Conspiracy of Silence @ DZs

[petetheladd 0]

I seen 2 ambulances at the DZ on the 4th of July weekend and on two previous weekends as well.
Today, its thursday and there's still no mention of them in the incidents forum.

It makes me wonder just how many incidents and problems are kept quiet at DZs around the world through either peer pressure or a misguided sense of loyalty.

The incident forums are about learning from others mistakes and a reality check about the dangers of what we do so why the blanket of silence ??

People are quite happy to talk and interrogate others about incidents at other DZs but stay zipped about whats going on around them at home.

PtL

No, Not without incident

[riggerrob 558]

Perhaps we just burned out from reading too many inaccurate reports in the popular press/TV/radio, etc.

If I hear "parachute failed to open" or "jumping out of perfectly serviceable airplanes" one more time I am going to start throwing punches!

[Ron 7]

It amazes me that people try to keep things quiet.

"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms." -- Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson Papers, 334

[Remster 24]

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It amazes me that people try to keep things quiet.

I was at the same DZ as Peter this weekend, and tho one the one hand, its always good to learn from accidents, its not an obligation of anyone to post anything on here.

Remster

[bmcd308 0]

Your poll does not have enough choices. It needs "I don't post uninformed, irrelevant information concerning incidents about which I know nothing."

I know of a couple of crashes at my dz that did not make the Incidents forum. I know of a bunch more that did. But in order to make a good post, you have to have someone who 1. wants to post, 2. actually knows what happened, and 3. doesn't mid if noone listens anyway.

----------------------------------
www.jumpelvis.com

[petetheladd 0]

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It amazes me that people try to keep things quiet.

I was at the same DZ as Peter this weekend, and tho one the one hand, its always good to learn from accidents, its not an obligation of anyone to post anything on here.

I know legally there's no obligation but what about ethical/moral responsibility of holding back info that might help others ?

Do people think that overall, the reporting of incidents on these forums is a bad thing ?

If not, then it seems people are willing to only take from the trough and not give back - a selfish attitude.

Something to ponder

PtL

No, Not without incident

[hookncrater 0]

Well, not everyone who skydives bothers to post here.

In the last week I have jumped at 3 different dropzones and saw or heard of:

1. A potentially fatal canopy collision near miss
2. A hyper-extended minor knee injury
3. Back injury

None of which were posted here. Probably because there was no new lesson to be learned.

To sum up what could have prevented each one is:

1. Don't open in a cloud without better break-off separation.
2. Don't flare too high and then reach for the ground with your foot.
3. Don't land on your butt without an adequate flare.

Cheers

________________________________________________________________________________
when in doubt... hook it!

[skybytch 259]

Quote

I seen 2 ambulances at the DZ on the 4th of July weekend and on two previous weekends as well.
Today, its thursday and there's still no mention of them in the incidents forum.

You jump there. If seeing mention of them is important to you, find out what happened from those who know. Encourage them to post it. If you have the official info and/or witnessed it, post it yourself.

Remember that not every skydiver posts on dropzone.com. Perhaps those involved don't post here?

Or maybe they do and they'd prefer to review the incident with people they know and trust and pass on what they learned to those close to them instead of opening themselves up to Monday morning quarterbacking from the world...

[petetheladd 0]

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"I don't post uninformed, irrelevant information concerning incidents about which I know nothing."

I think thats a cop out. If a incident occurred then post what ever facts you know even if its just a terse "Incident at DZ X on x/x/2005, no details can anyone give further information"

Setting a seed like this has many times caused someone else to pipe up with concrete info

PtL

No, Not without incident

[Orange1 0]

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Probably because there was no new lesson to be learned

Lessons to be learned are an important function of the incidents forum.

For a newbie like me, another one is seeing the number of incidents. Because many times it is experienced jumpers who hurt themselves, and every single post like that reminds me, again: Never let yourself become complacent in this sport.

(I didn't answer the poll, not applicable so far, I pray it stays that way but I know chances are it won't)

Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

[speedy 0]

I believe most of the fatalities get reported although there have been fatalities in Germany that were not mentioned on DZ dot com.

An ambulance does not always mean a serious injury and what is serious anyway? If we reported every broken bone in the incidents forum it would get fuller than the bonfire

I think calling it a conspiracy is a bit strong. Sometimes people just cannot be bothered, do not know enough facts or have too much other stuff on their plates at the time.

The last fatality at my dropzone in Germany was reported by Craig Poxon. No one at our DZ was really interested in posting anything about it and I can't say I blame them.

Sorry I did not vote as none of the answers seemed to fit.

Dave

Fallschirmsport Marl

[petetheladd 0]

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Probably because there was no new lesson to be learned.

I see this as another cop-out. How can anybody know what a new/recent forum member can learn or has missed due to a short history in the sport.

