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Heuristic Traps in Recreational Avalanche Accidents: Evidence and Implications by Ian Mccammon

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Heuristic Traps in Recreational Avalanche Accidents: Evidence and Implications by Ian Mccammon Avalanche News, No. 68, Spring 2004 Heuristic Traps in Recreational Avalanche Accidents: Evidence and Implications by Ian McCammon Authors note: This article extends the findings I presented at the 2002 ISSW in Penticton, BC. A full version of the article, including a description of the statistical methods used, appeared in the Avalanche Review (Vol. 22, nos. 2 & 3). You can download the two-part article at www.snowpit.com. highmark a slope they believe is safe. And then they Several years ago, my buddy Steve died in an trigger an avalanche that buries one or more of them. avalanche. It was a stormy day and the avalanche In hindsight, the danger was often obvious before danger was high, but Steve and his partners felt that by these accidents happened, and so people struggle to choosing a familiar route and carefully managing their explain how intelligent people with avalanche training exposure, they could stay out of trouble. After all, they could have seen the hazard, looked straight at it, and were experienced backcountry skiers with avalanche behaved as if it wasn’t there. training. Steve, the most skilled of the group, had just visited the area less than a week before. Heuristic traps in avalanche accidents Two hours into their tour, they met another party of skiers headed for the same pass and the low-angle So how do people come to believe that a slope is safe, slopes on the far side. They briefly discussed the even when they are faced with likely evidence that it avalanche conditions, and agreed that prudent route isn’t? One possible explanation is that people are misled by unconscious heuristics, or rules of thumb, selection was the key to safety that day. But ten 1 minutes later, as Steve’s group broke trail across a that guide most of our decisions in everyday life. shallow, treed slope, they triggered an avalanche that Such heuristics work well for dealing with routine swept down on them from above. The avalanche risks such as driving, using crosswalks, or avoiding caught all three skiers, seriously injuring one man and social embarrassment. But as we’ll see, avalanches completely burying Steve. The other party witnessed present a unique hazard that renders some of our the accident and came to the rescue, but by the time heuristics irrelevant, and in some cases dangerously they dug Steve out, he was dead. misleading. When a rule of thumb gives us a grossly inaccurate perception of a hazard, we fall into what is In the aftermath of the accident, some people felt that known as a heuristic trap. Steve died because he took foolish risks that day. Traveling in avalanche terrain during high hazard, they Six heuristics in particular are recognized as being said, was reckless. They believed Steve’s group had widely used in our daily decisions: familiarity, consistency, acceptance, the expert halo, social ignored obvious signs of danger, and that they were 2 tempting fate by crossing under an avalanche path in facilitation and scarcity. Because these heuristics such conditions. The explanation sounded reasonable. work so well and because we’ve used them for much of our lives, we are largely unaware of using them, But it didn’t match what I knew about Steve. Weeks even when we are making critical decisions. Such earlier, I had shared a lift ride with him at a local ski conditions are fertile ground for heuristic traps. hill, and we had reminisced about our climbing adventures years before. We laughed about how Steve To study the possible influence of these six heuristic used to love leading thin, difficult routes, often high traps in avalanche accidents, I reviewed 715 above his protection. But things were different now, he recreational accidents that took place in the United said. He told me about his wife and his beautiful four- States between 1972 and 2003. Data for the study year-old daughter, and how his days of being reckless came from records maintained by the Colorado were over, and how the time for raising his family had Avalanche Information Center, published accounts in begun. He still loved to ski and climb, he said, but now the Snowy Torrents (Williams and Armstrong, 1984; it was more about enjoying the outdoors and coming Logan and Atkins, 1996), the Westwide Avalanche home afterwards than about taking risks. When he Network, the Cyberspace Snow and Avalanche Center, died, it was on a popular route in familiar terrain, on a avalanche forecast center annual reports, and various slope traversed by dozens of people every season, in a Internet and newspaper resources. place that he believed was safe. We will see that there is good evidence that many As sad as this accident was, the real tragedy is that avalanche victims fell prey to one or more heuristic similar stories unfold in accident after