Accidents in North America Climbing

I have a lot of criticisms about this chart but there are some interesting takeaways. First let me say, I don't know anything about how this data is collected or if the data represents non-fatal or both fatal and non-fatal accidents. Maybe somebody can chime in here.

The biggest takeaways for me were the following:

• rappelling accidents aren’t as dangerous likely as falling accidents (4% vs 49%)
• same with gear pulling out/failure (nuts/cams + pitons/screws + equipment failure = 4%)
• weather and natural disasters make up about 14% of accidents (avalanche, rock/ice fall, crevasse, lightning - [12% without crevasse]) 
• user error/inexperience makes up about 25% of accidents (I'm combining quite a few categories here)
• these categories suck

Edit: full size image here

If you were writing your own compilation of climbing accidents, what would you do differently?

While Accidents' incident reports are fantastic, their "analysis" is pretty meaningless.

If an inexperienced climber takes a lead fall and rips gear resulting in an injury, is that due to "fall or slip on rock," "exceeding ability/inexperienced," or "nut/cam pulled out?" All three? How is that categorization made? It seems to me that you could make the data say whatever you want just by choosing categories.

Yeah, apart from the pretty colors, that figure is remarkably uninformative...surely they've got someone who knows something about quantitative analysis?!

I noticed that the data goes all the way back to the 50's, I wonder what it would look like if you just used the last 20 years worth. Climbing has changed so much since the 50's and anecdotally there are a lot of lowering and rapping accidents.

But what category did this guy who got totally CONED fall into??

Adam bloc wrote:

But what category did this guy who got totally CONED fall into??

There's a thread by the guy who got injured here. https://www.mountainproject.com/forum/topic/120894130/anal-impalement Most excruciating thing I've ever read. 

FWIW, I had concerns back a long time ago about the database. I contacted the ANAM editor at the time, Jed Williamson. I found out a lot about what they do and how limited some information is. Jed actually suggested that I send him info. With that effort, he actually came out and visited my home and chatted with me. Since, there have been additional subsequent editors. It's a tough job. They rely on us climbers to send info. Some info comes from newspapers, TV news, personally witnessed issues, websites such as this, and word of mouth.

https://internal.rockymountainrescue.org/publications/2012_RMRG_Boulder_Eldo_Rock_Climb_Accidents.pdf

This report from RMRG in Boulder had rappel & belay errors making up just 21% of technical accidents. Compared with 30% for lead fall related accidents. 

While rappel errors make up a smaller percentage of accidents, I’d be surprised if the majority of that percentage did not have a fatal outcome. IMO the consequence of an error on rappel seems much higher compared to a lead fall related accident. The chart provides no definitive information about the outcomes.

Al Pine wrote:

While rappel errors make up a smaller percentage of accidents, I’d be surprised if the majority of that percentage did not have a fatal outcome. IMO the consequence of an error on rappel seems much higher compared to a lead fall related accident. The chart provides no definitive information about the outcomes.

Great point. I’ll change the wording in my post.