Well it surprises me. Does anyone even know how many hours are spent fell racing? Do you have a source?Originally Posted by alwaysinjured
Anyway, the number of fatalities in in fell races is so small that I'm not sure that it makes sense to calculate a risk of mrtality per hour.
I agree with some of your more general points about the safety rules issue though.
Carol Matthews perished off route...which was pretty much a straight line between 2 points. It is believed she fell into the 'parallel error' trap whereby she continued to ascend straight up the hill whereas the marked line slightly contoured off to the right. She subsequently found herself in a trackless waste of peat hags, in very poor visibility and a chilling wind. By the time anyone know she was missing, the weather had deteriorated to a strong storm and the light was fading. She was found the following morning curled in foetal position against a hag. She was never more than half a K from a path. She must have circled in terror until the cold got to her. Only wearing a singlet and shorts. No extra gear. It still haunts me now.
If you are going to make a statement like that, the least you can do is reference the statistics that prove it.
Don't you think the threads long enough?
Ruddy heck lecky.... would not have thought it was so controversial, and I am not sure adding another 20 pages of evidence is helpful to the thread!
Will have to dig up some old stats I have read.
Just picking up a couple at random...
Following is plausibility not proof...
http://www.cyclehelmets.org/papers/c2014.pdf
Holds that the risk to a cyclist is around 1 per 5.6 million hours.
Following is guestimate: Fell running we have around 500 races a year, with average 100-200 participants, on average running an hour in each one (more shorts than longs) so order 100,000 race hours a year across all participants. Fatalities around 1 every 5 years ie 1 per 500,000 hours. (probably more risky because there are more running hours now, than in the past, so past fatalities were occuring on fewer running hours)
So roughly an order of magnitude in it.
None of this exact but roughly illustrates the point.
As someone point out, the number of incidents is so small that the numbers do not hold much statistical significance as a measurement, rather than detection of risk.
Stats tell there are 30 times the number of serious accidents than fatalities road biking (presumably means life threatening...some govt agency figure) . I am guessing that there are far fewer serious accidents fell running as a ratio of fatalities, So serious fell and road cycling accidents are not dissimilar per hour - same order of mag. Point I am making is fell running is still not more massively risky than riding (or driving) to the lakes! Less than/only an order of magnitude in it.
The other point I was making, that the health benefit of running and fell running undoubtedly is far greater in reducing mortality, than the small incident rate increases it.
Last edited by alwaysinjured; 11-10-2013 at 03:57 PM.
Now i'm well and truly scared of driving up to do Langdale tomorrow !!!!! Better not let the wife read this thread plus the one about no *** before a race
That's not like for like.. I take it that is cycling, not bike racing, so you can't compare fell racing and cycling.. it has to be fell racing and cycle racing.. or you have to include all the non-race hours people log which I guess would probably be a good 10 x that of racing.. probably more.
Ian - I think you are are missing the point: It illustrates how low it is not how high... As you say, allowing for training hours, the numbers pale into insignificance. It is not the racing that gives the danger to cyclists by and large, it is proximity to traffic.
The point is: Motorcyling is far more dangerous, and horse riding even more dangerous than that.
I read that a horse owner can expect a serious incident or accident every 500 hours, with a dozen fatalities every year, and a lot more paraplegics where they came from.
Last edited by alwaysinjured; 11-10-2013 at 05:18 PM.
My point exactly Iain. Statistics can be made to say pretty much what you want, especially when they are just made up.
There have been a lot of posts on this thread that are exaggerations or misinterpretations, that, if people took account of them could be quite worrying. This doesn't help get a balanced view.
And I agree with Richard that this thread is long enough.
I know how how you feel.
Different context, I have owned a variety of businesses most of my working life, employing quite a few people over the years. I had a retail business once, and within a week of opening a branch in east manchester two armed thugs walked in on a friday night, one hit me with an axe (fortunately not serious), and the other held a knife to the throat of one of the girls I employed at the till who was petrified.
The perpetrators were locals who were eventually caught and sent down for five years, but she, another local who was one of the nicest people you could ever meet, she was never the same again. She was extremely nervous, agorophobic, panic attacks and her life was a living hell She never returned to work. I kept in touch, only to discover she committed suicide a couple of years later, at the time they were due to be paroled. A life sentence.
That still haunts me. I can never forget, and a part of me blames myself. I turned the business into fort knox, and sold it (almost gave it away) and from employing hundreds off and on have never employed anyone else ever since, nor will I. The feeling of responsibility is hard to handle when someone dies or is seriously injured even if it is not your fault.
Last edited by alwaysinjured; 11-10-2013 at 05:44 PM.
Posting Permissions
