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BMC Near-Miss and Incident Reporting (Read 22976 times)

petejh

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Reported by a Mr N. Ostradamus

shark

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they've evolved their approach over the years to remove the stats analysis and focus on anecdotal reports as this was found to be a stronger driver of behavioral change.

This is I think the value of accident reporting.

Stories are a powerful educator as it makes you think through situations and use your imagination.

I’m inherently suspicious of a stats based approach to risk education as most people deal with stats poorly (including Doctors!) and for other reasons I attempted to articulate here:
www.ukclimbing.com/articles/features/editorial_chance_risk_and_accidents-1099

Looking back at that article I was overreacting and responding to some appalling threads on UKC at the time and have now softened my stance on accident narratives (a respectful time after the event) as it gets people thinking about risk in a useful way.

I also wrote a following up piece on my thoughts on climbing risk here:
www.ukclimbing.com/articles/features/a_few_thoughts_about_risk-1237


« Last Edit: April 20, 2019, 09:43:40 am by shark »

Steve R

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Agree with the stories vs stats thing. 
On stats though, there's that saying along the lines of '80% of motorists think they're better than average at driving'.  I'll bet there's an analogous illusory superiority thing with trad climbers like '80% of trad climbers think they're better than average at placing gear'.  Plus a bit of Dunning-Kruger action piled on top no doubt.   
One slight thing with the database - possibly/probably already considered but might it be an idea to be able to filter entries by discipline?
Disappointingly, not seen any entries containing the term 'cragfast' yet.
Good effort Dan and all involved

Will Hunt

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I'm still trying to think what the most outrageous incident is that would still be deemed credible by the mods. Falling off ringpiece first onto an awkwardly placed clipstick seems too far fetched, but finding a seemingly fixed-in-situ dildo on a route and pulling it off while trying to use it resulting in a nasty fall seems strangely more plausible.

remus

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Regarding the stats vs anecdotes, I think it's important to distinguish between analysis and reporting. While it's definitely hard to interpret and report statistics properly I don't think that means it should be thrown out entirely, as it lets you make conclusions that you otherwise couldn't (and perhaps more importantly discount spurious conclusions).

It seems like the obvious approach would be to let someone who's statistically competent analyse the data and then use anecdotes to illustrate the findings.

tomtom

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I'm still trying to think what the most outrageous incident is that would still be deemed credible by the mods. Falling off ringpiece first onto an awkwardly placed clipstick seems too far fetched, but finding a seemingly fixed-in-situ dildo on a route and pulling it off while trying to use it resulting in a nasty fall seems strangely more plausible.

By any stretch that would be the bottom of any list..

DAVETHOMAS90

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I'm still trying to think what the most outrageous incident is that would still be deemed credible by the mods. Falling off ringpiece first onto an awkwardly placed clipstick seems too far fetched, but finding a seemingly fixed-in-situ dildo on a route and pulling it off while trying to use it resulting in a nasty fall seems strangely more plausible.

By any stretch that would be the bottom of any list..

I fell off repeating Inferno at Baggy Point many years ago. 3rd ascent, when it still had a sticky out Lost Arrow to protect the crux.

I slid down the slab, astride the peg, hitting it sack first, ripping it out. Extremely painful.

Will Hunt

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Historic incidents can be logged, Dave. Your report could be what saves someone else's life (or their ability to create more of it).

DAVETHOMAS90

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Historic incidents can be logged, Dave. Your report could be what saves someone else's life (or their ability to create more of it).

"hitting it sack first, ripping it out“

I meant the peg, but I got the point.  ;D

I presume near miss can include things like rotten gear?  :P That's supposed to be a serious comment. I'm being lazy. I'll have a read.

Paul B

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The business I used to work for used near miss reporting both for Health, Safety and Environmental near misses, but also for commercial issues, later expanding this to add 'positive interventions' (these were often quite dubious IMO as we were 'encouraged' to raise them); Without being a terrible bore I wonder if the same kind of near miss reporting would work with access issues?

I was pretty surprised yesterday to find >10 vehicles, and two dogs (one in a vehicle, the other kind of in/tied to a vehicle) at a crag with fairly specific signage. When challenged the response was "we didn't know before we drove here, and we'd drive all the way from home".

The sign reads "No dogs whatsoever" and concludes with "The above is absolutely vital for continued climbing use of the quarry. Please do not be selfish".

The concept of going somewhere else, or one of the party who wasn't climbing sitting in the pub ~1 mile away (on one of the nicest days we'll have this year) simply hadn't been considered. Not everyone's willing to have the confrontation required to raise these issues and it might give warning to arising problems. It may just be noise...

 :tumble:.

Will Hunt

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I think that's a good idea, Paul. I wonder if it might cause problems if it's visible to the public - giving landowners the evidence to say that their access arrangement has been breached no less than x times over a y month period. It would certainly be a better way of compiling incidents than having people leave comments on UKC logbooks/forums saying that they were chased away by landowners.

Paul B

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I think that's a good idea, Paul. I wonder if it might cause problems if it's visible to the public

I did think that. I'm currently on an old phone; can you report issues at specific crags via the RAD app?

Will Hunt

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I think you can leave comments on a particular crag.

duncan

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Regarding the stats vs anecdotes, I think it's important to distinguish between analysis and reporting. While it's definitely hard to interpret and report statistics properly I don't think that means it should be thrown out entirely, as it lets you make conclusions that you otherwise couldn't (and perhaps more importantly discount spurious conclusions).

