Preventing Fatal Incidents

Abstract

Apart from deliberate deaths or some deaths associated with transport to or from a program, counterfactual analysis of incidents shows capable individuals responsible for a program could prevent most outdoor education deaths. This chapter summarises what is required of organisations and individuals to take all reasonable fatality prevention measures. Fatality prevention requires knowledge of past fatal incidents, prevention-focussed knowledge of programs, locations, conditions, and activities, and monitoring of precautions. Usually it entails expert supervision of young people in the outdoors. It requires prevention to be an overriding priority, and could incur costs or cause inconvenience. Fatality prevention poses no threat to outdoor education overall, but it could require some programs to be modified or cancelled. This chapter lists seven priorities for fatality prevention in outdoor education, and discusses some limitations to case-based prevention. Fatality prevention is subject to the overall competence of individuals and effectiveness of organisations. It is constrained and enabled by the quality and availability of case reports; the chapter concludes with a discussion of the role of those who work in the outdoor education field in producing and reproducing case-based knowledge. In particular, future fatality prevention must contend with organisational tendencies to suppress information in order to protect reputations.