J2Ski Forum Posts and Replies by ise

stevesmoothie wrote:Natasha Richardson's fatal accident was enough for me. What if you had a fall on a rock hard icy patch . . .

Bottom line is snow sports ARE dangerous sports and it seems obvious to wear protection.

Actually here's the bottom line..

if you think snow sports are dangerous then according to the statistics football must be positively suicidal!!

Dr Mike Langran, UK National Secretary for both the International Society for Skiing Safety and SITEMSH (The International Society for Skiing Traumatology and Winter Sports Medicine)

- skiing isn't a dangerous sport, overall injury rates is 0.2-0.4%, football runs around 14% for example

- Natasha Richardson died from bleed caused by a blunt trauma, it's not clear a helmet would help. The actual odds of death from an accident on the slopes is approximately 1 in 1.5 million. Mike Langran has comment on this accident : http://www.ski-injury.com/latest_news/nr there's a lot of other interesting stuff on his site.

We all get something called a cognitive bias, there's many sorts and this is specifically an availability heuristic. That's the perception of the odds of something occurring is based on being able to recall a vivid example of it. Publicized accidents like that tend to push us into that trap.

Some of the other comments from above :

I always wear a helmet, keeps me protected from the nutters out there! It might well do but that's not much use, most accidents involve only one person.
I don't ski steep stuff so I really won't bother that's unfortunate, it's much safer on steep stuff. Most accidents occur at lower speeds on easier runs.
I would guess that the most common ski injury is thumbs and hamstrings and knees .. actually, that's perfectly correct )
I would like to see the statistics of serious head injuries on the slopes before I make any considered judgement try http://www.ski-injury.com but serious head injuries are rare and in many cases a helmet wouldn't help at all.

The problem here is you've got one group of people who are convinced wearing a helmet prevents a likely fatal injury and another group who've correctly assessed that sort of accident is unlikely.

Mike Langran has a balanced view I think if you read his comments about Natasha Richardson.

AllyG wrote:I would think the only case for going by train in this instance, would be if you get really coach sick like I do.

I'm really surprised the train links from Geneva are so bad :shock:. I thought the train system looked really efficient when we were in Geneva on the train a few weeks ago.

Ally

Those trains are going the other way into Switzerland :) It is a breeze, the station's in the airport complex and you don't even go outside, I was on the train with my father last week and he was saying by the time he got to Sierre it was the first time he'd been outdoors since stepping on his plane at East Midlands Airport. It's just what ought to be short trips the other way to somewhere like Anney or Chamonix that are a pain.

msej449 wrote:Guys, c'mon, I was just making an off-the-cuff suggestion! I have done snowtrain from Calais, and flying + taxi, scheduled coach, hired car and train and each has its pros and cons and I'd recommend spending just a bit of time on alternatives. This dislike of public transport is a very British prejudice. It's surely no bad idea to be aware of the options in case their flight is badly delayed?

It might be a British prejudice but it's not one I'm guilty of, that's why I've got a season ticket for Swiss Rail and when I'm working anywhere in the world I use public transport ranging from two day bus rides over the world's highest roads to the disgrace that is the Virgin West Coast line on a recent trip to the UK.

The train link to Chamonix from Geneva airport is appalling, I guess that's why a number of private operators have stepped into the breach and run pretty reasonably priced coach services, a bunch of them were posted earlier.

You'll not get discounts or family tickets on that route though, it's international which is why you'll also find SBB won't sell you a ticket online.

I've never quite understood why the French can't get their act together with transport links for Geneva airport, it really shouldn't take more than an hour and a half on the train for that journey. If I want to go somewhere in the French Alps from here it's a pain on the train, going to Austria is breeze in comparison.

Unless they've updated the website, and the location of Lake Geneva, since I was I was there (about 5 hours ago) then Martgny is still the other end of the lake from Geneva or Chamonix )

I think your geography's a little off there :) Geneva to Chamonix via Martigny is more like 4 or 5 hours at best if the connections line up and more like 8 or 9 hours if the connections don't work. Martigny from GVA is exactly the wrong direction going the long way around Lake Geneva. Rail connection to France from Geneva are atrocious, you can link some buses up and at least travel in a straight line with only three or four changes in 3 or 4 hours.

The transfer companies already suggested will be much quicker.

Pablo Escobar wrote:I don't disagree, I'd just guess that loads of people have RECCOs in their ski boots/jackets/trousers and don't have a clue what they are there for. You are probably right in that there will be very few cases where someone will be saved using RECCO unless something happens with the technology soon. I did read that the RECCO detectors were getting smaller and smaller but remain too big to carry about.

Bear in mind this is the perfect clarity of hindsight ) RECCO has been around for 25 years or so and it's not worked out too well. I thought it sounded a great idea personally, maybe 15 years or so back I'd get new RECCO's if I got new boots and stick them on. Sometime over those years I've learnt a bit more about snow and realized that RECCO hasn't worked too well in practice.

RECCO have a thing called the White Book (http://recco.com/avalanche/safety.asp) which is well worth a look and there's a movie, their advice is pretty clear, if you're away from the piste you're going to need a transceiver. Even then, I'm not very impressed with the state of skiers with transceivers and their use, it's pretty obvious to me that people are spending too much time agonizing over which transceiver to buy and then comparing them to work out who is a couple of seconds quicker finding a buried rucksack and nothing like enough concerned about route selection and understanding the conditions under their feet.

Pablo Escobar wrote:Who knows that if having a RECCO on a jacket will give someone the confidence to get in to dangerous situations, maybe certain types of people but you can't really say for sure.

No, we can say that for certain, it's a hugely well researched area of behavior. We're all guilty of it really.