Safety Matters

[wynn]

* The assertions about the "UK Athletics witness and their lawyer" are wrong. The person briefing the UKA/FRA lawyer was me. I sat behind the lawyer in Court and I alone passed notes to him during the hearings (with the support of the FRA Chair who sat by me) and consulted with him before and after each session. The letter submitted to the Coroner on day 4 from the FRA was jointly written by me/the FRA Chair and our lawyer. Nobody else and certainly not UKA.

So..... if this is the case who lined the Buttermere/sailbeck marshals for the slaughter.......?????

[Mark G]

As I've said before I think the rules are useful mainly to protect the organiser so far as is reasonably possible from the fallout after an incident. In this instance if the person in question had got in to difficulties somewhere on the course I dont see how any blame whatsoever could be levelled at the RO, so job done. But possibly only because the RO had the resolve and experience to do things properly by checking everyones kit, it might have been a much greyer area if they had just assumed compliance.
Although there has been some comment about the contradiction between personal responsibility (which we all want) and defined rules (which we dont want but accept as necessary, sometimes grudgingly) I think this can be resolved by accepting a necessary compromise - ie the basic requirements set by the RO/FRA/SHRA or whoever, which we will doubtless all disagree on but will in most cases comply with for all the reasons given in the earlier posts. This involves no personal responsibility whatsoever other than the basic requirement of doing what we are asked to, whether its taking the kitchen sink or just 'cag and a whistle'. But we then take personal responsibility over and above that for assessing a range of factors and deciding whether or not we should take extra kit and managing ourselves around the course - which might involve a whole range of decisions like the retirement mentioned above or not even starting on a particular occasion.

[Hes]

I think it is very simple, if you enter a race where there are specific kit requirements, you carry that kit whether you think you'll use it or not. If you know that you need water on the route, you have a bumbag or pack big enough for the kit and the water. Personally I think it is a bit foolhardy to run anywhere in the mountains without full body cover regardless of the weather.

At the TWA I drank a full bottle of drink, a cup of water at the water station and also drank from streams. It was thirsty work! Everyone's different.

I fail to see why anyone would need to carry water on the AW. Most people will cover the course in under 2.5 hrs and there is a good stream at the bottom of Dalehead, pretty much at the point where you might want a drink. There is no need to carry water on the Teenager either as there are good streams all along the course. On Saturday, whilst it was sunny, it wasn't actually hot on the tops, so there was very little risk of becoming seriously dehydrated. Overhydration is more of a serious health risk in distance running than dehydration.

[DazTheSlug]

...This involves no personal responsibility whatsoever other than the basic requirement of doing what we are asked to, whether its taking the kitchen sink or just 'cag and a whistle'. But we then take personal responsibility over and above that for assessing a range of factors and deciding whether or not we should take extra kit and managing ourselves around the course - which might involve a whole range of decisions like the retirement mentioned above or not even starting on a particular occasion.

this is a perfect summary
and seems quite simple and common sense
to me
unfortunately, some people are idiots

I have in the past done an AM race in which several runners were quite clearly carrying no kit whatsoever, with the obvious acceptance of RO/marshals
if the RO was happy then good luck to him/her
it certainly never occurred to me to complain (either to the RO about other runners having an unfair advantage, or to the FRA about the RO not following the "rules")
I just got on with running my race as safely as possible
and enjoying myself
which I did.

(having said that, if one of the kitless runners had fallen in front of me, I might have had to think twice about stopping for them...)

[wynn]

I do wonder how, following a future death in an English fell race registered with SHR , the RO would explain to an English Coroner that he had registered his race with a Scottish organisation because he found the safety requirements demanded by the English FRA governing body (and amended in the light of his or a colleague's recommendations) too demanding? Particularly since the police would almost certainly ask the FRA/UKA to critique the race arrangements.


Graham I find this interesting.... however I cannot help but wonder what the reaction would be to... Said today by a senior committee member.

As you know the FRA does not accept that the H+S at work act applies to fell running.... surely H+S applies to most everything ........including Fell running

Lancashire council thought it applied when Bowland hosted the FRA relays.

[wharfeego]

http://racingsnakes.com/gallery/Teen...e/D71_6463.jpg

Thought this was frowned upon at fell races now?

[wynn]

he's still wearing his top with the number visible Just
and on the front
and we're not FRA so !!!!!!!!

[alwaysinjured]

New safety update.

A race plan sent out to a number of people in FRA for discussion was just brushed aside by the secretary with the wording "we do not accept that HS legislation applies"

Disregarding whatever was in that document - I have yet to read it in detail - the FRA response roundly misses the point, despite how many times it has been said by competent people. Safety management practice is universal whether or not imposed legally. So it seems we have to say it again.


Many facets -Just take a couple.

Take the core essence of safety - the fundamental way safety improves is the result of REVIEW. Every race must do it. You cannot review unless you can determine whether problems arose
(a) because people did not do what they were instructed or
(b) because they misunderstood what they were asked to do or
(c) someone forgot to instruct them or
(d) personell changes leading to wrong assumptions made by people who do things a different way or
(e) because instructions were faulty and had not allowed for an unusual event. etc etc
So You cannot review unless you can see exactly how people were instructed in the first place, which is an essential function of a written plan. And the result of review is to amend the plan whilst the incident is fresh in the mind. NOT allow a year of forgetting.

