aa - I think you skydivers are barking mad jumping out of a serviceable aircraft but if that's what floats your boat
I've dropped plenty of parachutists from helicopters over the years but I still think it is tempting fate.
Ha ha! Well, it was my door to the best kind of aviation: skydiving --> private fixed wing (can't be around airplanes all day and not know how to fly them!) --> commercial helicopter
But, back on thread, sort of: there is always a skewed perception of risk among the less knowledgeable. While it is difficult to make direct comparisons, your chance of dying on any given jump is not very different, and probably less, than on any given helicopter flight, on an individual basis, just looking at yearly fatality totals. So we are all crazy for leaving the ground regardless of what we might be doing when we do it. Another case in point: if I told you I was a motorcycle road racer, and I was for about a decade of my earlier life, all of you mad-for-motorcycles pilots would cheer me and possibly even be a bit jealous. But I can tell you I was far more concerned about dying doing that then skydiving. Indeed, my skydiving career also spanned roughly a decade. I never saw anyone die while skydiving and only saw one person get seriously injured (bad swoop landing--what else is new?) But I actually did see one person die when racing, and saw many, many people go the hospital with very serious injuries. So just because it
looks stupid doesn't mean it is any more or less stupid than things that average people find more emotionally or intellectually accessible.