This $6,000,000 Lawsuit Could be the end for Climbing Gyms
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- Опубліковано 16 чер 2024
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0:00 Auto belay lawsuit
10:51 Failed shooting at climbing festival
14:34 77-Year-old climber
15:03 Canada V16 double downgrade
15:42 Stefano 5.15b kneepad downgrade
Music:
Clouds by Joakim Karud / joakimkarud
#climbing #bouldering #lawsuit #downgrade #climbingstuff - Спорт
You know that lady with the coffee burns had a very legitimate lawsuit, right?
The coffee was served 50 degrees hotter than the legal limit, so she dropped it when holding the cup burned her hand. She had 3rd degree burns and had to have several skin grafts while hospitalized for over a week.
The reason public opinion labels her crazy/entitled is because McDonald's hired a PR company to make her look bad and publicly shame her.
Not just her hand. The coffee got all over her things which caused so much pain she went into shock at the scene.
and more importantly, she sued only for $20k (her medical costs). Instead, the judge decided to award her the equivalent of two days of coffee sales for mcdonalds (which was millions of dollars)
I immediately thought the same thing. It really was a life changing thing for her so it was very justified. But I understand if Climbing stuff didn't know about it cuz it was covered up a lot.
he was just using something as an example, not specifying that specific one or anything. simply saying that some people sue for way too much for things that dont deserve it.
@@LucasJohn0723 he implied that it happens, which it does not. There are far better examples.
I love how you brought up the coffee lawsuit. She was awarded way more than she sued for because Maccas had heaps of complaints against them, and the coffee was so hot in permanently damaged her genitalia. It was life changing for that woman.
And douche-bros out here slagging her off. It's infuriating.
Doctors thought she could die! Greatest PR campaign of the 80's got everyone to say Stella Liebeck was in the wrong
He didn’t mention this, but the gym owner did NOT want to settle because he felt the lawsuit was frivolous. However, since it was the gym’s insurance company that was handling the lawsuit, they decided to settle.
So the gym didn’t want to settle, its insurance company did. The statement released by the injured man’s lawyers was misleading.
Someone recently broke their bone bouldering at my gym. How can autobelay companies keep doing this 😢
Is this sarcasm?
@@duncanfromunderthebridgeDuncan from under the bridge
@@duncanfromunderthebridge yeah, it's gotta be. its also a really funny comment, i love this one 😂
Lmao, I commented before I finished the video. I was like no one could be so dense.
@@NillocFDso you admit that bouldering gyms deliberately omit critical safety systems?
I’m glad to see so many comments about the coffee burn situation. It breaks my heart that McDonald’s had such a successful smear campaign against a woman who got 3rd degree burns from entirely too hot coffee.
I have no idea what happened in the coffe-case but there must be some misunderstanding here. Coffe can not be hotter than a 100°C and that is not hot enough to give third degree burns. If poured on someone they would get second degree burns, which of course is not nice either.
@@JacobLikesMusic 100° is definitely enough to give 3rd degree burns, it'll even be pretty fast. According to a couple of fire department websites I checked it only takes around one second to get a 3rd degree burn in ~70° water.
@@adrian9048 I stand corrected. I did some googling too, and it seems you can get third degree burn from exposure to boiling hot water (and less). Usually if you spill, the exposure is so short that it won't happen. But if there is longer exposure then apparently, yes.
@@JacobLikesMusic
She dropped the coffee in her lap while sat in her car so she was in contact with a pool of the hot liquid for longer than if it had been able to run off of her.
There's a UA-cam video about how mcdonalds had a coffee machine that was brewing 220 degree coffee and knew it. The attorneys for mcds intentionally led the public to believe it wasn't their fault.
I actually was there when a dude in my gym realised at the top (15meters) that he didn't clip in, he basically went up free soloing the route. Lucly I yelled at him to stop, because the last move was a jump. And also luckily, he was climbing in a corner so he could wait safely with good balance that someone climbed up with two systems and helped him clipping in....
