Skiing and Risk

Can statistics really be used to conclude whether a sport (or anything else) is dangerous?  Sure, statistics can tell us if one activity is more or less dangerous than another.  Yeah, statistically speaking, from an actuarial perspective, skiing is less dangerous than tiddlywinks.  However, do risks/dangers exist in skiing?  Yes.  Can they be 100% eliminated?  No.  Unless you want to argue either of those, the conclusion has to be that skiing is (or can be) dangerous, but statistically speaking not that dangerous.

That said, I’ve had many more injuries playing soccer (torn muscles, broken bones, stitches) than skiing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Wald

Pretty brilliant really to realize that the thing you were unable to see - planes that didn't make it back - was the thing you needed to analyze and evaluate.

billyymc wrote

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Wald

Pretty brilliant really to realize that the thing you were unable to see - planes that didn't make it back - was the thing you needed to analyze and evaluate.

That is very cool!

JTG4eva! wrote

Can statistics really be used to conclude whether a sport (or anything else) is dangerous?  Sure, statistics can tell us if one activity is more or less dangerous than another.  Yeah, statistically speaking, from an actuarial perspective, skiing is less dangerous than tiddlywinks.  However, do risks/dangers exist in skiing?  Yes.  Can they be 100% eliminated?  No.  Unless you want to argue either of those, the conclusion has to be that skiing is (or can be) dangerous, but statistically speaking not that dangerous.

That said, I’ve had many more injuries playing soccer (torn muscles, broken bones, stitches) than skiing.

Your argument amounts to arguing that being alive increases one's risk of dying. There is danger all around us if you look for it.

And yes statistics tells us exactly how dangerous skiing is on a whole. What DOESN"T tell us how dangers skiing is or isn't is the experience of one person, or a small group of people. Camp's comments about his two injuries that caused him to miss work were skiing injuries are a perfect example. He had that experience and based on that experience he concludes that skiing is dangerous.

My worst injury also happens to be from skiing. It was almost all my fault. I was goofing around, did something stupid, and cracked my femur on a blue run at Bretton Woods. I was dumb enough to try and ski another two runs on a cracked femur before driving myself to the hospital in North Conway after assuring my friends I'd be back on skis the next day. I wasn't. I don't use this to conclude skiing is dangerous. My conclusion is that if I fail to pay attention to what I'm doing, that doing any activity in an out of control way (which is what I essentially did), increases my probability of getting hurt. The risk level of skiing didn't change. I just moved on the risk spectrum of skiing due to my own actions. In that case it caught up with me.

Risk isn't binary or static. It's a spectrum that you can be at different points on. And yes, statistics could easily bear that out if enough data was collected for any activity under various settings.

Ok, no desire to split hairs.  

Yes, if you are alive you will die.  If you do ski you will face risks (i.e. danger), there on the spectrum you mentioned, that you can’t control (other than by not skiing).  Yes, statistically speaking that danger is negligible.  

So, to sum up your position, would it be correct to say that when you ski you will face risks/dangers that you cannot control, but skiing is not dangerous?

 Common sense says skiing is dangerous.  Simple truth!! Mountain Biking Dangerous.  Golf no so much.

tjf1967 wrote

Common sense says skiing is dangerous.  Simple truth!! Mountain Biking Dangerous.  Golf no so much.

Agreed, all Symantecall and/or statistical exposition aside.

JTG4eva! wrote

Ok, no desire to split hairs.  

Yes, if you are alive you will die.  If you do ski you will face risks (i.e. danger), there on the spectrum you mentioned, that you can’t control (other than by not skiing).  Yes, statistically speaking that danger is negligible.  

So, to sum up your position, would it be correct to say that when you ski you will face risks/dangers that you cannot control, but skiing is not dangerous?

Sort of. Risks exist in skiing, and in the general world around us. Yes there are some we can't control. But there are two things that keep us all from coming home in body bags.

1 - Humans aren't good judges of risk. So when we perceive something as risky or dangerous we usually overestimate that risk.

