UKC

The risk of death during rock climbing is 1 in 320,000 climbs according to the HSE:

http://www.hse.gov.uk/education/statistics.htm

I live about 250 km from Tremadog, so my risk of being injured driving there and back is just under 100 x larger than my risk of death climbing the crag, using the same source.

However, the risk of death in a road accident is close to 100 x larger than the risk of being injured, according to the 2004 report here:

http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/statistics/datatablespublications/accidents/casua...

Therefore, my risk of being killed in the journey to and from Tremadog, is almost the same as my risk being killed as a result of climbing the crag, according to these numbers, and if I climb the crag twice on a visit (which is typical), I am twice as likely to be killed climbing as on the road.

Of course, some climbers are safer than others, and the same is true for drivers. Also, some climbs are safer than others, and the same is true for roads (and cars).

Stay safe!

In reply to GeoffF: Hiya Geoff,
Superb stats - Thanks.

The stats are for the risk of death yet the risk would probably presumably be higher for injuries that cause less than death. Personally, I consider serious injury to be potentially worse than death. Therefore the perceived risk to me would be higher.

It would be interesting to have stats to include things such as;
a) A dodgy belayer increases the chance of death by 10x.
b) Abseiling increases the chance of death by 30x.
etc etc.

Also, how to reduce the stats might depend upon variables such as the experience and condition of the climber, the type of climbing, the preventive measures taken, and the treatment received after an injury.

In reply to GeoffF:


Hmm interesting statistic. I'd be equally interested to know how they got their figures for how many routes are climbed, it must be based on a very rough estimate!


Can't figure this one out. So, for every one road injury, there are 100 deaths..? I never was a statistician :-/

In reply to GeoffF:

It can be statistically proven that all statistics are rubbish.

In reply to Frogger:
I think it says a lot about the HSE that they publish an annual risk of injury of 1 in 1,432,000 kilometres travelled. What the hell does that mean? Idiots

In reply to A Chorlton Climber:

Actually 87.4% of statistics on the internet are made up.

In reply to GeoffF: That is good stuff, but do we know the risk of injury?

In reply to A Chorlton Climber:

Funny but dangerous. Stats can be used to prove badly formulated results are rubbish. Stats are a perfectly valid form of maths. Its not the fault of stats, its the people to blame who produced those numbers (I say people as most formally trained professional statisticians I know are very careful...we had an RSS centre in our department). Rubbish data in or bad assumptions gives rubbish out.

In reply to GeoffF:

>"The risk of death during rock climbing is 1 in 320,000 climbs"

Cool, I'm off to solo Silly Arete 319,999 times.

In reply to 999thAndyaugh out loud and 40% of them or on here.

In reply to JLS:

good luck!

In reply to GeoffF: Yes, location, and day of the week (Sunday!) has a lot to do with the level of risk. I think that there was a 3/4 week period at Stanage that I thought that the chance of death or serious injury must be odds on by the number of times that I saw the MRT out.

In reply to GeoffF: Is that 320 000 climbs or 320 000 pitches? hmmm

In reply to GeoffF: Zippy has done Sardine at least 500,000 times so he should be dead by now.

Wonder who has done the most climbs (be they single pitch, multi pitch or boulders). Big Ron I reckon.

Wonder how they arrived at these figures and whether they include indoors - the BMC's estimate of in excess of 50 million user visits to walls and 4 deaths that I know of would indicate the HSE don't include indoors, or if they do their figures are way off the mark.

In reply to TerryB: Detailed climbing risk stats would be useful - but someone has to collect them.

In the case of driving, being just under the alcohol limit increases your risk of an accident by six times.

You will find other stats for road safety.

In reply to Frogger: They can get the number of deaths from Death Certificates, but they clearly have to estimate the number of climbs. I do not know how they did it.

Sorry I typed it the wrong way round. For every road death there are close to 100 accidents, including the non-serious ones (most of them).

In reply to trouserburp: The HSE figures for road accidents come from Department for Transport research. You will find a breakdown if you follow my second link.

In reply to EeeByGum: No, they do not give the risk of injury. People have to report road accidents, but they do not have to report climbing accidents.

In reply to Graeme Alderson:

Where/when/how were these four deaths?

I remember the one at Birmingham (IIRC, short fall onto feet then head hitting the concrete floor).

In reply to Graeme Alderson: The 320,000 figure is for outdoor rock climbing.

Taking the BMC's numbers for indoor climbing, and assuming six route climbs per visit, gives one death per 75,000,000 climbs, making indoor climbing about 230 times safer than outdoor climbing. You are almost certainly more likely to be killed driving to the climbing wall than at the climbing wall.

Most of the indoor accidents are in bouldering. I doubt whether many are fatal, but there have been some very serious injuries.

It would be interesting to know the relative risks of indoor leading and top roping.

In reply to lowersharpnose: One was at a wall in Scotland in the 1970's. The other 2 were heart attacks whilst climbing

In reply to GeoffF: You are correct in saying most injuries are sustained in bouldering but very, very few are serious (ie life threatening). All of the life threatening accidents that I know have have been on roped walls ie being dropped from height.

In reply to GeoffF:

IIRC(*), the only indoor fatality in the last 25 years or so, was top-roping.

(*) Big if.

In reply to buddha1369: The 320,000 statistic is for climbs rather than pitches, but I wondered about that too, in the context of Tremadog. However, I expect that deaths are mostly the result of hitting the ground, which should not happen after the first pitch, if you are half competent - so counting the number of climbs rather than pitches per accident looks fair enough to me.

In reply to Graeme Alderson: I should have said 'the other 2 were heart attacks whilst in a climbing wall' as I am not sure of the circumstances.

In reply to trouserburp:

Yes the HSE are idiots......sigh

Well, since I do about 200 routes a year, I can expect to die when I'm 1600 years old.

