Teaching ski safety-whose job?

Ruapehu Bulletin, Volume 6, Issue 298, 4 August 1989, Page 5

Teaching ski safety-whose job?

Who should be responsible for teaching ski safety - instructors? ski patrol? lifties? the Department of Conservation?

The question of ski safety instruction was the subject of an article in the January issue of an American journal, Ski Area Management. That article suggested skier safety needs to be taught as "etiquette" rather than as safety rules. "Nobody denies that safety ought to be taught, but .everybody wants to pass the buck," states the author of the article, Stu Campbell, referring to the jJnited States experience on the issue. "Part of the problem is in the terminology. 'safety' seems to be imposed upon us from a higher authority. Isn't safety policed?

"Risk management connotes restrictions, rules and regulations and the last thing a guy on vacation wants to hear about is the Skier's Responsibility Code." In the States law suits relating to ski injuries are common and Stu Campbell is predicting ski instructors will be the next target. '"My instructor didn't teach me to be safe,' they will say. 'He didn't assume responsibility for my safety'," Stu suggests as examples. In New Zealand we don't have law suits associated with injury so much because of the Accident Compensation Commission, but does that mean we don't need to worry about teaching safety? Part of the problem, it seems, is the new

way skiers get into the sport. "In the old days new skiers suffered some embarrassment. Strong peer pressure dictated that you be polite and patient in lift lines, that you move quickly away from an unloading area and follow all aspects of the Skier's Responsibility Code, which is little more than common sense." "Yet in the past two decades we've had such a tremendous influx of new skiers that many have fallen through the

traditional educational cracks. The bottom line is that they don't realize they assume the inherent risks of the sport. They don't know enough to be safe because the sport itself has not pressured them into doing so," says Stu Campbell. He says the US court system has encouraged this basic misunderstanding. The option of pushing safety in ski school classes is a turn-off for new skiers, claims Campbell. "Any instructor worth his salt knows that every student in the class will instantly tune out if we take that ap-

proach (the approach he describes as from "school-marms" - 'Okay class, we're going to teach you to be safe, responsible * skiers.')," says Campbell. "And quite frankly business will suffer immensely. "Other sports somehow manage to teach etiquette rather than harping on responsibility or safety. Etiquette is far more subtle and far more effective because it is imposed by one's peers, not by some governing body. "The end should be the same: to make skiing even safer and more fun than it is by shift-

ing the burden of correct conduct back onto the shoulders of the participants. But the means might be changed with the help of ski instructors and other parties. Campbell suggests new skiers be taught that if they deviate from the "norm" they will be embarrassed. He concedes that some will be insensi-

tive and need to be openly criticized or punished for dangerous behaviour, and by that we assume he means taking away lift passes. He suggests an education campaign include printed material and videos with dependable looking peo-

ple saying, for example: "look, to avoid embarrassment, this is how you behave in a lift line. This is how to move smoothly and without embarrassment into the traffic flow on a slope. This is how to avoid an embarrassingly close call with somebody else. Here is how to respect the mountain. This is the best Hvay to enjoy you day."

"Ski instructors will taf course have to bear some of the load, as will patrollers, lift attendants and others. But safety cannot and should not be the main thrust of a ski lesson," says Campbell. "That unfortunately runs counter to saies and general good will. Instead, safety should be communicated as a friendly, secondary aside."

"Nobody denies that safety ought to be taught, but everybody wants to pass the buck."

"The end should be the same: to make skiing even safer and more fun than it is by shifting the burden of correct conduct back onto the shoulders of the participants."