"Some time ago, I was interested in a similar question, but not the highest survived fall, it was the LD50 height (height, where about 50% of the climbers die) which I wanted to find out. So I reviewed all the accident information I could get from my local climbing area (Elbsandstein) back to 1883, and compiled it to a graph:
The black part of the bars are the ones who not survived. From this, I would estimate the LD 50 height to about 25m. Although survival rate decreases with increasing height, the dependency is not too strong. Apparently it depends also much on how you fall and what the cratering zone looks like."
- Joerg Brutscher
Source: here
Rockclimbing.com Forum thread: here
Monday, November 26, 2007
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5 comments:
Nice find, but the red could use division into subcolors, e.g. - walked away, limped away, carried away. Of course, I would settle for the f*cked-up-for-life/not-f*cked up-for-life distinction...
Seriously, I think your landing zone is incredibly important for determining outcome, as is helmet usage and fall type (headfirst or not). I assume these are all ground falls?
Not much more data out there unfortunately (at least that I could find).
Reminds me of my looking into motorcycle accidents where there was really only one good study from the 70's...
I would say that there is probably on reporting bias. Some of those black bars should be longer but the potential reporter of the data was dead...
Not sure bout that. Chances are that you are climbing with someone (belayer) who did not die.
These days, almost all accidents are reported, catalogued and analyzed, especially in high-traffic areas. I'm guessing there just aren't that many really long falls...
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