2 - We have the ability to mitigate what we perceive as risky. RA sees crowded slopes as presenting more risk so he doesn't ski them. Gut feel would say that crowded slopes do increase the risk of some types of incidents - like running into another skier. But without data we can't know that for sure, and we also can't know if having more people on the hill reduces other types of risk. For example with more people out there maybe more of us ski slower or more carefully which results in a lower probability of a serious accident or death (while at the same time increase the probability of a skier to skier collision). There are inter-related risk factors that "gut feel" and intuition can't really sort out.

The data that's available shows skiing to be a relatively safe activity overall. Gut feel and intuition don't replace that conclusion. But gut feel and intuition can help you feel the need to mitigate perceived risk. Basically the survival instinct in action.

Relatively safe, yes.

We have stumbled into an area that interests me immensely, as I was the Risk Officer (for 10 years) for the organization I worked for in my last job before I retired. I have a Masters in Public Administration and Finance from SU. I worked for the military and civilian government agencies and had lots of fun (seriously) using statistics, operations research, process evaluation and risk management.  

So for argument purposes, lets concede that skiing is statistically safer than kayaking, walking down the street or driving (or lots of other activities). That doesn't make it safe. It can still be an unnecessarily dangerous activity.  

Why: 'cause it can still result in injury or death, especially if not done with proper care. It also can be considered an unnecessarily risky activity, (as was your kayaking ;-). One of the most important parts of evaluating and reducing risk in an organization is evaluating whether taking the risk is desirable or necessary.  So if an activity (skiing) is not necessary (for living for example), one would eliminate it from the organization.

But I am not arguing that one should not ski or Kayak. Obviously. Why? Because I see that there are intrinsic benefits from skiing (at least for me) from being physically active in the winter and skiing keeps me mentally stable in  these fairly long upstate NY winters.

I am arguing that one should recognize that there are risks when one undertakes risky activities, and one should not automatically assume that the ski area operator or the woman who sold you the kayak is responsible because you had an accident and died while using their product. We don't do this for other activities. For example we don't automatically assume that the manufacturer of your car, or the state and company that built the road you drive on, is responsible for you having an accident. And we certainly don't allow drivers to sue to state because the road has potholes and sharp curves. Even if the curve is not well marked.

But for some reason the mother involved in the subject ski death wants to assign blame to Hunter Mountain for operating a ski slope. To me it is self evident that using that ski slope is taking a (possibly unnecessary) risk. One that all skiers acknowledge when they buy that pass.

So the state police investigated the death. They state that Hunter was not responsible. She will eventually get the report. But she hasn't seen the report, and she was already blaming Hunter. It is understandable that an emotionally involved person would do so, but the rest of us should not.
 



 

billyymc wrote

No, statistically it is not. In 2012, according to NSAA figures, there were 54 ski/snowboard deaths, out of 9.8 million participants, for 5.5 deaths per 1 millions participants. So about 1/2 a death per 100,000.

So I'm not trying to make this a gun post, but in 2013 there were over 11,000 homicides by firearm in the U.S. With a population around 315 million that year that works out to about 3.5 gun homicides per 100,000 people in the U.S.

Yes but how many minutes do those 9.8 million participants spend skiing every year?  Compare that to the total number of minutes a person spends in a place with other people per year.  If you compared skier-deaths/skier-minutes to person-deaths/person-around-other-people-minutes I bet you would come up with a VERY different take-away.

Statistics don't lie, but they can and are frequently used to disinform.  

Doug - you started your Mar 29 post by stating that skiing is a dangerous sport.

I disagreed with that. I think "dangerous" is very subjective. Risk isn't. Risk is best measured by probabilities. Danger is a gut feel thing.

So your opinion may be that skiing is dangerous - whatever that means. My opinion is that it isn't. Those are just opinions.

The available data appears to show that the risk of death in a skiing accident is relatively low.

I'll say it one last time. Statistically three deaths at a ski area the size of Hunter Mt, in one season, is a highly improbably event. Improbable enough given the available safety statistics that they should be evaluated by experts.

