The human factor in alpine skiing and snowboarding accidents

Abstract

Introduction: Hundreds of millions of people practice winter sports worldwide. Alpine skiing and snowboarding are associated with a possible risk of injury. There are at least three important factors that can affect safety in wilderness activities (environmental factors, technical factors and human factors). Awareness of human factors would allow us to reduce the risk in winter sports. Material and method: The objective of this study is to find out, through a self-explanatory cross-sectional personal survey, what and how human factors are involved in alpine skiing and snowboarding accidents. Results: 219 surveys were carried out of a total of 3,911 patients attended at the different health care points. The highest percentage of respondents related their accident to distraction or complacency, both in 72.2% of the respondents. Other factors that were pointed out by more than 50% were; lack of knowledge (60.4%), lack of following the norms (58.5%), fatigue (57.5%), lack of situational awareness (57%) and stress with (53.8% of the respondents). Conclusions: By identifying these most frequent human factors during downhill skiing and snowboarding, actions can be taken to prevent or contain human error.