Rich Kulawiec wrote: > > On Tue, Feb 17, 1998 at 07:16:28PM -0500, dldecker_at_mediaone.net wrote: > > Boy , that white water report make Sea Kayaking seem like a safe Sport. > > Why? The reporting of a handful of near-miss events gives absolutely > no indication of the relative safety of whitewater as compared to > sea kayaking. If you want to try to compare them, you'll need to > look at accident rates in terms of (say) injuries/paddler-hour or > some other statistical measure that lends itself to comparisons. > > But please don't leap to unfounded conclusions based on anecdotal > evidence, which is all that Charlie was reporting. > I think we had a bit of a discussion about this two years ago, i.e. relative danger of whitewater vs. seakayaking. We didn't come up with many good answers then but I have thought about this a lot since. Rather than look at the "danger" quotient it may be better to look at the "awareness of danger" quotient. I think that the awareness-of-danger quotient in higher among people doing or entering whitewater paddling. So a person experienced or beginning in whitewater is likely to equip him/herself to the teeth with high flotation pfds, training, throw ropes (and their proper use technique), scout out waters and guage them against skill levels. The same is not necessary true of sea kayaking. You would hardly ever see a whitewater paddler without a pfd on and cold-water attire. You will often see seakayakers without either. For the most part, most any whitewater paddler does seek training or has an awareness of skill necessary to tackle certain classes of waters under different conditions. Many seakayakers haven't a clue. So in a sense, whitewater is a "safer" sport because of awareness and preparation levels. Having said that there is nevertheless a high danger level in whitewater paddling among _expert_ paddlers. There are very few cases of expert seakayakers getting killed (aside from surf kayakers). I am only aware of one or two in the last 10 years. However, in whitewater, experts do die regularly especially as they seek greater challenges. Weren't there about three or four recent such deaths highlighted in a recent issue of Paddler? Hardly a year goes by without some prominent whitewater paddler with a steller reputation getting killed. ralph -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Ralph Diaz . . . Folding Kayaker newsletter PO Box 0754, New York, NY 10024 Tel: 212-724-5069; E-mail: rdiaz_at_ix.netcom.com "Where's your sea kayak?"----"It's in the bag." ----------------------------------------------------------------------- *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net ***************************************************************************Received on Tue Feb 17 1998 - 20:48:41 PST
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