How Safe Is Mountain and Rock Climbing? New Study Suggests It Is Safer Than Thought..
July 8, 2008
The Journal of Wilderness and Environmental Medicine recently published a study suggesting that climbing is relatively safe when compared to other outdoor sports. The study analyzed cases for 212,708 people who were treated in emergency rooms for outdoor related activities.
The study found that 72.1 injuries occurred among every 100,000 Americans, with 68.2% of injuries to males and 31.8% to females. Not surprisingly, the most dangerous outdoor sport is snowboarding, with 25.5% of all injuries, and most of those to young men. The next two most dangerous outdoor activities are sledding with 10.8% of injuries and hiking with 6.3%. Climbing, including both rock and mountain climbing, accounted for 4.9% of outdoor injuries. Of course, since the total number of participants in climbing is unknown, the relation of climbing injuries to total climbers can’t be accurately made.
That’s some interesting information. I wonder if this has to do with there being WAY more snowboarders or wanna-be snowboarders than climbers? It doesn’t exactly mention how each group was broken down. Another surprise is the number of hiking injuries. Once again i will attribute this to shear numbers of those who hike compared to those who climbed.
This post was actually made on Stewart’s Climbing Blog for About.com. Stewart Green who writes the blog decided to take this study a step further and research some numbers from the American Alpine Institute in regards to climbing accidents and fatalities. To read the surprising findings, go check out Stewart’s Climbing Blog.
From The Adventurist Vault:
Written by Jason A. Hendricks · Filed Under Climbing |
I LOVE it that sledding is more dangerous than rock climbing. Parents stereotypically worry about their kids rock climbing, but not sledding
Then it turns out to be second most dangerous! It would also be interesting to see how skydiving compared.
I am not sure how accurate these statistics are. I mentioned that climbing may be a bit ’safer’ on the grounds that not that many people climb, compared to hikers, sledders, etc. We also have to remember that his is only from an Emergency Room standpoint. It doesn’t give many details about actual deaths and how they relate–
I can’t speak for the skydiving community, but I would have to say that it is one of the safer sports. Rarely do you hear of a death and there are hundreds if not thousands doing this on a daily basis.