if the coach had suggested it not only would my answer have been "**** no" but I would have probably put in a complaint about their dangerous incompetence
That's a coach and an environment you know.
I went canyoning once in the Pyrenees with a guide and off your territory you put yourself entirely in their hands, for things like jumping down (felt to me) massive waterfalls, being carried underwater by the current through short tunnels. Loads of fun which you'd just not do let alone enjoy if you didn't have full confidence in the guide. And might well die if you just went for it with a guidebook.
It's part of guide's job to inspire confidence in clients and with that comes a lot of responsibility. The ten year sentence I guess might signal that pretty sharply.
That's a coach and an environment you know.
Definitely. I was thinking of Edukator example of being led by a guide. If someone took a bunch of novices, who wouldnt know enough to go "**** no", over horseshoe falls in high water then, to use their phrase, in my opinion its a case of having "deliberately put you at unnecessary risk ".
Whenever I have done coached/guided kayaking at any interesting spot its either a case of the coach of having assessed the conditions/group deciding its just not safe and so portage time or if it is runnable then letting everyone have a look/discussion about trying it.
That weir was very definitely a case of the former and she didnt even manage the latter.
As avalanches have been brought up.... I've been reading with interest and have a couple of thoughts:
(I'm not in anyway shape or form an avalanche professional but I have done all the local training I can do up to the amateur ceiling and I still prefer to ski with guides).
Most North American (I'm in Canada) ski guiding operations will have some sort of run map and traffic light system. Runs are allocated red or green based on hazard level and the terrain (even in high hazard there might be some terrain that is low risk). Colours are agreed at the beginning of the day and it takes a documented observation of the snow pack to change colour. The hazard rating is only part of the discussion. So to bring this back to the incident the combination of river state and a weir have to considered at the same time not in isolation.
Beginner back country skiers shouldn't be taken into more risky terrain irrispective of the hazard (in Canada terrain is classed as simple, challenging or complex).
The group think is very pertinent as well. Ski guides I've used have increasingly ensured there is a "speak up" culture in their group management and talking through the decisions. There's much less of the "I go; you follow" than there used to be. My understanding is that group dynamics are covered more and more in their training.
There’s an ever increasing amount of evidence that group dynamics and creating an environment where every concern is heard is crucial in preventing back country avalanche accidents. If you haven’t read it, the second half of Eric Blehms “ the darkest white” is a fascinating and sad investigation into how group dynamics, staff hierarchy and lack of communication lead to a tragedy.
As someone stated above, trying to pin the blame on the dead colleague - the one who died trying to rescue others - won't have done her any favours in sentencing.
Reading a bit about this case, Lloyd comes across as colossally arrogant and it is not difficult to envisage her putting others in danger by being dismissive and making others feel like legitimate concerns are weakness or lack of courage.
The insurance fraud also hints at someone who is willing to be devious and probably wouldn't feel much shame at trying to get herself out of the shit by blaming someone else.
Ten years sounds a lot at first, but four people died.
The "downside" on Corporate Manslaughter is the company not the individual is convicted and so individuals can avoid direct consequences on them.are you quite sure about that? There's generally no double jeopardy problem when the body corporate is prosecuted for corporate manslaughter and individuals are prosecuted for their personal acts or omissions. I flicked through the act quite quickly now and didn't notice any special provisions on this.
In this case, it obviously would have been futile to prosecute the body corporate when it had no money and no activity (although I have seen a couple of other moronic prosecutions of bodies corporate in similar positions) as well as the individual. But if hypothetically the company had been Tui or something, it would have been a good idea to prosecute them as well as the guide (if there were evidence etc).
Yes, sorry I wasn't meaning to imply that if they pursue the Corporate offence against the corporate body that they couldn't also pursue Gross Negligence Manslaughter against an individual. What I meant was when the prosecutor decides that only the corporate body can be held accountable the "public" feel aggrieved that nobody is personally punished - a £10M fine against a listed company is embarrassing and probably someone gets fired but it doesn't REALLY hurt. The charging advice does highlight that charging both may make the Jury's job harder: https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/corporate-manslaughter but may be appropriate in some circumstances.
