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St Peters Gym accident 3-Feb-2017 At 10:55:48 AM rightarmbad

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>7-This climber taking a lead fall was very much unexpected and out of character. It's the belayers responsibility to be ready to catch all the time of course but their only human and humans are not perfect. If you catch them unprepared it's you that will suffer.
>Corrective action=If you are intending to do something unexpected then tell your belayer before hand. It could be your going to push to failure when you don't usually or keep slack to a minimum where there is a possibility of hitting a ledge or what ever it might be.

This is the big one.
But belayers are only human and humans are not perfect.
So my question is, do you let go of the steering wheel of your car while you are driving?

Holding the rope is the one single most important job of the belayer.
It is really easy, you can do whilst you check out the hottie next door or work out the moves on the next door line, it just isn't hard to do.
Short roping your leader, that is distraction and a little bit of imperfect human, but not holding the rope is not just being a little human, that is a huge difference.

This is the same sort of behavior that has cars running over cyclists or hitting curbs while they are on their phone.
You must take ownership of your responsibility to stop your partner from getting dropped.
There are no excuses.
By falling back onto the 'we are all human and we all make mistakes' mantra, shows that you still do not understand this and still fail to fully accept your responsibility.

I have no doubt that some time in your future, you will make a similar mistake.
It may be less likely now, but until you fully accept the responsibility of being a belayer you are dangerous.