[PVRCNC] bad news

[Joseph Mack NA3T]

On Sun, 22 Jun 2003, Jim Jordan K4QPL wrote:

> Joe,
>
> My comment wasn't so much concerned about the details of what happened to
> Steve. It was more about the rest of us who have and/or climb towers to
> remember that bad things can happen to good people and we need to be
> constantly on our guard.

agreed.

I've taken this up with the ARRL following a tower collapse, where I filed
a full accident report, to find they have no interest in exploring or
recording such events and they keep no records of them. Ham radio then
learns nothing from accidents like this and presumably people will go on
making the same mistakes and injuring or killing themselves.

You can't tell your kids just to be careful crossing the road. You have to
tell them that cars closest to you come from the left... and to walk at a
uniform pace... You have to tell people what to be careful of.

If you look at a canoeing book, it will tell you all the ways people have
had accidents and what to do to not have it happen to you.
Backpacking/rockclimbing/canyoning organisations have lists and details of
all accidents and for poorly understood events, skilled people repeat the
trip under as similar conditions as possible, to see what must have
happened and this report will accompany the original report.

What we need in ham radio is an ethic were accidents are reported and
all information relating to the event are public information. Presumably
good information is available from serious injury events (the person still
being alive), while data from fatalities will be partial. A person
climbing a tower will then know all the available information, eg the
distribution of ages of people, their experience, the height at which the
event happened and will also know the completeness of the data (eg only
20% of accidents with fatalities are understood).

The ARRL should investigate all fatalities and report them in QST for our
education.

Joe

-- 
Joseph Mack NA3T EME(B,D), FM05lw North Carolina
mailto:jmack@wm7d.net - azimuthal equidistant map
generator at http://www.wm7d.net/azproj.shtml
It's GNU/Linux!