The group think.issue has been seen in medical mishap cases as well
Thank you for the detailed replies, Poly.
The equivalent of ankle leashes would be using skis without brakes and using ankle leashes or clipping the skis to the boots - a no-no with high avalanche risk.
Some of the people I've skied with have been receptive to input, others not - group dynamics and personalites.
In terms of checking, there are forums where people post conditions and risks from day to day but in the end it's down to personal judgement, some people are more experieced/competantced/risk averse than others.
The stuff about the clients being beginners, calming anxiety, reassuring - that I've seens lots of, including British guides in the Ardêche in France - qualifications (several rendered invalid by Brexit), masses of experience, you'll be fine with us attitidue. The last thing a guide does is destroy the confidence clients have before they even start. In the mountains I've seen guides coaxing clients up (or rather down) stuff, the challenge is why many people do these things, they want to push themselves and want to be reassured, coaxed and encouraged. They know water is dangerous, they know there's an avalanche risk but they still want to do it. To me it shouldn't be a factor in sentencing. Everbody knows water is dangerous and moving water is more dangerous, it's not just humans, some horses won't go into water.
In terms of the ability of the clients - they got that far, they'd reached the wier without issue. The assessments I've observed are done very quickly - can this skier do a conversion? can this person paddle in a straight line and navigate? In kayaks the kids that aren't very good get put with good kids or in with a guide/teacher. SUP is different - we've never taken kids on moving water, only lakes. When school kids go surfing with a surf school there's very little of that briefing and assessment - a swimming certificate, here's how to do it, here's where and away they go.
The rest of your points are valid
That's in bold because in every post I've recognised the incompetance displayed (and bad faith on questionning). What I do contest is that the clients were somehow unaware of the risks of being on a SUP and being in control of their own destiny in an inherently dangerous environment. They knew it wasn't a passive fairground ride in which you buckle up and have complete faith in the engineers and maintainance crew, they knew they'd have to paddle alone on the water and there was a risk. That's not victim blaming it's saying the court failed to acknowlege that the victims had volutarily entered an environment even a horse knows instinctively is risky and the Whatsapp message say the participants knew was so risky they had to ask.
A guy died in a crane as a result of negligence, human errors and incompetance, a significant fine but no jail sentences.
I've read all the replies and this still feels a disproportionate sentence.
The real question to me is should someone be more actively policing these sort of operations - it seems unlikely to me that she's the only person with a side hustle which is cutting corners?
It does appear there is a lack of validation/continuation training or assessment in some 'instructor' roles. I find this interesting and curious.
What I do contest is that the clients were somehow unaware of the risks of being on a SUP and being in control of their own destiny in an inherently dangerous environment. They knew it wasn't a passive fairground ride in which you buckle up and have complete faith in the engineers and maintainance crew, they knew they'd have to paddle alone on the water and there was a risk. That's not victim blaming it's saying the court failed to acknowlege that the victims had volutarily entered an environment even a horse knows instinctively is risky and the Whatsapp message say the participants knew was so risky they had to ask.
It kind of IS victim-blaming, if you don't mind me saying. I'm not going to rehash the arguments, they're all here.
The only interaction we have on STW is you slagging me off and cristicising what I write, Pondo. I don't know/remember where it came from but it's there. Nothing to say on a thread but slag off Edukator and here we have it again. 🙂 Nothing to say on nay points except one of mine. Toodle pip.
I really can’t believe people are still arguing here about things they have zero knowledge of….well I can obviously as it’s the internet.
It’s very simple.
Please stop calling this moving water etc when it really isn’t. Please stop suggesting that the victims drowned because they didn’t have the requisite skills and an expert SUP group would have ridden the weir with no issues - this is not what happened.
If you are looking for pointless comparisons this was akin to pushing some people off a 100ft cliff during a coasteering trip. Yeah some of them might have lived but it would be mainly down to luck not skill.