If we only posted incidents caused by mechanisms that never happened before, the incident forums would be a ghost town.

PtL

P.S. To everyone, I know not everybody has access to these forums but thats the least likely reason for an incident not to be posted IMHO
.

No, Not without incident

[Darius11 12]

I think it is great to post something when there is a learning opportunity, like something happened that we don’t know or never heard of.

Unfortunately most of the deaths have been caused by the same thing over and over again.

Don’t turn to low, Pull something, look around, and be safe.

I think we all know these things, I bet if you go up to any skydiver he will be able to tell you that he wont turn low he will pull and be safe. But mistakes still happen.

I don’t know most incidents I read don’t really help me change my mind or procedure they just make me sad.

So maybe that’s the reason people don’t post every incident that they see.

I'd rather be hated for who I am, than loved for who I am not." - Kurt Cobain

[Anvilbrother 0]

The time has come where you hear people say that a broken arm, leg is not a bad accident. That is one reason I think incidents are not making it into the forums. The frequency of arms, and leg break type incidents are making people not post until there is a femur, neck, back, internal injuries type of incident. You get where I am comming from?

Postes r made from an iPad or iPhone. Spelling and gramhair mistakes guaranteed move along,

[LouDiamond 1]

If every twisted ankle or similar incident was posted there would be a lot of noise clouding the incident forum more than there already is. I do not advocate keeping quite about incidents. However, I see no need to, nor do I see the relevance of people posting "today at skydive the place to be we had joe bag of doughnuts get hauled off in a meat wagon because he twisted his ankle", when there is no other information or learning points provided.

Often times, vague posts like that lead to the incestant rumor mongering and sometimes out right un truths being repeated as fact which leads to the heated arguements we are all familiar with. If someone twists and ankle or gets skinned up for no other reason than making a poor decission and there are no other mitigating factors that could prevent such an incident from happening again(common sense rule), why post it? If that information is what people are after then it can be found in the incident reports in Parachutist, if the DZ reports them. Incident's like what occured over the 4th holiday are the types of accidents where explanations, circumstances and contributing factors that lead up to the accident are all salient questions that serve as a usefull teaching point for others to learn from. Of course, this is all IMO.

"It's just skydiving..additional drama is not required"
Some people dream about flying, I live my dream
SKYMONKEY PUBLISHING

[hookncrater 0]

I don't see that as a cop-out at all.

Do we really need a bunch of no/late/high flare minor injury threads to tell people that they should flare at the appropriate time. That's kinda a given in my mind. I don't know a single person that has never dicked up a landing, so we should all be aware of what happens when you screw up and how to prevent it.

Now if it was a case of a new jumper stabbing the brakes at 20 feet, then not holding the flare, failing to PLF, and face-planting into ground because the canopy dove to repressurize when they let up, I might be more inclined to post it since perhaps someone new might learn something from it, i.e. a canopy dives before returning to full flight from full brakes.

________________________________________________________________________________
when in doubt... hook it!

[tigra 0]

Your poll options aren't all that great. What you may consider an "incident" others do not. No conspiracy there! If every broken ankle or near miss were reported and discussed here, Sangiro would run out of bandwidth in a hurry.

[IanHarrop 37]

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"I don't post uninformed, irrelevant information concerning incidents about which I know nothing."

I think thats a cop out. If a incident occurred then post what ever facts you know even if its just a terse "Incident at DZ X on x/x/2005, no details can anyone give further information"

Setting a seed like this has many times caused someone else to pipe up with concrete info

PtL

Well then why didn't you post that for the things you saw?

"Where troubles melt like lemon drops, away above the chimney tops, that's where you'll find me" Dorothy

[FrogNog 1]

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I seen 2 ambulances at the DZ on the 4th of July weekend and on two previous weekends as well.

Did you see the ambulances load anyone or stay longer than 10 minutes? A couple weekends ago we got an ambulance _and_ a fire truck because a whufffo saw a cutaway main go in.

A separate question: how long do you wait before you expect to see an incident posted? Does that vary with the cause, type, severity, or spectacularity of the incident?

-=-=-=-=-
Pull.

[Ron 7]

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I was at the same DZ as Peter this weekend, and tho one the one hand, its always good to learn from accidents, its not an obligation of anyone to post anything on here.

No obligation, but man I would think sharing events that might save another pain, or maybe their life would be worth it.

I know some are gonna say "But if its not a NEW problem, why bother?"

Well so people can see that the accident is more common even if it is not "NEW".

Lets face it there are very few "New" accidents....But the rate is as, if not more, important.

If we had the actual numbers of times that people break bones on landing we would have much better info to find out who is at the greatist risk and why...Then you could put programs in place to prevent those accidents in the future.

Same think with close calls in freefall....We might find operations that most consider "normal" to be dangerous.

