Speculation and Incidents

[LawnDart21 0]

My comments aren't aimed at any one thread in particular, this is more of a general observation about a recurring theme that I have observed on Incident threads and what they seem to evolve to.

Observation #1:
Most incidents that occur, injurious or fatal, are not "new" incidents, typically they are carbon copy mistakes or series of events of other incidents. IE, other than perhaps determining a frequency of the occurance, there is rarely ever any great informational breakthrough derived from page upon page of speculation after the inital facts are uncovered.

Observation #2, unanswerable questions are just that, questions that cannot be answered. Continuing to go in circles speculating about causes that will never be confirmed, I find tiresome to the thread, and disrespectful to the injured/deceased and thier family. I think the term "grasping at thin air" is a good way to describe the tireless speculation that some on this board are dedicated to.

That's it really, I'm just tired of the endless speculation some people seem capable of and intent on continuing in the incident forum. I think it is disrepectful to the friends and family of the injured or deceased subject of the thread and I wish people would put more thought into why they are posting and what it is that they post.

In a perfect world, Incident threads would be not much more than a form:
1) Here is what happened
2) Here are the quantifable (not speculated) facts about the jumper and the gear
3) Specific recommendations (following say, the BSR recommendations)

Thats would be it.....form posted and locked up. Maybe filter all incidents through the mods? You want to add frequency of incident to infer a trend? Fine, one more line on the form.

Despite my perceptions above, I am not for censoring persay, as I believe any exchange where information can be gathered to increase our safety is a positive, but after reading multiple threads that include tireless speculation over and over again, it really makes me question whether or not some people simply need to post for the sake of posting.

Here's an example:
It's already genuinely accepted that skydiving drunk is a very bad idea. An incident then occurs lets say, where a drunk jumper hooks it in and breaks a leg.
Simple, right? The thread should describe what happened on the jump including the fact the jumper was drunk, give jumper details like expeirence level, gear used, etc, and then conclude with the message: Skydiving drunk is a very unsafe thing to do.

That short, to the point. You want to say DZ "XYZ" has had 2 alcohol related injuries (if you need frequency). Okay include that too. 4 lines and the whole thing is wrapped up, learning tool derived.

Now in the real world, if this incident occurs, there will be a thread that will have page after page of speculation about how much the person drank, what they were drinking, someone will inevitably want to know why they were drinking, etc, etc. Another person will inevitabely offer thier own expeirence of someone they knew that jumped drunk. Someone else will add how long it takes for alcohol to leave the body and produce a flow chart, someone else will inevitably diagree with the flow chart and post another version of oxidizing alcohol in the body, etc, ect. Soon enough, thiere will be 5 pages of speculation. "Did the jumpers friends know?" "Yes!" says one, "No!" says another, and around and around we go. "What color socks was the jumper wearing?" "Did they eat anything while they were drinking? You know food absorbs alcohol".......and so on and so on, all of which does nothing to change the fact 1) it happened, 2) the clear reasons for it happening already have been uncovered, and 3) the "lesson learned" was not derived from all the speculation, it was rerived from the begining facts and most likely already well known, like "don't jump drunk". You dont need 5 pages of speculation to reach a conclusion that you already knew.

Thanks for reading my vent.
Tom

--
My other ride is a RESERVE.

[kelpdiver 2]

Tom, speculation and hypotheticals may not be kind to those involved, but if the incidents only discussed the exact details known, far fewer scenarios would be discussed. And the whole point is to live and learn, right?

[LawnDart21 0]

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speculation and hypotheticals may not be kind to those involved, but if the incidents only discussed the exact details known

I understand your point, but I ask you to show me where one of these (hurtful to the person or thier family) speculations uncovered some new truth that made us all safer. That it uncovered somthing we didnt already know? I ask becuase in your scenario, people are being hurtful in speculation, and I say its without producing any new safety benefit to our community, and I find that very disrespectful. Thats the truth of it as I see it.

--
My other ride is a RESERVE.

[CSpenceFLY 1]

If your is the scenario you like just read the reports in Parachutist.Then you don't have to read the feedback.

.

[Eiley 0]

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You dont need 5 pages of speculation to reach a conclusion that you already knew.

Sometimes though, I think, the conclusion we 'already knew' is the wrong one.

For example, to me it would have been 'obvious' that for the recent tandem drowning they 'should have been wearing flotation devices'.