The bottom line was that going over that weir and not using the fish Shute or falling off the fish shute was almost certain death. Not for beginners but for anyone - that’s why the instructor died when he dived back in.
A weir in that condition is not a bit hard or even a lot hard - it’s a death lottery with bad odds. If I took some beginners round the Dart Loop that would be moving water. Now normally it’s very easy but when it has a lot of water going over it gets harder - too hard for beginners but not for experts. This is the crucial point - yes you could drown “but it’s unlikely. Even a beginner going round when it’s high probably wouldn’t die unless they were very unlucky though they would swim and possibly break an arm etc whilst in the water. An expert wouldn’t even break a sweat.
If I took a beginner round and it was too high and they drowned it is possible I might go to jail but not probable because it’s generally acknowledged as a safe piece of water, but there is some inherent risk - even at a low volume I broke my nose there in an unlucky headbutt of my paddle shaft as it caught on a rock upside down
Either way there would be those in the paddlesport community that said it was harsh I was being sent down and those that would say I deserved it. However in this situation there is not one instructor I’ve spoken to who has suggested she was treated harshly - not one.
What I do contest is that the clients were somehow unaware of the risks of being on a SUP and being in control of their own destiny in an inherently dangerous environment...That's not victim blaming it's saying the court failed to acknowlege that the victims had volutarily entered an environment even a horse knows instinctively is risky...a disproportionate sentence
The reasonable foreseeablility of the risk, the duty of the offender to adequately manage that risk, and the offender's gross negligence in failing to do so are all inherent to the manslaughter offence. If your opinion is "accepting any level of risk is accepting all levels of risk", then your objection isn't really to the sentence - it's to the fact the offender was convicted in the first place. And most people would find it unjust if a person in this offender's position were not punished for their actions.
https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/gross-negligence-manslaughter
Care to name those with zero knowlege that are not allowed to have an opinion. Please quote people when you disagree with them and debate a bit like this:
Please stop calling this moving water etc when it really isn’t
well it certainly wan't stationary, there wouldn't have been a problem if wasn't moving.
almost certain death
but the instructor did dive in. The person best able to evaluate the risks did dive in. You've done lots of training is your time to get where you are Winton, one of the first things I've been told on courses is not to be a hero and add your name to the list of victims. Dive in as a last resort when there is no other means of rescue and only if you are sure you can perform the rescue without "almost certain death". It strikes me that even the most experienced person there couldn't see how dangerous it was. Yes I have dived in, no I didn't die, and in all honesty the victim would almost certainly have survived without my intervention.
There's a lot of wise after the event in this thread.
well it certainly wan't stationary, there wouldn't have been a problem if wasn't moving.
haha.
The reason is that rivers in the Uk (and most parts of the world) are graded Flat, barely moving then Grade 1 up to 5 which is considered moving water - then ungraded or possibly grade 6 plus which covers all the rest and is either unrunnable or only by a handful of paddlers worldwide.
However almost all weirs even on flat or grade 1 are not classified. This is because they are considered too variable and dangerous or unpredictable. So hence a weir is not ‘moving water’ in the paddlesport world and each one is taken as an individual feature which may like Hurley be a playground or like most as a dangerous man made object to be portaged around. Either way there is no way a genuine instuctor would shoot a weir on any given day unless they had checked it themselves first.
The instructor was the first down. That bit was respected, the problem (if I've correctly understood the sequence of events) was the others hadn't been shepherded to a safe place to wait while the instructor explored and evaluated if it was safe to pass and if so where and with whom on the day. That's where the trouble really started. There are often many factors that contribute to a tragedy and in this case the one thing that wasn't done that critically should have been done was to regroup eveverybody in a safe place while the weir was evaluated. If judged safe for the ability of the participants the instructor would show them how to do it and give them the option of a walk around.
Whilst the seNTencing notes are interesting and indeed a series of omissions and errors, most of it has little or no bearing on the outcome, the critical error was to run the whole group down the weir without regrouping, stopping, evaluating and thinking it through first. A beggars belief error for anyone who's done the sport but 10 years for one error all the same.