"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms." -- Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson Papers, 334

[billvon 2,384]

Do not confuse "keeping secrets" with "not posting on dropzone.com." I have spoken to a great many people who will not post any incidents because they know the person involved will immediately be ripped to shreds by people with 120 jumps, who will then proceed to tell him what they would have done. It's hard enough when it's you; it's really hard when you have to listen to other people say those things about someone you cared about who just died.

I hope people can exercise good judgement on the Incidents forum and:

1. not talk too much about subjects they don't have much experience with

2. keep the "that guy should be run off the DZ on a rail" comments to a minimum

3. realize that we are all human and can make those sorts of mistake. The next incident you post may be yours; reply to other incidents as you would want to be replied to.

[tigra 0]

While you may have a valid point, the fact that not every single broken bone or close call is reported on this almighty site does not indicate a "conspiracy of silence" as the original poster indicated.

[Ron 7]

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While you may have a valid point, the fact that not every single broken bone or close call is reported on this almighty site does not indicate a "conspiracy of silence" as the original poster indicated.

True and while this site has no offical anything...It is a good source of information.

But I have in fact seen accidents and hear people try to prevent anything from being posted on here...For the very reasons Bill wrote about.

Mainly its ego.

However, like it or not this is a great source of information.

And I have found that asking a question such as :"Accident at "DZ" on "date"?" Will start a thread and most times the info comes out.

My problem with the started of this thread is....If you KNOW of accidents....Why didn't YOU start a thread?

And yes people should not all jump all over the poster or the people involved....But on the same token people should not take offense when people ARE found to have made a mistake.

It happens...In fact it is the most common cause of accidents in this sport...Operator error.

"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms." -- Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson Papers, 334

[tombuch 0]

I'm one of the S&TA's at the DZ Pete jumps at. We had three injuries this weekend that I am aware of.

The first involving a tandem student was a hard landing on her butt. She was transported by ambulance with back pain. I do not have a follow-up report.

The second involved an experienced jumper who simply had a bad landing of unknown cause. He broke his ankle and was treated on his own without an ambulance. It was not related to weather or a low turn, but may have had something to do with a new line set or the way this experienced jumper flared. It may also have been caused by an unanticipated downdraft or turbulence. Who can say?

The third involved an experienced jumper who turned to low and fast, and smashed himself up pretty badly. He was transported by ambulance. I do not have a follow-up report.

I hate to say it, but after 25 years in the sport and five years as S&TA, I'm pretty much bored by these incidents. I tend to report the major incidents and those that generate new lessons, or lessons that need to be brought out of the clutter. Reporting every ambulance call at every DZ would add so much clutter to the channel that we wouldn't see the major accidents or learn the new lessons.

Based on past years numbers I expect we will have about 20-25 ambulance calls at The Ranch this season (on a total of about 40,000 jumps). That's about 1 ambulance call for every 2,000 jumps. At the national level USPA membership applications show that we seek medical care from a doctor roughly once for every 22 members, and we have 32,000 members---that's about 1,400 skydiving related member doctor visits per year. We will probably have about 30 domestic fatalities this year, or roughly one for every 1,000 USPA members.

If you want more statistics, check out Article 7 "Skydiving Risk" on The Ranch web site at http://www.ranchskydive.com/safety/index.htm. The site also has some pretty good articles that will help you understand risk and avoid the major mistakes that have injured so many of our friends.

If you are visiting The Ranch you can see a collection of Ranch specific statistics from a Safety Day presentation a few years ago. They are included in the appendix of the printed version of the S&TA Articles available in a binder at manifest and the school office.
.

Tom Buchanan
Instructor Emeritus
Comm Pilot MSEL,G
Author: JUMP! Skydiving Made Fun and Easy

[petetheladd 0]

Lets not cloud the issue here with saying that common sense should not prevail.
If someone stubs a toe or skins a shin, its not going to be posted nor am I advocating that it should.

Plenty of people bemoan the fact that only fatalities are reported and would'nt it be great to have stats on non fatal injuries, their frequency and causes.

I personally think that the biggest reasons, silence reigns on incidents serious enough to be posted are :

A) It takes a level of responsibility to put yourself out there and report on an incident and these days responsibility is usually avoided. Lets face its sooo much easier to let sleeping dogs lie

B) It probably wont make you very popular at your local DZ as it may be perceived you've told on them and it makes the place look bad.

C) if its you personally that have had an incident, you dont really want to face the armchair quarter backing from others with their fanatical edge and you may have convinced yourself it was outside factors anyways or you know your mistake so you've already learned all you can from it.

To all who say, this site is not the be all and end all reporting tool in skydiving then show me a better one. Its a remarkable source of information for skydivers worldwide

PtL

P.S. Chill on the conspiracy wording, I am more interested in the reasons not the wording
.

No, Not without incident