I came to make a similar comment regarding my hobby; skydiving.
I've been falling out of planes for over 20 years, and have seen the equipment progress in design and function such that people don't die due to the same things which used to claim skydivers. However the yearly rate of death remains about the same. The dark joke is that as the sport has gotten safer people have had to come up with new, more stupid ways to die.
Smarter people than me point to the theory of risk homeostasis. Basically, you accept a level of risk of an activity, if the safety of this act increases you'll find new ways to make it as risky as it was previously.
I've been falling out of planes for over 20 years, and have seen the equipment progress in design and function such that people don't die due to the same things which used to claim skydivers. However the yearly rate of death remains about the same. The dark joke is that as the sport has gotten safer people have had to come up with new, more stupid ways to die.
Smarter people than me point to the theory of risk homeostasis. Basically, you accept a level of risk of an activity, if the safety of this act increases you'll find new ways to make it as risky as it was previously.
https://www.google.com/search?q=risk+homeostasis
In skydiving this is jumping smaller and smaller canopies (aka parachutes), swooping, base jumping, big way formations, aggressive angle flying, etc.