I am aware of the grading system, I've never done anything over grade 4 and given the conditions that wasn't particularly hazardous on the day. I posted a Youtube on here some time ago.
For comparison I've read in the Guardian today that a premeditated attack on one of your employees motivated by jealousy, approaching them from behind and beating them about the head with an adjustable spanner, is worth 2 years. And this is only worth 32 months:
The only interaction we have on STW is you slagging me off and cristicising what I write, Pondo. I don't know/remember where it came from but it's there. Nothing to say on a thread but slag off Edukator and here we have it again. 🙂 Nothing to say on nay points except one of mine. Toodle pip.
Apologies - in that case, I agree with you completely. Is that better?
Pretty sure those are not our only interactions but you have my genuine apologies if that's how it feels. Nevertheless, I reserve the right to call out opinions I disagree with - in this case, not only did it feel a bit like victim-blaming, you then explicitly said you weren't victim-blaming. I disagree, sorry.
For comparison I've read in the Guardian today that a premeditated attack on one of….
I guess he must have done a risk assessment. Anyway I’m not going to continue trading random unrelated whatabouts with someone who I don’t know. You do you as they say and the rest of us who are actively involved in this business and for whom any repercussions (good or bad) will have an impact on, we’ll continue doing us - and if any good at all has come out of this it will be that the publicity of the event from the sentence will generate a higher respect from (most!) of the non paddling public for how dangerous a familiar water feature in thier local area can be. I’m also deeply sorry for anyone related to the victims - it must have been a terrible ordeal to have gone through and then had the trial on top several years later. Tragic as the thread title says.
Educator - you seem to be assigning a narrative that you assume must have happened which is at odds with the prosecution case which the defence accepted without challenge.
You seem to be saying “people sign up to do adventurous stuff and sometimes it goes tits up - that’s what it’s adventurous”… as the Judge notes none of them “signed up” at all.
These were inexperienced paddlers expecting a safe and relaxing paddle, they did not even know there was going to be a weir never mind a safe(r) place to pass it.
had it been billed as an adventure paddle for people looking to develop rough water skills, had they been briefed on the weir and it just been executed badly as you suggest I don’t think it would have been anything like a 10yr sentence, it might not even have been prosecuted as manslaughter - and of course if they had been told of the weir and the fish ramp they might all have made it alive albeit terrified.
it would be absolutely incredibly stupid to take a group of inexperienced paddlers down a river in spate towards a weir without briefing them on what to expect or having a process in place to manage the risk of that weir. Even more stupid to do it if you were wearing the wrong sort of leash, some of the paddlers were not in wetsuits and one wasn’t wearing a PFD, and you’ve not actually done any training on paddling on moving water yourself. In fact so stupid she pled guilty to 4 counts of manslaughter. It sounds like her defence team should have called you as an expert witness to explain what the victims would obviously have known and expected, you’d have got her off (except for whatever prosecution evidence including the accounts of survivors - not one of which has said they were expecting adventurous risks)
For comparison I've read in the Guardian today that a premeditated attack on one of your employees motivated by jealousy, approaching them from behind and beating them about the head with an adjustable spanner, is worth 2 years. And this is only worth 32 months:
your guardian article predates the latest sentencing guidelines, presumably the guidelines were created/updated because the feeling was that sentencing was inconsistent. Applying today’s guidelines that cast would be at least as serious as the SUP one. We don’t have all the details we do for that but I think even though it was “only” 1 death it would have probably been a starting point of 12 years!
the attack with the wrench for the love triangle - resulted only in minor injuries.
It does appear there is a lack of validation/continuation training or assessment in some 'instructor' roles. I find this interesting and curious.
