In reply to maybe_si:
Speaking as someone who's also been injured falling down a slab in very much the sort of way being discussed here (foot popped on a techy problem, skidded down the wall, smashed the arch of my foot on another hold on the way down and got a delightful break/dislocation thing called a Lisfranc injury, commiserations and fistbumps of solidarity to my fellow injurees on this thread) --
I think it's far from "easy enough" to make those risks disappear in the manner you assume, at least not without removing a wide range of creative possibilities from route-setting.
Which I for one would miss (as if the user-name wasn't enough of a giveaway ...).
> It is easy enough to find decent juggy holds for an easy problem that are low volume (don't stick out much).
For reference, the hold that meant I couldn't climb (or walk without crutches) for months was rather small -- certainly not a jug. And even a small hold that catches someone's foot can tip them backwards and make a fall unpleasant at least.
And in this case, based on my memory of recent slab sets at the Arch, the issue isn't finding big juggy holds for easy problems, it's volumes used so that harder problems with sketchy smearing on them can be set.
Unless you're going to say that a slab should only have a very few well-spaced problems with no other holds underneath them at any point (which would make slabs a very unproductive use of space for most wall managers), I think the risk of skidding down the slab and hitting other things on the way down is always going to be there to some degree.
And if you're going to use volumes at all in a problem, unless it's pretty much the last hold or the problem travels diagonally, you're going to have the risk of falling from above the volume and hitting the volume on the way down.
And some of us are going to take the risk and get unlucky.
> You would never put a big wooden box on the floor below a boulder problem, so why put one near the bottom of the wall which is still in the landing zone.
If someone put a big wooden box on the floor below a boulder problem, then I imagine that it'd be fairly obvious even to newbies that, if you climb directly above the big wooden box, you run the risk of falling onto the big wooden box.
Yeah, I've absolutely seen route-setting which has struck me as stupid or annoying in terms of how problems interact, or as making something pointlessly risky.
But saying that it's the wall's responsibility not to set things in such a way that you might conceivably hit something if you fall off on a slab -- I think I would find that saddening in terms of the interesting indoor problems it would eliminate, and I also think it would set a dangerous precedent in terms of the responsibility it imposes on the wall managers and route-setters (should they also be obliged to avoid any overhanging problems where you might swing off and land at an odd angle, or any problems with heel-hooks because you might land on your back, or any with low cruxes because you might hit the mat before getting your feet under you evenly and roll an ankle, or any of the other possibilities?).
It's good to have the reminder that indoor falls can be dangerous in a variety of ways, and that bouldering walls aren't actually bouncy castles just because they look like it. Hopefully hikingoz's post will be a useful reminder for people who may need to hear it.
But I don't think the answer is to put the onus on route-setters to eliminate risk altogether (not least because that's not remotely possible). And if you establish as a principle that it's their responsibility to do that, it would seem to make them more liable to be sued, not less.