accident, year traps. But because this study is based on accident data, after year. An experienced party, often with avalanche it can only demonstrate correlations between victims’ training, makes a crucial decision to descend, cross, or behavior and the presence of heuristic trap cues. 1 Without doing controlled experiments on people’s finding is consistent with the frequently-made behavior in avalanche terrain (which would be observation that most avalanche victims appear to problematic, to say the least), it is not possible to have ignored obvious signs of instability (Fesler, 1980; conclusively establish causation of accidents by Smutek, 1980; Jamieson and Geldsetzer, 1996; Atkins, heuristics traps. Thus, the conclusions of this study 2000; Tremper, 2001). Importantly, there were no should be viewed as preliminary – other causative cases in the data set where all of the hazard indicators factors may be at work. Nevertheless, we will see that were known to be absent. experimental results from other fields of human behavior support many of the findings. Evaluating decisions by avalanche victims If avalanche victims were in fact influenced by heuristic traps, we would expect to see the evidence in their decisions. Specifically, when trap cues were present immediately prior to the accident, susceptible victims would be less objective about the avalanche hazard and would tend to expose themselves to more hazard than they would when the trap cues were absent. In other words, in accidents where victims fell prey to heuristic traps, the presence of heuristic trap cues would correlate with greater exposure to Figure 1. Exposure score frequencies for all accidents avalanche hazard. in this study, including those where little information To approximate the objective hazard faced by each was available (N = 715). party prior to the accident, I computed an exposure score that was a linear combination of seven easily The blatancy of the hazard in avalanche accidents recognized indicators of avalanche hazard (Table 1). would be understandable if most victims had little To minimize reporting biases, I chose indicators that understanding of avalanches. Unfortunately, this does would have been readily apparent not only to the not seem to be the case. When accidents parties are victims, but also to any witnesses, rescue parties or categorized by the training level of the most skilled investigators. person in the party (Table 2), we find that almost half of the parties contained at least one person (often the The distribution of exposure scores shows that most leader) who had formal avalanche training and knew victims proceeded into the avalanche path in the face not only how to recognize the hazard, but also how to of ample evidence of danger (Figure 1). Almost three- avoid or mitigate it. Almost two thirds of the parties quarters of all accidents occurred when there were were aware of the avalanche hazard, and still three or more obvious indicators of the hazard. This proceeded into the path anyway. Even more telling is the fact that exposure scores did not significantly 3 Indicator Description Frequency decrease with training. Thus, all four levels of training appeared potentially susceptible to heuristic traps. Obvious path Distinct start zone, path, 82% runout, trim lines or a known avalanche path. Mean Recent loading Loading by snowfall > 15 cm 66% Training Description Freq. age and/or wind in the last 48 hours. None No training; displayed no 34% 24.3 awareness of the avalanche Terrain trap Obvious terrain features such 58% hazard. as cliffs, gullies or dense trees that increased the severity of Aware General awareness of the 24% 30.1 the slide. avalanche hazard; took no precautions prior to the Posted hazard Considerable, high or extreme 55% accident. hazard posted for the region. Basic Formal avalanche training; 28% 30.9 Recent In the immediate area, within 35% consciously took group avalanches the last 48 hours. management precautions prior Thaw instability Above-freezing air 20% to the accident. temperatures or rain at the time Adv. Extensive formal training; 15% 33.5 of the incident. displayed ongoing avalanche Instability signs Collapsing, cracking, hollow 17% and terrain awareness and risk sounds or low stability test management. Performed scores noted by the victims or meaningful snow stability tests. the rescue party. Table 2. Training categories used in this study. Frequency Table 1. Hazard indicators used in this study. denotes the percentage of accidents where training was Frequency column denotes the percentage of all known or could be reliably inferred (N = 484). accidents where the indicator was present (N=715). 2 A number of investigators have suggested that party size may have played a role in decisions leading up to avalanche accidents. A “risky shift,” or the tendency of larger groups to take more risk, has been discussed frequently in the literature. As shown in Figure 2, there is a significant variation in exposure score by party size.
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