The review process has also to be capable of involvement of a third party (eg FRA auditor) which can also only be done in written form. So you cannot improve safety without a written plan to review what was decided against what took place. Simple. Or it should be. When you consider that many accidents have a contributing cause of bad communications and misunderstanding, the need is clearly a slamdunk.

Nothing to do with HS legislation , all to do with common sense good safety practice. The fundamental lesson of sailbeck, yet to be heeded.


Many other examples.

Take you do not introduce anything as good practice without creating an operating procedure for it and checking that procedure works, and that the instruction does not leave ambiguity or misunderstandings.

A typical result of doing this FRA fashion? - People at nine standards tried to use the number grids outside their tested use and function by using them as the prime recording mechanism and it failed miserably. Nothing to do with HS legislation. All to do with people meddling in safety without sufficient experience and not taking advice on the matter – so failing to grasp the importance of writing a procedure to use the grids (however short) and then process qualification to determine the limits before stating as good practice. Those grids are fine, provided the context of them is defined, stress tested up to a level of runners, and only used in the tested context. What works as a process at 20 runners a minute, may not work at all at 50.

I have no criticism of the grids. Only the unsafe way they were introduced. (Had we been allowed to do a presentation, or even review the documents before being accepted: That would have been predicted in advance). Safety is about predicting in foresight, not closing stable doors afterwards.. Now see the growing heap of untested documents mounting and now mislabelled as good practice and be worried…. I will wager there was no written review of that grid incident, as there should have been as tasked by what should be our guidelines.

But in the end it is all about the "next" incident.
There will be one, the only question is when. And a lottery of which RO.

What can the RO show to others ,to save himself and his marshalls from a similar verbal mauling as happened at sailbeck inquest? Apparently at Graham Breezes instruction or so he implies.

Under FRA rules , nothing at all: Other than a thicker book for the prosecution to beat the RO around the head with.

The RO can only do what they did at sailbeck, refer to half remembered conversations about what he thinks he asked marshalls to do, but as Sailbeck proved the variation in what they actually did proves that they were not instructed properly or unambiguously which can only happen on paper.

And NOTHING FRA has so far said or done has changed that. And as you will see if you read the sailbeck evidence, you will be made to look bad as marshalls - and had it got to civil or criminal claims, the receiving end of an uncaring QC ripping you to shreds it would be a whole lot worse. It is not where you want to be..

All because FRA committee are not listening as demonstrated by secretary's remarks above. So It has nothing to do with safety legislation. Event planning of anything is clearly a must.

A good plan - in particular a list of written instructions for you and the critical parts of your team is a damn fine document not just to help make sure things happen as you expect them (so less chance of oversights, misremembers, mishears and all the things that happen in practice) but aslo to show in the attempt to show the world that you took reasonable steps and "non negligent" behaviour. So when push comes to shove you can say “we did this” showing a good quality document, and it seemed to work the last few years.

Or you can rely on your memory which is how a gate was still locked barring the path of runners, minutes before the secretarys race, last time I was there. Inconsequential? In that case yes. But PRECISELY the kind of oversight that can and does lead to a tragedy: and an army of "hindsight wisdom" blame lawyers making it sound as though it was obvious.

Notice a locked gate was also EXACTLY a nominated root cause of a coroner stating an RO contributed to a death at a cross country RO because emergency services could not get to the scene of an accident, because of the locked gate!

Is the planning process frightening or a burden? No.
All our secretary had to do , was put "get key for gate" on his own pre race checklist, and an instruction on his own list, to give it to a specific official, and put "open gate" on his officials checklists and a time for him to do so. There is an auditable written plan. If it did not work out you can review and amend it.
It will work even if the marshalls change, so they are not relying on memory.

He does not seem to want such plans because he thinks it is "HS legislation". I will wager there was no written review of his closed gate either. It is actually common sense safety. Or perhaps he misunderstands what was meant by a “plan” because of refusing the presentation by qualified and experienced people!

This is not raking over old history.
Same problem still there. This week. Same people in charge.

[GeoffB]

http://racingsnakes.com/gallery/Teen...e/D71_6463.jpg

Thought this was frowned upon at fell races now?

I forget what Simon did, but when Rhys came past our check-point he took his vest from around his waist, opened it up and showed us his number.

[FellJunior]

A typical result of doing this FRA fashion? - People at nine standards tried to use the number grids outside their tested use and function by using them as the prime recording mechanism and it failed miserably. Nothing to do with HS legislation. All to do with people meddling in safety without sufficient experience and not taking advice on the matter – so failing to grasp the importance of writing a procedure to use the grids (however short) and then process qualification to determine the limits before stating as good practice. Those grids are fine, provided the context of them is defined, stress tested up to a level of runners, and only used in the tested context. What works as a process at 20 runners a minute, may not work at all at 50.

I have no criticism of the grids. Only the unsafe way they were introduced. (Had we been allowed to do a presentation, or even review the documents before being accepted: That would have been predicted in advance). Safety is about predicting in foresight, not closing stable doors afterwards.. Now see the growing heap of untested documents mounting and now mislabelled as good practice and be worried…. I will wager there was no written review of that grid incident, as there should have been as tasked by what should be our guidelines.

On enquiry, the Nine Standards RO reported no problems, so perhaps you could elaborate and provide feedback for the process qualification.