It seems like the obvious approach would be to let someone who's statistically competent analyse the data and then use anecdotes to illustrate the findings.

I love a bit of data analysis but the sample is likely to be so biased (by self-selection, no fatal accidents reported so far and I'm guessing not many will be) that conclusions derived may be invalid.   

Well done to Pete and Louis, and the BMC for piloting this. The Yosemite equivalent used a record of all YOSAR call-outs so was more appropriate to report descriptive stats. but it was anecdotes highlighting particular issues that most influenced my behavior. 

cheque

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I think you can leave comments on a particular crag.

You have to specify the crag when you report an incident.

Paul B

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The Yosemite equivalent used a record of all YOSAR call-outs so was more appropriate to report descriptive stats. but it was anecdotes highlighting particular issues that most influenced my behavior.

Always worth a plug:
http://www.bluebison.net/yosar/alive.htm

Offwidth

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The Yosemite equivalent used a record of all YOSAR call-outs so was more appropriate to report descriptive stats. but it was anecdotes highlighting particular issues that most influenced my behavior.

Always worth a plug:
http://www.bluebison.net/yosar/alive.htm

The biggest lesson I got from this excellent YOSAR analysis and from talking to Yosemite climbing rangers, guides and the rescue teams is that good experienced climbers still die or get seriously injured doing exactly the same stupid things. I'm not sure it's what Peter Cook once said "I learn from my mistakes I can repeat them exactly", more that those who need to know won't find out or if they do read it will deny it applies to them. Jim Titt made a similar point on UKC about the huge amount of written alpine analysis (hardly anyone reads it and the messages clearly just don't get out to the right people).  I always thought the BMC winter skills stuff, SAIS info, winter training courses etc. were wonderful for UK scottish winter safety stuff; yet every time I went on the Ben knowing to avoid particular gullys someone would always be in them (especially the No5 start to Ledge Route.... people were avalanched there this year under some of the most serious avalanche forecasts I've seen).

Still, if this resource saves some lives its all worth it.

remus

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I love a bit of data analysis but the sample is likely to be so biased (by self-selection, no fatal accidents reported so far and I'm guessing not many will be) that conclusions derived may be invalid.

You could say the same of any analysis on the data, whether it's reporting a few anecdotes or some in depth stats. As long as the limitations of the data are kept in mind I don't think it precludes a statistical approach.

Will Hunt

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Here's one for y'all. A friend had a nasty accident in some god-forsaken limestone quarry recently. She got to the anchors, clipped in with a sling, leaned back and turned around, and then bounced down the route to come to rest a few inches off the floor. The krab that was on the sling is still attached to the lower-off, the sling is unbroken.

This has been picked apart and we think that what has happened is as follows:

Climber has a sling attached to their harness and has a couple of knots tied along the length of the sling. The krab can be clipped below one of these knots to lengthen or shorten the sling for clipping to the belay. However, this sling is one of those thick, tape sling jobbies. The krab is something like this, i.e. the krab tapers and forms a narrow nodule at the bottom.
https://dmmclimbing.com/Products/Locking-Carabiners/I-Beam-Boa


So the suspicion is that the climber thought they had clipped the sling below the knot, but had in fact clipped the krab around the whole sling, not through it. The knot, being on thick tape, was thick enough to then sit on one side of the tapered part of the krab, and when the krab is pulled up/sling is pulled down, the knot doesn't pull through the krab. When the sling was properly weighted, the knot must have deformed easily through the krab and the climber then fell.


So, asides from being careful about how you set up a lanyard, there's also one other very obvious thing that the climber didn't do which was to clip the lower-off as a runner before doing anything else. Had she done this, the sling still would have failed, but she wouldn't have gone nearly so far.

There's a few other crazy things in the way that some people thread lower-offs. When pulling up slack to thread the lower-off, people tie a clove hitch or similar and clip this to them to stop them from dropping the rope once untied. But some people clip it to their gear loop! No! Just move your hand a little bit to the left/right and clip it to your belay loop. You're then still on belay to your last runner (which could well be the lower-off) for the whole time you're re-threading.

dunnyg

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Must have been a short route to hit the ground?

Will Hunt

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I think the distance between last bolt and LO. You clip the last bolt then go up onto a ledge. Then v easy ground to get to the lower-off on the neighbouring route.

tommytwotone

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Re clipping lower-off as a runner. +1 to the max.

One of my nastiest accidents was on Costa Blanca, top of a route, pumped out of my mind and fumbling around trying to unscrew the (bloody tightly screwed up) screwgate on the lower off. I got it undone, pulled up a loop of slack...and fell of literally as I was about to put the rope through the krab.

To make matters worse I'd cockily skipped the penultimate bolt so took quite a ride, smacked my swede when it all came tight and cheese-gratered by back.

Why I didn't just clip a quickdraw into the lower-off, clip that AND THEN faff about threading is beyond me. Painful way to learn a basic lesson.

dunnyg

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Grim, both will and TTT!

andy popp

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I can confirm that dropping the rope while threading the anchor is deeply embarrassing.

Will Hunt

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I can confirm that dropping the rope while threading the anchor is deeply embarrassing.

 :lol:

And the best bit is, it's totally up to your mates how long they leave you there before coming to the rescue.

 

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