Having read the thread, I now know what I didn't know. It was useful.

nothing to see here

[LawnDart21 0]

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Then you don't have to read the feedback

It's not my reading it that is the issue (the arbitrary, uninvolved outsider). Ask yourself how you would feel if someone you knew and cared very much about was overzealously speculated about and scrutinized, post mortem or laid up in a hospital, about everything about them from A to Z, when (here's the important part......) nothing beneficial to our collective greater safety came of it.

Your right, I can read a thread, see a ridiculous speculation and simply choose not to read it, my day goes on. But consider the party with a substancial interest in the person involved, getting to read about all the possibities of the things that could have gone wrong, and all the mistakes that "might have been made". If a decisive conclusion could be reached in the end, so be it, it served a better common good, but that decisive conclusion is rarely, if ever reached. Its the friends and family of the injured/deceased that deserve that forethought on posts. They don't have a choice to not read it.

Instead friends and relatives get to read wild speculation from arm chair quarterbacks.

Put it this way, I challenge anyone that posts speculations in the Incident forums to ask themselves this one simple question before they post their speculation:

Would you say what your saying on this board to the friends and family of the person involved, to their face? If you would, fine, go for it, post away. But go back and read some of the recent threads and the wild speculations that have been posted, and ask yourself honestly, would you say that to the friends and family in person? Given some of the things speculated/posted, I'd be appaulled if the answer to some of the speculations was "yes".

Lastly, I do not expect this thread to stop or even slow the overflow of speculation that exists on incident threads. My only hope is that people will atleast stop and give pause to their conscience, and think about the friends and family reading it as well, and the effect it can have on them, before they feel the need to post what random unlikely possibility "could have been the cause" of such incidents.

--
My other ride is a RESERVE.

[kelpdiver 2]

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I understand your point, but I ask you to show me where one of these (hurtful to the person or thier family) speculations uncovered some new truth that made us all safer. That it uncovered somthing we didnt already know?

Well, as you wrote, it's rare that an accident tells us something we didn't (or more importantly, should have) know. Yet it keeps happening. I personally think that these reminders are useful, if very costly. And I'm not sure about your conclusion that the tangents don't produce any safety benefit. I've certainly picked up some things to mull over, more than I would from an incident report that just read - something went wrong, he went in.

The brutal truth is that the Incidents forum is not for the victims and their families. It's for everyone else.

I'm a bit concerned that the RSL/AADs incidents have lead people to remove them after poor risk assessment, but at least the conversations are thorough.

[LawnDart21 0]

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it's rare that an accident tells us something we didn't (or more importantly, should have) know. Yet it keeps happening.

Yup, but what's uncovered is done so by the facts. Not the wild speculation.

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The brutal truth is that the Incidents forum is not for the victims and their families. It's for everyone else.

Yes, but my point is that it is possible to reach the truth without being unneccessarily brutal.

I'm all for fact and truth, what I'm not communicating effectively is that alot of threads go way beyond useful. Some people will continue to speculate on and on and on, about the most peripheral of possibilities, and I wish they would give more thought to what they are posting and why.

--
My other ride is a RESERVE.

[Guest 1010]

Obviously, your efforts here are totally wasted on Kelpdiver. I'd like to see Sangiro man-up and put a submission-form in Incidents for the data items common to, well, skydiving incidents, and change the forum rules there to have only persons with knowledge of the incident post. I'm always hoping to be surprised one morning and see the changes implemented, it just hasn't happened yet.

You can have it good, fast, or cheap: pick two.

[kelpdiver 2]

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Obviously, your efforts here are totally wasted on Kelpdiver.

Read the text describing that group and reconsider.

Lawndart seems more concerned about the cheap shots being taken on the victims than in the topic drift that is inevitable. Nothing says that postings of that nature can't be culled. But even that greatly increases the workload on the moderators.

[sgt_ludy 0]

hehe, welcome to the great world of internet-forums...

but let me point out, that incidents are really discussed on a high niveau with much respect to everyone concerned on dropzone.com.
compared to other, similar internet-forums, that is.

[LawnDart21 0]

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Lawndart seems more concerned about the cheap shots being taken on the victims than in the topic drift that is inevitable.

Yes, that's fair to say. But I am also concerned with situations like this example:

Poster 1: "Freefall collision injured 2 today, not many fact available, I will post the facts as they are uncovered."
Posters 2-102:"Did they hit a bird? I've heard thats possible." "Were they newbies? Newbies get into alot of collisions" "Where was the spot? No one knows how to spot any more" "They must have been doing a skydive above their skill level. People are always jumping above thier skill level" "What plane did they exit from? I've heard xyz plane has a high rate of jumpers colliding in freefall" "This one time when I got into a collision in freefall it was caused by a low tim jumper crashing the formation, I bet thats what happened." and so on and so on and so on and so on............

