*** Accidents in North America ***
 		     ***  on World Wide Web ***

Mon Mar 27 13:40:19 1995
Message : #23947123    From: Peter Steinmetz
Address : peter@nye.wbme.jhu.edu
Group   : Usenet.rec.climbing
Subject : Accidents Statistics Now Online
Org.  : Johns Hopkins University, Dept. of Biomedical Engineering

The American Alpine Club and the Alpine Club of Canada jointly publish
an annual report entitled "Accidents in North American Moutaineering".
Occasionally readers of rec.climbing have enquired whether the
statistical data in these reports is available on-line somewhere.

A set of graphs summarizing these statistical tables as well as the
tabular data underlying them is now available on WWW at the following
URL:

http://www.bme.jhu.edu/~peter/climbing/ANAM/ANAM.html

A few of the items I found interesting:

1. The number of accidents on ascent and descent is roughly equal.
This goes counter to the frequently heard statement that "More
accidents happen on the descent".

2. Roughly equal number of accidents are reported for very
experienced, moderately experienced, and inexperienced climbers.  This
seems odd, since if anything, one would assume there are much larger
numbers of inexperienced climbers out there and that they are more
prone to accidents; both factors would raise the number accidents
reported by this category.

(Of course, these data really aren't strong enough to support general
conclusions with regard to these factors)

Peter N. Steinmetz (peter@bme.jhu.edu)

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