Re: [Paddlewise] ACA Accident Report - Critical Judgment II

Bradford R. Crain wrote:
> According to the ACA Report, Table 13 below, roughly equal numbers of
> novice paddler and experienced paddler fatalities were tabulated in this
> study, giving the false impression that novice and experienced paddlers
> are dying at the same rate. The counts have not been adjusted for total
> hours of risk exposure per paddler, nor has the data been adjusted for
> degree of severity of environment in which each paddler has been
> operating. Clearly this data should be adjusted for total risk exposure,
> just as a cancer patient would be. I find this table terribly
> misleading.

Excellent points, Brad.  Nor has it been adjusted for "paddler skill" in 
the face of difficult/dangerous conditions.  IOW, for a really skilled 
paddler, Class III WW is about as dangerous to that paddler as Class I is 
to a novice.

 > Table 13: Canoe and Kayak Fatalities by Operator Experience 1996-2002
-----------------------------------
|      Hours           | Per Cent |
-----------------------------------
|    <10 hours         |  29%     |
-----------------------------------
|   10-100 hours       |  39%     |
-----------------------------------
|   over 100 hours     |  31%     |
Jeez, Brad, are you surprised they can't do math?  They had two PhD's, an 
MD, and a USCG "Boating Safety Statistician" on board for this report. 
[big, cheesy grin: we all know "PhD" stands for "Piled Higher and Deeper" 
in the hierarchy of "BS" and "MS" ("More of the Same");  BTW, I are one of 
the piled higher and deeper ones, so I should know!]

Their comment about this table _does_ suggest, in a backhanded way, that 
there is a higher than _expected_ rate for the novices:

"Another risk factor for mishap and injury among paddlers is inexperience. 
Information on experience is only available for 323 of the 574
known canoe and kayak fatalities in the USCG database. The majority of 
these fatalities had more than 10 hours of experience (71%) with
just less than a third reporting more than 100 hours of experience (Table 
13)."

I think they are trying to say that, other things being equal, you'd 
_expect_ a much higher rate of fatalities among more experienced paddlers, 
because of greater risk exposure, but the rate for novices is _as_high_ as 
that for experienced paddlers.  Meaning:  if novices were better trained in 
really basic safety practices, their rate should be lesser than the rate 
for folks exposed for longer periods of time to more risky conditions.

Yeah, yeah, I know.  They did not compare the number of fatalities to 
_how_many_ folks were in each group, or to the number of hours of 
exposure/paddler.

A better table would have been one which compared "deaths per paddler-hour 
on the water."  Probably they had no way to get at that figure, except 
conjecture.  Not to mention that there are no experience data for some 40% 
of the 574 known fatalities.

In the end, I think the focus should be on "stupid deaths," in which we 
identify deaths that are easily prevented and get folks to avoid doing 
stupid things like boating drunk.  And, then, accept that in any risky 
activity, some people are going to freaking die!!  Life is short.  As Janis 
Joplin said:  "Get it while you can ..."

-- 
Dave Kruger
Astoria, OR
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