Bungee jumping

Is bungee jumping safe?

For most healthy people jumping with an established operator, yes. Deaths are rare enough that nobody has a good count. The figure you will see everywhere is about 1 death in 500,000 jumps, about 2 micromortsMicromortA one-in-a-million chance of death. It lets you compare the risk of very different activities on one scale.More in the glossary, but it cannot be traced to a published study or official register. A 2018 review in the Bulletin of Emergency and Trauma put it plainly: no records are kept on bungee injuries, so there are no reliable statistics.

So treat 2 micromorts as a rough order of magnitude, similar to a skydive or a scuba dive. The more useful point is where the risk comes from. Almost all of it sits with the operator, not with you.

What goes wrong

A bungee jump is simple physics. The cord stretches to stop you before you hit the ground or water, then rebounds a few times. The safety margin depends on getting a handful of things right on every jump:

• Weighing the jumper and choosing a cord rated for that weight and the drop.
• The cord length. Too long, and the jumper hits the ground, water or the structure.
• Every connection: harness to cord, cord to anchor, carabiners locked.
• Cord life. Commercial cords are retired after a set number of jumps.

Published reviews trace fatal and near-fatal accidents to technician error, equipment failure and impact. An early review in Sports Medicine (Hite and colleagues, 1995) listed injuries including bleeding in the eye, nerve damage in the legs and paralysis. The 2018 review notes at least two trauma deaths in the UK. Most recorded deaths around the world happened where a step was skipped, or at temporary sites with poor oversight.

Injuries

The 2003 New Zealand survey is one of the few with a denominator. Adventure operators reported 62 bungee injuries, 3 of them classed as serious harm. Per million hours of participation, bungee jumping had 477 injuries, against 760 for horse riding and 2,229 for snow sports. That per-hour measure flatters it somewhat, because a bungee jump is short.

Medical journals are full of case reports, which shows what can happen but not how often. The most common is bleeding in the eye. Hanging head-down after a sudden stop raises pressure in the head, and small vessels in the eye can burst. Most cases clear up within weeks, but a few have caused lasting damage to the retina. Other reports describe neck and spine injuries, a torn artery in the neck, broken legs from a twisted rebound and lung injuries.

In one study of 100 first-time jumpers, 42 reported some symptoms afterwards, mostly dizziness. Three still had symptoms after 48 hours.

Who should be careful

The rebound puts real stress on the neck, spine, eyes and heart. Operators normally turn away people who are pregnant or have high blood pressure, heart disease, epilepsy, recent surgery, neck or back problems, or eye conditions such as a previous retinal detachment. If any of these apply to you, talk to your doctor before booking.

A case report of a broken thigh bone came from a rebound that loaded one leg more than the other. If you have knee, ankle or hip problems, ask whether a body harness is available.

How to choose an operator

This is the decision that matters, because once you leave the platform you have no control.

1. Prefer countries and sites with regulation. New Zealand, the birthplace of commercial bungee, regulates adventure operators under the Health and Safety at Work (Adventure Activities) Regulations 2016, with a registrar for operators.
2. Watch them weigh you. A serious operator weighs every jumper and writes the weight down, often on your hand.
3. Watch the checks. Staff should check every connection out loud before each jump, and a second person should confirm.
4. Be wary of pop-up jumps at festivals or on temporary cranes in places with no oversight, and of operators who are vague about cord age or weight limits.
5. Ask about recovery. Find out how they bring you down or back up, and how fast they could reach you if something went wrong.
6. Keep your head and neck neutral. Follow the jump position you are shown and do not jerk your head on the rebound.

How we scored it

Fatality risk (74) sits in the 1 to 5 micromortMicromortA one-in-a-million chance of death. It lets you compare the risk of very different activities on one scale.More in the glossary band, on an estimate we cannot verify well, which is why confidence is low. Injury risk (82) is good on the little data that exist. Controllability (55) is weak because the jumper's safety is in the operator's hands. Compare skydiving, with better-measured risk and more personal control, and BASE jumping, which shares the cliffs but not the safety margins.