IMO the State police aren't qualified to investigate factors that may or may not have contributed to a skiing incident.

If I ran Hunter I'd hire the best experts at evaluating those incidents, and frankly given the chance of lawsuits I'd bet they already have. I never said Hunter did anything wrong in their operations, or there were higher than normal risks present due to the nature or condition of those trails.  I have no qualifications to say anythign like that.

You guys can keep insisting skiing is dangerous. I'm happy in my belief that it isn't. Whatver dangerous means. I do recognize there are risks, and I mitigate them in ways that make sense to me. But might not make sense statistially :)

Did you read my post above about how your numbers are wildly misrepresentative?  

TheGreatAbyss wrote

Did you read my post above about how your numbers are wildly misrepresentative?

I did, and they aren't. But I'm done arguing this. Carry on.

I fully understand what the numbers do and do not say btw.

clearly you don't if you still think your comparison is valid.  

Dougski wrote

We have stumbled into an area that interests me immensely, as I was the Risk Officer (for 10 years) for the organization I worked for in my last job before I retired. I have a Masters in Public Administration and Finance from SU. I worked for the military and civilian government agencies and had lots of fun (seriously) using statistics, operations research, process evaluation and risk management.  

So for argument purposes, lets concede that skiing is statistically safer than kayaking, walking down the street or driving (or lots of other activities). That doesn't make it safe. It can still be an unnecessarily dangerous activity.  

Why: 'cause it can still result in injury or death, especially if not done with proper care. It also can be considered an unnecessarily risky activity, (as was your kayaking ;-). One of the most important parts of evaluating and reducing risk in an organization is evaluating whether taking the risk is desirable or necessary.  So if an activity (skiing) is not necessary (for living for example), one would eliminate it from the organization.

But I am not arguing that one should not ski or Kayak. Obviously. Why? Because I see that there are intrinsic benefits from skiing (at least for me) from being physically active in the winter and skiing keeps me mentally stable in  these fairly long upstate NY winters.

I am arguing that one should recognize that there are risks when one undertakes risky activities, and one should not automatically assume that the ski area operator or the woman who sold you the kayak is responsible because you had an accident and died while using their product. We don't do this for other activities. For example we don't automatically assume that the manufacturer of your car, or the state and company that built the road you drive on, is responsible for you having an accident. And we certainly don't allow drivers to sue to state because the road has potholes and sharp curves. Even if the curve is not well marked.

But for some reason the mother involved in the subject ski death wants to assign blame to Hunter Mountain for operating a ski slope. To me it is self evident that using that ski slope is taking a (possibly unnecessary) risk. One that all skiers acknowledge when they buy that pass.

So the state police investigated the death. They state that Hunter was not responsible. She will eventually get the report. But she hasn't seen the report, and she was already blaming Hunter. It is understandable that an emotionally involved person would do so, but the rest of us should not.

Great post Doug!

TheGreatAbyss wrote

billyymc wrote

No, statistically it is not. In 2012, according to NSAA figures, there were 54 ski/snowboard deaths, out of 9.8 million participants, for 5.5 deaths per 1 millions participants. So about 1/2 a death per 100,000.

So I'm not trying to make this a gun post, but in 2013 there were over 11,000 homicides by firearm in the U.S. With a population around 315 million that year that works out to about 3.5 gun homicides per 100,000 people in the U.S.

Yes but how many minutes do those 9.8 million participants spend skiing every year?  Compare that to the total number of minutes a person spends in a place with other people per year.  If you compared skier-deaths/skier-minutes to person-deaths/person-around-other-people-minutes I bet you would come up with a VERY different take-away.

Statistics don't lie, but they can and are frequently used to disinform.

Ok since you seem to want a response, here it is.

This is one of the dumbest posts about statistics I've ever read on the internet. It shows a complete lack of understanding of statistical design, methodology, and interpretation. So much so that trying to explain to you why it's so stupid would be futile.

You're welcome. billyymc out.

Lies....

Damn Lies...

.....and statistics!