accidents
1 in 254 jumps (Kjerag)
Recorded deaths, 2007–2017
223 worldwide, 137 of them in wingsuits
Main cause of death
Hitting the ground or the cliff (96%)
Compared with skydiving
About 100 times the risk of death per jump

How the score breaks down

The overall score is the weighted average of these factors. Scoring rules

  • Fatality risk50% of score

    18 out of 100, Poor

    At Kjerag in Norway, 9 of 20,850 jumps from 1995 to 2005 were fatal, about 430 MicromortA one-in-a-million chance of death. It lets you compare the risk of very different activities on one scale.More in the glossary per jump (Søreide 2007). In Switzerland's Lauterbrunnen valley, the fatality risk was 0.02% to 0.08% per jump in 2007–2016.

  • Serious injury risk25% of score

    35 out of 100, Poor

    Kjerag had 82 non-fatal accidents in 20,850 jumps, one in 254. A Lauterbrunnen study found injuries on 0.05% to 0.2% of jumps, and a 2012 survey of nearly 19,500 jumps found 2 severe injuries per 1,000.

  • Controllability15% of score

    40 out of 100, Weak

    Most fatal events involve human factors such as opening too low (64%) or a bad exit (15%), so skill and margins matter. But a jumper has seconds and one parachute, wind and terrain are unforgiving, and experienced jumpers die often.

  • Rescue and environment10% of score

    22 out of 100, Poor

    Jumps are from cliffs, often in mountains, and injured jumpers may hang from a cliff face or lie in steep terrain. A 2026 report on a Kjerag rescue needed two helicopters and a 220-metre lowering; the jumper arrested over three and a half hours after impact.

Compared with everyday risks

  • An hour's walk1 in 14 million
  • Driving 100 miles (160 km)1 in 5.9 million
  • A day of skiing1 in 1.3 million
  • An ordinary day: accidents and violence1 in 1 million
  • A scuba dive1 in 500,000
  • Cycling 100 miles (160 km)1 in 430,000
  • Running a marathon1 in 290,000
  • A skydive1 in 250,000
  • A general anaesthetic1 in 100,000
  • Riding a motorbike 100 miles (160 km)1 in 83,000
  • BASE jumping: per jumpThis activity1 in 2,500
Chance of dying from each activity, on a log scale (longer bar = riskier). Activity figures are approximate and come from our activity pages; the ordinary day and the anaesthetic come from The Norm Chronicles (Blastland and Spiegelhalter, 2013).

Is BASE jumping safe?

No. It is one of the most dangerous activities we rate; only expeditions to Mount Everest and K2, road motorcycle racing and its own wingsuit form, wingsuit BASE, score lower. At Kjerag, a 984-metre cliff in Norway, 9 of 20,850 jumps between 1995 and 2005 ended in death, about 1 in 2,300. That is roughly 430 MicromortA one-in-a-million chance of death. It lets you compare the risk of very different activities on one scale.More in the glossary per jump, about a hundred times the risk of a skydive. A Swiss study of the Lauterbrunnen valley found a fatality risk of 0.02% to 0.08% per jump in 2007–2016, or 200 to 800 micromorts.

The jumpers who die are not mostly beginners. The Lauterbrunnen study describes the patients as predominantly young, experienced men.

Why the numbers are so much worse than skydiving

A skydiver opens the parachute thousands of feet above open fields, with a reserve and an automatic device as backups. A BASE jumper leaves from a cliff, bridge or building, often a few hundred metres up, and has one parachute and a few seconds. There is no time for a reserve. Any problem on opening, such as the canopy turning toward the cliff, has to be fixed immediately or not at all.

A review of 223 BASE deaths between 2007 and 2017 by Bouchat and Brymer found that 96% died from hitting the ground or an object. They traced most of them to human factors:

  • Low pull or no pull (64%). Opening the parachute too late, often while flying a wingsuit close to terrain.
  • Bad exits (15%). Leaving the edge unstable, which leads to tumbling or a poor opening.
  • Equipment problems. Malfunctions and pilot chute problems.
  • Conditions. Wind, poor visibility and water landings.

197 of the 223 deaths were from cliffs, not buildings or bridges.

The wingsuit effect

Wingsuits turned BASE jumping into a flying sport, and the death toll followed. Mei-Dan and colleagues found that 29 of 59 BASE deaths in 2008–2011 involved wingsuits. In the 2007–2017 review it was 137 of 223. Proximity flying, close to ridges and trees at well over 100 km/h, is where many of these deaths happen.

Because nobody counts wingsuit jumps, we cannot give a reliable per-jump figure for wingsuit flying alone. What the data show is that it makes up the larger share of deaths in a sport whose overall rate is already extreme.

