101 uses for a mobile!

[Mud]

I can see that a mobile phone may help in the situation where you come across a badly-injured fellow competitor, where time is of the essence, and you happen to have a signal. I'm not aware of any of these cases - have there been any?

I'm not sure how a mobile phone would help in the case of slow-onset hypothermia, where decsion-making faculties are dulled, you are by yourself, and you just want to lie down and go to sleep.

My understanding is that the few deaths in fell races have been the latter.

I may be wrong though?

[wheezing donkey]

[quote=Mud;92237]I can see that a mobile phone may help in the situation where you come across a badly-injured fellow competitor, where time is of the essence, and you happen to have a signal. I'm not aware of any of these cases - have there been any?
Mud - get on the programme - take a look at Emmilou's earlier post (1 or 2 pages back) wrt the incident at this years UKA Hill & Fell Relays.

[Mud]

Mud - get on the programme - take a look at Emmilou's earlier post (1 or 2 pages back) wrt the incident at this years UKA Hill & Fell Relays.

Well I had that one in mind, really.

The way Emmilou described it. the woman had hurt her ankle a bit.

[wheezing donkey]

MRT thought that it warranted calling the air ambulance out!
It did turn out, once thoroughly examined in hospital, not to be as bad as it first appeared.

[Mud]

MRT thought that it warranted calling the air ambulance out!
It did turn out, once thoroughly examined in hospital, not to be as bad as it first appeared.

Maybe best glossed over in the mobile-phone-saves-fellrunning-lives argument then...

[wheezing donkey]

Maybe best glossed over in the mobile-phone-saves-fellrunning-lives argument then...

OK Mud, next time you are writhing in agony, in a remote and rough location with no vehicular access, from a cropped ankle that you can't bear to walk on........ we'll just dawdled off and see if we happen to bump into an MRT member, won't bother getting the cell phone out of the bumbag!!!
An incident is an incident; does not have to be immediately life threatening.

[George]

Mmmh. "sane" or "insane", and skipping lithely (oh I am very lithe) past the philosophical debate (eg was Nietsche sane? Not sure, but he wrote more profound words than one will ever read on this Forum) surely the point is that the organiser decides?

Did Nietsche organise many fell races?

Perhaps we should move off the sane or unsane and think about regulation. Who does any sort of vetting/ controlling / anything else you want to call it of organisers? In entering a race, we rely on them having made some good judgements. Yet as I understand it, anyone (who's probably mad enough!!!) can opt to be a race organiser. And now to be really controversial - didn't we have a thing about race officials with UKA a while back? Seemed to think it wasn't popular, but maybe we should have some sort of "qualification" for race organisers.

[eccentric]

but maybe we should have some sort of "qualification" for race organisers.

That's me off to the dark side then!

[George]

That's me off to the dark side then!

Which race do you organise then Eccentric?

[Wheeze]

Rewinding back to something I said earlier, could not this issue have been introduced more diplomatically? I suspect a fair proportion of runners would carry a mobile on longs themselves because they have made their own personal 'risk assessment' and decided it was worth it (that's what I did). Would be interesting to conduct a straw poll at the next long you do. Just ask for a show of hands at the start.
Race instructions could have encouraged people to take their phones and perhaps offered a discount off the race fee. I would be willing to bet that this may have resulted in at least 50% of the field carrying such a device.All this could have been achieved without enforcement which is the 'smart' way to go.

At the one fatality I have been involved with, would a mobile phone have saved the life? Debatable, given Mud's point above and the vagaries of signal availability. Would the use of a compass have saved the life? Almost certainly because the person would never have strayed off course in the first place. In a nutshell, prevention is better than cure.

But, at the end of all this, I completely agree that the RO's decision is final. Those that don't like the rules, stay away.