Agreed. Wife and I were both skydivers. We have not jumped since my daughter was born. To be honest, it is not because it is unsafe (there is a risk just driving to the drop zone) but because of the life insurance that we now carry. That being said, even if I still jumped I would not do some of the other items around it like is used to (BASE jumping for example).
I'm curious -- what effect does the life insurance policy have?
Is the risk that you die during an event which is not covered or is there some other contingency (like simply taking unnecessary risks while alive can be used to justify voiding of the policy postmortem)?
One of the ironies is that test pilots have trouble getting life insurance, yet its extremely rare that a test pilot for a major aerospace company has a serious accident. I can think of two crashes involving test pilots in recent years that resulted in fatalities (or serious injuries)
Virgin also lost Spaceship Two with one fatality in 2014 and Swearingen lost an SJ30 prototype in 2003. (The second is arguably is or is not in recent years.)
Military and E-AB (Experimental-Amateur Built) aircraft also have a higher than normal flight ops fatality rate, which speaks to the test pilot insurance rate, not directly to "routine testing of new civilian aircraft" level of safety.