It ends up being decided (speculated) that an uncurrent low timer must have exited a Grand Caravan from a very bad spot and was wearing a green jump suit with no helmet, and that the jumper crashed into the other jumper at a high rate of speed due to low time jumpers over zealous closing speeds on other jumpers.

Then an hour or a week later, when the real facts come in, the true story is simply:

"RW flier accidently kicked in head practicing 360s with fellow teammate."

This type of thing happens all the time as is illustrated by the often asked and just as often ignored request "Please stop speculating, facts will be given once we have them".

--
My other ride is a RESERVE.

[Squeak 17]

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I'd like to see Sangiro man-up and put a submission-form in Incidents for the data items common to, well, skydiving incidents, and change the forum rules there to have only persons with knowledge of the incident post. I'm always hoping to be surprised one morning and see the changes implemented, it just hasn't happened yet.

Whilst I agree with the sumission-form, I think people should be able to respond who weren't there. Knowldge from other incidents of similar nature can be valuble.

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..... seems more concerned about the cheap shots being taken on the victims than in the topic drift that is inevitable.

I don't agree that thread drift is inevitable, people should not be posting for the sake of seeing there name on the boards. Post should be limted to on topic discussion, anything else should be at least moved to general.
And blatant specuulation and hear say should not be tolerated at all.

You are not now, nor will you ever be, good enough to not die in this sport (Sparky)
My Life ROCKS!
How's yours doing?

[ChrisL 2]

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nothing beneficial to our collective greater safety came of it.

While this may in fact be true for you, it doesnt follow that its true for everyone.

Some people need to discuss something before they can really grasp it in
a way thats meaningful or beneficial for them.

Its great that this is not the case for you, but we are all different and not everyone can simply be presented with the cold hard facts and have it benefit them. They NEED to turn it around and look at it from every angle and talk to others about it in order to learn from it.
Its not a choice, its just the way their minds are built.

Some folks also need to speculate upon things for which there are no
adequate answers or facts. This helps people to understand and accept
things that otherwise cant be explained.
Unknowns generate fear, so people naturally try to make sense of unknowns. Who wants to be afraid?

This stuff is just basic human nature.

Acceptance will bring you closer to harmony with it. Thats your best course since reality is that its not likely to change any time in the next 10,000 years
As to the respect issue, imagine a movie star thats upset about being in the public eye all the time. They desire privacy and are upset that they cant get any.

Too bad for them. They chose a profession in which sucess means you will be subject to puclic scrutiny. It was understood going in.

Same with skydiving. We understand that if we die or are seriously injured while jumping, that the event will be picked apart and speculated upon.

If thats not understood going in, then the person shouldnt be jumping in the first place because it means that they have not adequately considered the grim posibility that they could be killed while engaging in this activity.

Thats how I see it

__

My mighty steed

[LawnDart21 0]

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Too bad for them. They chose a profession in which sucess means you will be subject to puclic scrutiny. It was understood going in.

Same with skydiving. We understand that if we die or are seriously injured while jumping, that the event will be picked apart and speculated upon.

And the fact that it will be picked apart beyond the absurd and ridiculously speculated upon is why alot of incidents that occur are not brought forward in a thread to learn from. This board (in the incidents forum) has created a whole breed of unqualified arm chair quarter backs that pontificate at nauseum about what "they think" happened. That keeps people from posting incidents on this board and that keeps information away from this board, plain and simple. And people will continue to not post incidents on here as long as the gossip queens keep that speculation machine rolling.

Wouldn't you rather have more people willing to post threads about incidents that they otherwise would not have due to all this useless speculation, so as to learn from, rather than hve less threads with more speculations? You end the useless specultaions, you'll see less incidents withheld from here, and we will all learn more and be safer.

But no, it wont happen, because just as everyone has an opinion, too many people feel they need to share theirs in an incident thread, much to the detriment of the thread.

Skydiving is supposed to be a family thing. We look out for our own. And yes, while tough love is needed at times, there is a difference between being honest and direct for the sake of safety, versus what goes on in the incidents forum, arm chair quarterbacks tearing apart every fiber of a person or an incident so they can apparently abate their fears as you said.

--
My other ride is a RESERVE.