Injuries and rescue

For each death there are many more injuries. Kjerag had 82 non-fatal accidents in the same 20,850 jumps, one in 254. A 2012 survey of nearly 19,500 jumps found 2 severe injuries per 1,000. Typical injuries come from striking the cliff after a bad opening, hard landings in boulder fields and broken legs and backs.

Rescue is slow and dangerous for the rescuers. A 2026 case report described a wingsuit jumper who hit the Kjerag wall and hung from his parachute two-thirds of the way down. Two helicopters and an alpine team lowered rescuers 220 metres to reach him; he went into cardiac arrest more than three and a half hours after the accident. The authors called it the fastest documented alpine rescue at Kjerag.

What the risk means over a career

Risk per jump hides how fast it builds up. At 400 MicromortA one-in-a-million chance of death. It lets you compare the risk of very different activities on one scale.More in the glossary per jump:

JumpsChance of death (approx.)
11 in 2,500
501 in 50
2001 in 13
5001 in 5.5

These are rough figures that assume a constant rate. Experience lowers the risk of some mistakes but leads many jumpers to harder exits and closer flying, which is part of why experienced jumpers keep dying.

If you still want to jump

The sport's own community has clear rules about how to start. In plain terms:

  1. Get at least 200 skydives first, including canopy courses, before a first BASE course. Many first-jump courses ask for about this many.
  2. Learn from a structured first-jump course, not friends. Start on big, clean objects with long delays and safe landing areas.
  3. Pull high. Low pulls kill more BASE jumpers than anything else. Set an opening altitude with margin and do not shave it.
  4. Walk away when the wind is wrong. Many fatal reports mention gusts, turbulence or poor visibility.
  5. Treat wingsuit proximity flying as a separate, much more dangerous sport. Build up over hundreds of wingsuit skydives and open-face BASE jumps first.
  6. Jump at legal sites with known rescue, and tell someone your plan. In the mountains, a phone signal and a helicopter can still be hours away.

How we scored it

Fatality risk (18) sits deep in the rubric's bottom band of over 100 MicromortA one-in-a-million chance of death. It lets you compare the risk of very different activities on one scale.More in the glossary, and the rescue environment (22) is almost as poor. Controllability (40) gets some credit because opening altitude and exits are choices. Compare skydiving and an expedition to Mount Everest, the other activity that scores in the bottom band.

Questions people ask

What percentage of BASE jumpers die?

Per jump, about 0.02% to 0.08% in Swiss data and 0.04% at Kjerag in Norway. Over a career the numbers add up fast. Someone who makes 100 jumps a year at 400 MicromortA one-in-a-million chance of death. It lets you compare the risk of very different activities on one scale.More in the glossary per jump has roughly a 4% chance of dying in that year alone.

Is wingsuit BASE more dangerous than regular BASE?

The data suggest so. Wingsuits were involved in 49% of BASE deaths in 2008–2011 and 137 of 223 deaths in 2007–2017. Proximity flying, close to terrain at high speed, leaves almost no room for error. We have no reliable count of wingsuit jumps, so a per-jump rate cannot be given.

Is BASE jumping legal?

It depends on the site. Some places, such as Kjerag in Norway and the Lauterbrunnen valley in Switzerland, allow it under local rules; most US national parks ban it. Legal status does not change the physics, but legal sites tend to have known exits and organised rescue.

How much more dangerous is BASE jumping than skydiving?

Roughly 100 times per jump. Kjerag's rate of about 430 MicromortA one-in-a-million chance of death. It lets you compare the risk of very different activities on one scale.More in the glossary per jump compares with about 4 per jump for US skydiving in 2016–2025. The Kjerag authors themselves estimated five to eight times the skydiving risk, using the higher skydiving rates of their time.

Sources

  1. 1.How dangerous is BASE jumping? An analysis of adverse events in 20,850 jumps from the Kjerag Massif, Norway (opens in a new tab) · Journal of Trauma (Søreide, Ellingsen, Knutson), 2007
  2. 2.BASE Jumping in the Lauterbrunnen Valley – A Retrospective Cohort Study from 2007 to 2016 (opens in a new tab) · International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (Brodmann Maeder et al.), 2023
  3. 3.BASE Jumping Fatalities Between 2007 and 2017 – Main Causes of Fatal Events (opens in a new tab) · Wilderness & Environmental Medicine (Bouchat and Brymer), 2019
  4. 4.Fatalities in wingsuit BASE jumping (opens in a new tab) · Wilderness & Environmental Medicine (Mei-Dan et al.), 2013
  5. 5.The epidemiology of severe and catastrophic injuries in BASE jumping (opens in a new tab) · Clinical Journal of Sport Medicine (Mei-Dan et al.), 2012
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