An element not addressed explicitly in these exchanges, so far, which I feel is brought out well in the Deep Trouble analyses is the role "group psychology" plays in leading to an incident. I get the impression the current SK editor is more of a "just the facts, please" guy than John Dowd was. You can see this in some of the reader responses to accident articles. Many folks are not aware of how their feelings, approaches to paddling, and decision-making processes influence the likelihood they will suffer an accident. I feel Matt and George did a better job of bringing out those elements than is usual in current safety articles. I'm sure a piece of it has to do with avoiding excessive Monday morning quarterbacking: in the heat of battle, sometimes stuff happens. I understand that; yet, readers should see how the mind sets of paddlers affect their risk exposure. An excellent, well documented example is the analyses published in the Portland Oregonian of the climbing accident which lead to the deaths of three very skilled climbers on Mt Hood a year and a half ago I could be expecting more from these articles than is reasonable. But, I want them to punch out a bit more, and grab the reader by the lapels, when possible. Sometimes not easy to do without getting preachy. Many know I taught introductory chemistry at a community college for many years; the result is a huge catalog of observations of minor accidents (nothing major, thank god) involving folks new to a chemical lab environment. And, so many, many times a student had a spill or something go wrong from just not thinking about what he/she was doing. Becoming critical of self and one's own actions, in real time, is a teachable attitude; SK mag's safety articles could do more in that direction. -- Dave Kruger Astoria, OR *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Thu May 08 2008 - 03:13:16 PDT
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0 : Thu Aug 21 2025 - 16:31:29 PDT