Chockstone Forum

      Sponsored By
      ROCK
   HARDWARE

Chockstone Photography

Australian Landscape Prints

Chockstone Forum - General Discussion

General Climbing Discussion

Topic Date User

Extreme sports and kids... 23-May-2015 At 8:44:51 AM Wendy

Message

On 22/05/2015 Snacks wrote:
>"And just how useful have they been sitting in the background? Have they
>stopped anyone doing stupid shit?"
>
>Yes. All the time... they're a formal way of 'enforcing' and promoting
>the common sense you speak of.
>
>The example Patto provided demonstrates that if someone misrepresents
>themselves as an experienced person and this goes bad then it can have
>follow on consequences for that person... which I personally think is reasonable,
>and you do not, but if that's your unrelenting opinion then fair enough.

I don't think negligence laws are what leads people to be safe and reasonable, no. I'm probably cynical, but I suspect the guy in that case still thinks he didn't do anything wrong and it was just an unfortunate accident and he feel really hard done by.
>

>
>But take the Perp story to the extreme and consider someone who DELIBERATELY
>left his friend hanging there with the partial intent of him falling...
>
>You're saying that he could just claim it was an accident and the charge
>of involuntary manslaughter could be easily dodged by simply claiming "Oh
>sorry, I'm a recreational climber and I'm exempt from such laws."
>
>The next Ivan Milat would be queuing up at Point Perp to offer everyone
>top belays if you had it your way...

Now you are trying to say that criminal acts should be covered by negligence law? ...
>
>Trying to explain a different way Wendy without a ludicrous Milat example...
>
>Situations where it is ambiguous as to whether a situation was accidental/deliberate
>and it has resulted in a fatality or some other major outcome will be scrutinized
>heavily... And I really don't see the problem with that.

Well, all deaths will be scrutinised heavily by the coroner's court anyway.

>
>As far as educating people goes on how to climb properly... no. These
>cases and their outcomes just raise awareness. It's a sad reality that
>it often takes a death with punishment laid for preventative action to
>be taken seriously. As it is and has been in many workplace industries...
>
>
>EDIT: A while ago I was curious about this stuff and asked a couple of
>mates that are NSW Prosecutors and they explained some of the above to
>me and yeah, it may seem ridiculous and overkill... but when it is your
>relative that has died from someone else's screw up then you'd like to
>think the law will do something to balance the scales...

It's all very social worker of me, but I don't actually believe that punishment and fines change people's behaviour much. Instead, I believe in rehabilitation, reconciliation and reparation. I don't understand when people get all up in arms for example about how this person deserves a death sentence to make me feel better about my own loved one's death. Because it won't change the death, it won't bring them back, it doesn't prevent further deaths ... and that's even when we are talking about deliberate criminal acts.

With acts that are basically ignorance, locking the person up or fining them isn't going to change their ignorance. It's probably going to make them resentful and angry about the whole system. Especially when you have someone who is genuinely sorrowful about the outcome of their mistakes and ready for intervention that prevents further mistakes.

But as a whole, unless you think there are a whole bunch of people being wilfully hazardous to others out there in the climbing world, I still reckon we have an education and skill base problem. And we have a culture that kinda perpetuates that. Remember the many discussions on here that go along the lines of "I did all this stupid things/ had all these near misses when I was learning and it was all good adventure and I turned out OK and everyone should do it"? or "Sandbagging is a classic Australian passtime" (do sandbaggers ever think of negligence law? I doubt it).