[ChrisL 2]

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arm chair quarterbacks tearing apart every fiber of a person or an incident so they can apparently abate their fears as you said.

Its my belief that fear abatement is exactly what thats all about.
Whether or not it should be that way is really irrelevant.

Its not likely to change unless peoples fundimental nature changes.

I completely understand what you are saying, however I think the only thing you will accomplish by railing against it is to make yourself
less content

__

My mighty steed

[Elisha 1]

This reminds of a great joke I read recently:


http://www.computerjokes.net/087.htm

Q: How many internet mail list subscribers does it take to change a light bulb?

A: 1,331:

* 1 to change the light bulb and to post to the mail list that the light bulb has been changed
* 14 to share similar experiences of changing light bulbs and how the light bulb could have been changed differently.
* 7 to caution about the dangers of changing light bulbs.
* 27 to point out spelling/grammar errors in posts about changing light bulbs.
* 53 to flame the spell checkers
* 156 to write to the list administrator complaining about the light bulb discussion and its inappropriateness to this mail list.
* 41 to correct spelling in the spelling/grammar flames.
* 109 to post that this list is not about light bulbs and to please take this email exchange to alt.lite.bulb
* 203 to demand that cross posting to alt.grammar, alt.spelling and alt.punctuation about changing light bulbs be stopped.
* 111 to defend the posting to this list saying that we are all use light bulbs and therefore the posts **are** relevant to this mail list.
* 306 to debate which method of changing light bulbs is superior, where to buy the best light bulbs, what brand of light bulbs work best for this technique, and what brands are faulty.
* 27 to post URLs where one can see examples of different light bulbs
* 14 to post that the URLs were posted incorrectly, and to post corrected URLs.
* 3 to post about links they found from the URLs that are relevant to this list which makes light bulbs relevant to this list.
* 33 to concatenate all posts to date, then quote them including all headers and footers, and then add "Me Too."
* 12 to post to the list that they are unsubscribing because they cannot handle the light bulb controversey.
* 19 to quote the "Me Too's" to say, "Me Three."
* 4 to suggest that posters request the light bulb FAQ.
* 1 to propose new alt.change.lite.bulb newsgroup.
* 47 to say this is just what alt.physic.cold_fusion was meant for, leave it here.
* 143 votes for alt.lite.bulb.

[Guest 1010]

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Obviously, your efforts here are totally wasted on Kelpdiver.

Read the text describing that group and reconsider.

I did, which is why I said this in my post:

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I'd like to see Sangiro ... and change the forum rules

But you have illustrated another problem, people replying to something that wasn't said, or replying without reading what they are replying to. That forum is one that many people actually make a point to read, hence the desire for people to post there.

To start with I'd like to see it moderated according to its own rules. Pretty sure this squabble about skyride added no 1st, 2nd, or 3rd hand info to the thread (even though technically acceptable). Is there any way in which Skyride can be related to a jumper's no pull? And if there is a way, those people aren't talking about it. All the Skyride/ASC-bashing and defending posts should go away, maybe they will, maybe they won't, who knows.

I'll post an incident of my own if it happens, but even if (or especially if) I ever see somebody go in, I don't see myself posting about it in the gossip column called the Incidents forum. Why have my just-gone brother or sister get disrespected there? You can read about it in the magazine. (And as someone recently told me, yeah I guess I need to lighten up a bit. )

Are there any Incidents forum rules other than these?

Incidents forum sticky 1 Reasons your post got removed

Incidents forum sticky 2 What will happen when you read this forum

Incidents forum sticky 3 What will happen when you post here

You can have it good, fast, or cheap: pick two.

[kelpdiver 2]

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I don't agree that thread drift is inevitable, people should not be posting for the sake of seeing there name on the boards. Post should be limted to on topic discussion, anything else should be at least moved to general.

Many times someone will ask, if speculative fact A and B were indeed what happened (or are something I could see occurring), how should I handle it? They aren't inventing fantasy, they want to know more about a somewhat similar scenario. Or perhaps one they did have and handled, but perhaps were more lucky than skilled in surviving it.

Even if these are lessons we should know, there's no reason we can't relearn more than one per incident.

Massively restricting discussion will have consequences. These days, I don't bother to read the incidents page in Parachutist because it covers 3 month old incidents that were much better discussed here.

[JeepDiver 0]

Speculating on a thread about Speculation. Classic.

[LawnDart21 0]

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Speculating on a thread about Speculation. Classic.

Yes, it appears my hipocracy knows no bounds....

