How safe is parachuting?

There are on average 51 deaths per year from lightning in the USA, which has a population of roughly 300 million people, all of whom are potentially exposed to lightning by virtue of the fact that electrical storms can arise anywhere. That means that a skydiver is about 50 times more likely to die in a single skydiving jump than from lightning during a given year. CB's quoted statistic about relative risk does not stand up to mathematical examination. Similarly, the risk of dying from a car accident would be in the neighborhood of 0.0001 per thousand car trips, also vastly safer than sky diving. Sky diving is an inherently risky activity. I am not saying that it is suicide to try it, but you need to approach it with common sense. Talk to anyone who has participated in the sport over a long period of time and I can almost guarantee you that they can tell you about at least one friend who died in the sport.

I suspect internationally it the stats are not much different:

"The sport of skydiving continues to improve its safety record. In 2013, USPA recorded 24 fatal skydiving accidents in the U.S. out of roughly 3.2 million jumps. That’s 0.0075 fatalities per 1,000 jumps—among the lowest rate in the sport’s history! Tandem skydiving has an even better safety record, with less than 0.003 student fatalities per 1,000 tandem jumps over the past decade. According to the National Safety Council, a person is much more likely to be killed getting struck by lightning or stung by a bee."