In reply to Fultonius:

You can also expect to possibly die tomorrow and statistically speaking once dead you can't die again. Each time you climb as the typical climber with typical behaviour and risk levels the stats are reset. But its doesn't work like that in reality... This subject is very emotive but its clear to me that proper attention massively reduces risks. Really serious hard routes get ascents with loads fewer injuries and deaths than you might expect given the massively inflated hazards and risk levels yet good experienced climbers die far more often than expected on easy terrain or through basic mistakes (see the Yosemite accident anaylses).

I've seen several lucky escapes indoors that could have been fatal but most ended up with comparatively minor injuries: all had lack of attention as part of the problem...climber, belayer, spotter, routesetter. The closest to the Darwin Award and least favorite climbing wall participant award would have been the idiot lead fall testing some new micro-crabs with no backup protection. It broke he decked but fluked a good landing.

In reply to Fultonius: If you were otherwise immortal and able to run the experiment a very large number of times, the average time you would live would be 1,600 years, but sometimes you would dies much sooner and sometimes you would die much later.

According to the HSE, the annual risk of cancer is 1 in 387 (and heart disease kills even more) so life is riskier than climbing.

In reply to GeoffF:

It all depends on you comaprison units though - climbs v miles v lifespan etc

In reply to GeoffF: The HSE website does not say how the 320,000 was calculated, but I expect that it is for predominantly trad climbing. Climbing on a climbing wall is about 230 times safer, as noted above. Sport climbing on well installed and frequently inspected bolts on a solid crag ought to have a risk nearer to climbing indoors: 100 times safer than trad climbing, perhaps. Are there any continental statistics?

Can trad climbing be made safer? Training? Experience? Assessment? Climbing only safe technical routes? Is there any data?

Here is an interesting reference:

http://bjsm.bmj.com/cgi/content/abstract/42/9/773

In one year, 10% of climbers had sustained acute climbing injuries as a result of a fall. They were also more likely to be injured doing difficult climbs.

The BMC quotes a RoSPA risk estimate, which is enormously higher than the HSE estimate, for my Tremadog example:

http://www.thebmc.co.uk/bmcNews/media/u_content/File/press/factsheets/Parti...

In reply to Bulls Crack: You would have to do about 1,000 outdoor trad climbs per year before the climbing risk overtook your cancer risk.

In reply to GeoffF:

But are they comparable units?

In reply to GeoffF and others: It's good to see an interesting discussion on comparative risk.

I remember having effectively the same discussion whilst at Uni back in the mid-1990's. The debate was what was most dangerous?
a) Going climbing in N Wales for the weekend.
b) Driving to/from N Wales.
c) Cycling around Cambridge for the rest of week.

The conclusion was that the risk of each was pretty similar and that all three were actually relatively dangerous.

However, when you start thinking about things like Winter Climbing, Alpine or High Altitude Mountaineering you are probably looking at risks of perhaps 100x or even 1000x higher than normal UK trad climbing.

In reply to Bulls Crack: Oh, dear why am I pitching into this?

The relevant stats are ones that help individuals make decisions about risk eg by perhaps highlighting a high prevalence of problems in a group of individuals engaged in an activity. Not sure the HSE stats are that helpful.

eg What is my chance of dying from playing tiddly winks in the next year compared to an average climber?

What proportion of averagely active tiddly wink players suffer injury in a certain period, compared to averagely active climbers.

Doctors when looking at patients risk tend to quote such stats eg % chance of having stroke or heart attack in next 1 year or 5 years...

I think if I knew that 25% of people engaged in what I was doing will be dead within the next 5 years I would take notice...would I if the figure was 1%?...not sure, probably not...5%?...not sure, probably...10%...probably. That might make me switch from Alpine mountaineering to eg flower arranging...but it might not - I like mountains. However, I might look more closely at the causes of the accidents and see if I could avoid the highest risk situations.

Collecting the stats is the problem...it's surprisingly hard to count even simple stats on deaths and have confidence you've counted all of the ones you're after. Death certs, coroners...all unreliable...a nightmare. Better no stats than bad ones, having said that I need stats on deaths in the work I do...even if I have to view them with caution.

One thing I have learnt is that some climbers don't like looking at risk...or stats. Heads in sand?.......


.......light blue touch paper and retire?...well it is Bonfire night next week.

In reply to Mark Stevenson: Crikey! - I wish that I could remember anything from the mid 1990s let alone a conversation!

In reply to GeoffF:

"They were also more likely to be injured doing difficult climbs." It doesn't say that, is says better climbers are more likely to suffer overuse injuries.

In reply to Offwidth: I do not have the full text of the article, but the conclusions of the BJSM article are:

"Climbing frequency and technical difficulty are associated with climbing injuries occurring at both indoor and outdoor venues, particularly cumulative trauma to the upper extremities."

Which in statisticians' jargon means that the more often you climb, the more injuries you are likely to get, and the more technically difficult routes you climb, the more injuries you are likely to get. The injuries were PARTICULARLY (but not exclusively) "cumulative trauma to the upper extremities".

I wrote:

"They were also more likely to be injured doing difficult climbs."

Which looks accurate to me, and is not at all surprising.

The abstract also says:

"Dedicated climbers participating in different forms of rock climbing more often and at a higher level of technical difficulty may be more prone to injury, particularly overuse injuries of the finger and shoulder."

The abstract does not mention the relative abilities of the climbers at all. I am a dedicated climber, but I am rubbish!

In reply to GeoffF:

The full detail is important. That paper relates to too many pully injuries etc, that come with the territory. The Yosemite accident data shows that for deaths and serious injuries the accident rate is far too high when competant climbers are doing easy stuff or avoidable risk.