First the stuntman John Bernecker died in July after a fall on the set of “The Walking Dead” in Atlanta. Then two weeks ago, Joi Harris died during a motorcycle stunt while filming “Deadpool 2” in Vancouver, British Columbia. Two days later, Paramount Studios announced it had halted filming of “Mission Impossible 6” because Tom Cruise had broken his ankle during a stunt.

The rash of accidents has made manifest the dangers of stunt work. But there have been few successful pushes over the years to further regulate the workplaces of stunt professionals, who, like circus acrobats, build careers atop a good measure of calculated risk.

“People imagine, ‘Oh well, they get hurt and that’s what they signed up for,’ which is an absurd presumption,” said Andy Armstrong, a stunt coordinator involved in two of “The Amazing Spider-Man” movies. “You’d be surprised by how lax all the rules about these things are.”

Unlike the rules that govern mining and construction, there are no specific federal regulations for many professions like stunt work, just the more general rules that protect all employees from hazards. Few states have regulations specific to the industry, though California, with its history of moviemaking, does prescribe what is allowed in stunts involving helicopters and explosives, for example.