As I understand it, whilst she was described as unqualified (for moving water guiding/instruction) there is no actual legal requirement to have any qualifications to be a SUP guide (or instructor). Obviously getting insurance without accreditation might be a problem - but legally whilst I need insurance to employ staff I don’t to take the public paddleboarding - so I think, provided I only take over 18s I could start offering guided sup trips tomorrow with no certification? If I provide the boards I *might* need Local Authority license as a boat rental facility but if it’s being your own board then I’m “in the clear”.
the critical error was to run the whole group down the weir without regrouping, stopping, evaluating and thinking it through first.
no, that was merely a consequence of the real critical error: operating an activity that involved exposing members of the public to material risks without any training or a way to adequately manage risk.
To return briefly to the avalanche analogy the lack of gear would be analogous to heading off piste / out of bounds without any transceivers etc... yes people do it all the time but any guide would surely be doing a beacon check.. (which engenders the discussion about why this is needed). Also most Canadian guides start every trip with an avalanche refresher just to emphasize the risks and do some practice.
If I've understood the narrative right there was no sort of briefing and they all just got on the water. Thereby skipping the whole "you know this might be dangerous" discussion....
As an aside SUPs are equally "scary" in some ways in Canada in that they easily provide access to water and people don't often appreciate how risky they could be. And it's such a new sport training and regulation hasn't really caught up.
As always the Instagram pictures don't paint the whole story. I've seen people a long way from shore with no pfd etc.. and I've fallen from 30C into ice cold glacial water where I'm pretty sure that without my pfd it'd have been touch and go if I'd have survived. Cold water shock has to be experienced to be believed.
To return briefly to the avalanche analogy the lack of gear would be analogous to heading off piste / out of bounds without any transceivers etc..
Surely in this case the avalanche comparison, which imho is quite a poor one anyway, is to actually ski into an avalanche you can see is already taking place without any kit. The evidence quoted here seems to indicate that the extreme danger presented by the weir would have been obvious had any risk assessment process taken place.
Is this the ex-copper who's just got 10 years?
The whole point is that clients hire guides because they lack the skills to fully assess the level of risk involved in an activity, or to put in place proper equipment or procedures to mitigate that risk.
So no, the onus of looking at that river and thinking 'nope' doesn't fall on them, it falls almost entirely on the guide/instructor.
In my area of knowledge (climbing), you wouldn't expect an inexperienced client to be able to tell the difference between a safe low grade climb and a loose, poorly protected higher grade climb from which rescue is almost impossible, and it is the guide/instructor's legal responsibility to make sure they are tied in correctly, and wearing protective equipment such as helmets.
@martinhutch - I think there’s probably three types of “guiding” too:
1. I really want to walk a particular ridge, I know it’s tricky, I contact a guide asking them to take me. Clearly there is know there is some inherent risk. You’d expect the guide to work out if there was a way to tackle the route that suited my skill.
2. I know little but want to do some stuff in the area, so I contact a guide asking about where they could take me. You’d expect the guide to find a route suited to my skills.
3. The guide advertises a specific route (and or dates) and invites people to sign up to join them. They either need to be confident “anyone” can do it or have some sort of “screening” to make sure they aren’t going to have a shit time or be a liability.
This trip seems to have been type 3, but Edukator is talking about client risk awareness like it was type 1.
Using the climbing parallel again, it's the difference between signing up for bit of easy top-roping at a popular single pitch crag - not entirely risk free, but suitable for novices under supervision, and recruiting a guide to take you up a significant Alpine route, with all the objective risks involved and requiring a decent level of proficiency, experience, and fitness. It is up to the guide to screen the client for those skills and not just launch onto the route in bad conditions with someone who hasn't a clue what they're getting themselves into. Basic duty of care stuff to reject a client altogether or downgrade the 'experience' to match their abilities.
Using the climbing parallel again, it's the difference between signing up for bit of easy top-roping at a popular single pitch crag - not entirely risk free
Another parallel would be Crib Goch. Need some checks but you could take most people up it in good conditions . However you definitely need a plan b if that week has turned wintery and its currently howling a gale.
Although even then it doesnt work perfectly since even novices would probably look out of the window and leave the seatbelt on whereas the river and weir werent so obvious.
