Luke_Quichotte

Very interesting discussion. First the disclaimer: I'm brand spanking new into the sport, as such, do not have enough knowledge of the sport itself to understand the intricacies. That said, I'm a Health & Safety guy with 15+ years of experience in managing safety in multiple companies in multiple countries with all kinds of different processes and risks. As such, this discussion peaked my interest. I think Drew Rae's podcast "We dont Kill enough people" from disastercast http://disastercast.co.uk/wp/2014/06/03/episode-33-we-dont-kill-enough-people/ might be an interesting listen as he briefly discusses this topic. In general, it is my believe keeping track of all irregularities makes sense. The question is where do you start and where do you stop? This would mean defining irregularities. Hard openings & small malfunction too, lack of knowledge/training? What information on an event do you track exactly, when is it enough? Do you need a governing body to force a certain way of tracking? (certanly hope not, a nightmare internationally and one doesnt want his/her information shared). In the end, the level of information gathered might not even matter the most. Bill Booth mentioned (in a youtube video I believe) that most incidents at the moment are related to the people, not the equipment. Tracking all small incidents, and having an open discussion on those, will most likely uncover some knowledge gaps in jumpers or processes, and might fix those before they lead to more serious incidents. As such, the data itself to use in material improvements might actually be secondary to the effect it has to discuss irregularities and create a culture of learning and improving quickly. (Although I am not suggesting that isnt here already, improvements can always be made) The remark that tracking data will not lead to workable data for material improvements might therefore be correct, but it is not the entire picture. We want triggers to review / discuss safety mechanisms (training, processes, material, etc) and catch anything before it leads too serious incidents. As a note, a lot of people tend to thing "blame" when you have a discussion about something that didnt go as planned: As any safety system, it is about the culture of openly being able to discuss things that did not go as planned and adjust accordingly, quickly. It can never be about blame. These situations are learning exercises. If someone does something dangerous, maybe they are lacking information / training. As such the training failed, not the person. In all the time I've been in my job, seeing a ton of minor and major things go wrong, including permanent disabilities and death, not once have I allowed any of the root causes to list "Operator error". When someone tried, I've sent them back or assisted them to investigate decently. No jumper is doing this with the intention to die. Anyway, I know I will be tracking all of my jumps including any and all irregularity and discuss those with my mentors / peers to see what I can learn, as fast possible. Having an ego about this stuff is counterproductive.

Hi All, Recently started AFF, lot's to learn, and enjoying it thoroughly. 35 ear old, male. regards, Luke