A few weeks ago, near the outset of this blog, I posted a strange finding I made: that the #1 search engine term that brought someone here was “Chad Crosson.” Though the weeks since have moved my friend’s name further down the popular search list, a new term has taken its place as the strangest way that someone has stumbled across my blog: odds of dying bungy.
Being as bungee (the more popular alternate spelling of “bungy”) fatality is such a huge topic in my posts, it made complete sense– What? No, I’ve never even mentioned bungee in a blog post.
What this poor web-searcher accidentally dug up was one sentence in an essay I posted titled, “Devoured”. The sentence goes, “The odds of dying on a bungee are dramatically less than the odds of dying in a car on the way to the bungee…” Unfortunately, though the search terms “bungee deaths” and “bungee fatalities” turn up some decent information, “odds of dying bungy” does not. And so, web-searcher X wound up with an essay on bitterness between siblings instead of actual, life-saving statistics — sorry, searcher X.
Though I can’t guarantee he’ll ever read this, I’d like to supply X with the information he was looking for just the same. I tried to find some numbers on bungee fatalities, but sadly it seems to be a research topic that has not been heavily pursued. The two best bits of numerical info I found were on WikiAnswers, which claimed 372 fatalities out of 97,674 worldwide jumpers since the inception of the sport, and Google Answers, which said there were “at least 18″ deaths worldwide. And being as I’d much rather be a pessimistic realist than a delusional optimist, I’ll go with 372 until better research comes to light — that’s still only 0.4% of jumpers that have died.
Hope that helps, X.
And now that I’ve given all this extra screen-time to bungee deaths, I won’t be surprised if more fearful jumpers happen across my blog in search of death statistics. Oh well; at least I’ll be helpful to someone.
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