PaulMcD wrote:I appreciate some of the kind words about my post. I do want to comment briefly on Tom183's post that pointed out that we should not blame kiting if a kiter does something stupid like jump a stone jetty as I mentioned in my post. I agree completely.
The issue however, is that when that kiter misses the jump, smashes into the jetty and gets killed, the fatality gets written down as a kiting accident. This sort of makes my point that we can only make every effort to train ourselves not to do stupid things with a kite and to encourage others to do the same. Even so, we will fail some of the time and when we do, inevitably, because of the inherent risk in kiting, there will be injuries and fatalities.
Safety is an issue very much on my mind when I rig and launch my kite. Even so, I have been guilty many times of rushing because I am so stoked by the wind. Or I have stood around on a beach too long on a gusty day chatting with someone or any of a 100 other things. A combination of my diligence, skill and a dose of luck has kept me out of trouble so far but all of us need to fight complacency on safety while not letting fear overwhelm our joy of how much fun kiting can be.
I agree completely. My point was that when we discuss the "inherent risks" of kitesurfing, particularly with outsiders, we should limit ourselves to what the kite/wind/waves can do to us. We should NOT include rider ignorance or complacency as an "inherent" risk - that is something WE bring to the sport.
Equipment failure is an inherent risk, but the numbers are skewed if you include riders who don't inspect their gear or use worn-out stuff.
Changing weather is an inherent risk, but we shouldn't include what happens to riders who didn't bother to check the forecast or kept riding in the face of obvious signs.
Board strikes are an inherent risk, but the totals are way higher if you include guys with bungie leashes in waves with no helmet.
There's always a chance that, no matter how often you check your gear or the weather forecast, you might still get caught. But it's much much MUCH smaller than if you DON'T check.
The "inherent risks" of kiteboarding are the smaller percentage. But look through the accidents and you'll see that the overwhelming majority can be traced to bad decisions on the part of the rider. In the early days, this was unavoidable since every rider was a test monkey, but it is time for the sport to grow up and for riders to stop taking unneccessary risks.
The law of averages always catches up with someone eventually, and the more guys taking unneccessary risks, the more often that will happen.