This isn't an injury or a fatality thread, and none of what I have suggested is outlandish speculation. It has been said many times by many people on this board that they in fact will not post about incidents due to the ridiculous amount of speculation that occurs. That is fact, not speculation.

Do you not have anything beneficial to contribute to this thread? Or are you resigned to just making witty commentary for the sake of your own amusement?

--
My other ride is a RESERVE.

[UDSkyJunkie 0]

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In a perfect world, Incident threads would be not much more than a form:
1) Here is what happened
2) Here are the quantifable (not speculated) facts about the jumper and the gear
3) Specific recommendations (following say, the BSR recommendations)

Thats would be it.....form posted and locked up. Maybe filter all incidents through the mods? You want to add frequency of incident to infer a trend? Fine, one more line on the form.

Despite my perceptions above, I am not for censoring persay, as I believe any exchange where information can be gathered to increase our safety is a positive, but after reading multiple threads that include tireless speculation over and over again, it really makes me question whether or not some people simply need to post for the sake of posting.

I agree with your observations, but I disagree with closing the thread. I have learned things I did not know in the incident threads.

For example, the recent mid-swoop cypres fire fatality really took the skydiving world by surprise, though many people including myself had wondered how close to the limit we were. What many, many people did NOT know was that cypres mis-fires on landing had already happened, they just hadn't caused an accident yet. I have also learned a number of things about our equipment when people like bill booth step in and address a question raised about a fatality.

When I read those threads, which is rare, I don't read the circular discussions much, because it's mostly so much BS. I scan it for useful information. If the incident is something so obvious as "the deceased had a blood-alcohol-level of 0.35" I don't bother... nothing new to be learned there.

Another thing to consider: you have 1800 jumps in 5 years listed in your profile, so you're obviously heavily involved in the sport. That means that many of the things that you believe are not "new" may as well be to someone with 50 jumps. This is particularly the case if they are the type who isn't immediately obsessed and/or if they jump at a one-cessna DZ in the ass middle of nowhere in Kansas. The constant repetition of old points and counterpoints can be very educational to that type of jumper.

Contrast that with the incident reports in Parachutist... I have VERY rarely learned anything new in those. Certainly nothing about my gear.

At the risk of sounding a little insensitive... while some may be being disrespectful to the deceased, I think it's important to remember that the right to free speech gives people the right to be assholes. If it offends you (and some of it does offend me), don't read it... noone's forcing you. The sensitivities of some should not detract from the learning of others.

"Some people follow their dreams, others hunt them down and beat them mercilessly into submission."

[Ron 10]

I can only assume you are talking about me.

OK fine.

I asked a question about culture and never got an answer, only insults. Some people (It seems a lot from that DZ...Understandable and to be expected) will not even look at some factors....I call it the "Circling the Wagons" syndrome. It's when someone dies and people refuse to admit they did something wrong since that person was "Nice", "Cute", "A Natural", "Skilled", "Liked", "Buddist" or any other non-related reason. DZ's often do it as well.

I will say that a sure fire way to end speculation is for someone with the info to post it. Truth kills rumors rather quickly. Asking a question and getting an insult, or told to shut up will not.

Speculation is not bad. It can go overboard. But it can also lead to discussion that while not a factor in that accident could prevent another one.

"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms." -- Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson Papers, 334

[CSpenceFLY 1]

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"Circling the Wagons" syndrome

It's the one post syndrome.

Sorry had to go for something whitty.


.

[Guest 1010]

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Speculation is not bad. It can go overboard. But it can also lead to discussion that while not a factor in that accident could prevent another one.

Speculation is discouraged by the forum rules:

from sticky 1:
"... there will be people who post simple speculation. This is discouraged, but there is no rule against it."

from sticky 3:
"Hopefully people will post either firsthand or reliable secondhand info; third-hand rumors are better posted in general or talkback."

"Posters should avoid speculation when they don't know much about the incident, but there's no rule against it."

"... although I hope people post enough facts to get a realistic and useful picture of an accident."


If you have any facts or examples specific to this dz regarding it's culture which may have something to do with the losses they have endured, let's hear them. Otherwise it sounds like speculation to me.

Do you ask about dz culture for every incident? It seems like a fair question, but it isn't always asked. Why ask for this one, and not others? Solely the bad run they've had, or does something else pique your interest about that, for this dz? (Maybe it should be asked for each incident ... hence the form I and others have asked for to capture similar data points across for all incidents.)

Blue skies

You can have it good, fast, or cheap: pick two.