Hey, go easy on me. I'm most of the way through my PPL. I came to this via hang-gliding. I used to go climbing and scuba diving. I'm expecting a child soon and my solution to that conundrum has been to get life insurance. The other part, I hope, will be to not die anyway.
I'm not arguing that people shouldn't accept an element of risk; just that people should be honest with themselves about the risks they choose to run.
I actually see the inability to do this as being part of the health-and-safety culture gone wrong. If playing conkers is forbidden, then as soon as I get to 18 I may as well take up base-jumping, right? Because both of them are dangerous...
I tend to divide things into:
Looks safe, is (reading)
Looks safe, isn't (going paddling in the African great lakes, horse riding, river fishing, kiddy trampolines)
Looks dangerous, is (hang gliding, motorcycling, base jumping)
Looks dangerous, isn't (roller-coasters)
The ones that really catch people out are the ones that look safe and aren't. Things that look dangerous because they are, like hang-gliding, would be an absolute massacre if it wasn't for the fact that most people who practice these sports realise this.
Flying in all its forms is inherently dangerous, because it's intolerant of mistakes and humans are prone to mistakes. The only reason it's acceptably safe is that we accept this; we try to do things sensibly; we get a lot of training. That's why to me it seems both fundamentally dishonest (sorry, but that's how I see it) and potentially very harmful to pretend that it's as safe as driving to work.