Long story short, I'm still traumatised from witnessing this scene, and now I triple check if I'm attached
yea, I have a similar story but the thing is I just heard a scream, I just had the time to turn my head and saw a girl falling like 15 meters. Luckily she didn't die but had serious wounds as she fell on a really thin matress (hopefully not solid ground otherwise whe would be dead). There was a small investigation and all leads to the fact that she simply didn't clip at all....
I expect to still be climbing at 77. I started climbing at 64 and will be 68 this month. I climb 3 days a week.
Cool! I'm 40, started about half year ago. And hope to still be climbing at 77 :) (happy birthday!)
well I started climbing at 9 and I don't know if I will still have fingers at 77 lmao (21 rn)
Insurance actuary here. There is something called social inflation, where claims costs are going up because juries are handing out insane verdicts that don't follow legal rules or common sense. In this guys case, a jury is likely to be sympathetic to him and even without evidence, award him money even exceeding the policy limits. So the insurance will just settle for the policy limit, and move on. Then either they will stop insuring rock climbing gyms, stipulate no auto belays are allowed, or skyrocket insurance premiums. It sucks to see so many small businesses are being killed in insurance premiums because of these crazy jury rulings. Things have gotten way worse since covid. Idk why, I think people just don't care, think insurance money falls from the sky, or just plain hate insurance companies. Either way, these things have massive consequences for the sport and daily life in general.
At our gym they moved to a double carabiner a few years ago. They clip-in in opposite directions. Thought it was dumb at the time but I guess this is why.
Damn. My gym has double carabiners since i was a tennager. About 9 years ago. For me thats just standart. If the Gyms mentioned in the video didn't have double biners(wich is unlikely) that would indeed be pretty stupid by them.
And aren’t the carabiners they use supposed to be triple action carabiners? Like pull down, twist, push
(Doubling up is never really gonna be a bad idea either way though)
I think the most important detail is the waiver. By default, somebody who climbs auto-belay independently has passed orientation and is responsible for ensuring their own safety and checking the gear before climbing.
Waivers contents don't really matter because people in these catastrophic injury cases its always depends on if there was negligence and if there is the waiver doesn't matter. You can look at it like this: If the gym could have done something reasonably easy to prevent the injury like for example a safety briefing on clipping in correctly and did not do that then its negligence and they will get a % of fault.
@@emperorsascharoni9577 So why do they make you sign a waiver? Every climbing gym waiver I've ever signed has said that you assume responsibility for the risk that you might die or become severely injured/disabled. I'm not saying you're wrong, I just want to know why the waiver would even exist because I hate having to sign waivers!
@@_415_
My dad lost a finger years ago at a skatepark in a freak accident.
Basically, during a fall his wedding ring caught on a screw that the skatepark hadn’t drilled in all the way and it wound up de-gloving/breaking off part of his finger.
Was the skatepark negligent in not maintaining their equipment? Big time. That place was a mess and had rusty tetanus metal sticking out all over the place but when he sought legal action against them it didn’t matter because he had signed a waiver stating that it was up to the skater/rider to determine what was and wasn’t safe.
That alone essentially made it airtight and he never got a dime from them.
Their waiver was also WAY less lengthy than the typical ones I’ve had to fill out to climb in gyms.
I feel like they’re pretty strict with that shit for a reason and you’d need a high profile lawyer to get anywhere.
@@_415_It’s not that waivers are irrelevant or useless, it’s just when a case of that magnitude starts getting washed through the legal system (and lawyers) they’re able to start chipping away at discrepancies.
@ It absolves gym from some responsibility but not all. Gym still can not be negligent. For instance, if gym forgets to fasten the holds properly and somebody falls, it is still liable, and you cannot sign this your right off.
In my gym there is a system with the autobelay that doesn't let you climb if you're not properly attached. The autobelay wire is attached to a sort of gate which blocks you from going to the starting holds.You can push the gate away only if you attach the autobelay correctly. It's practically impossible to fail attaching the autobelay.
Additionaly bonus for beginners is that the risk of letting go of the cable and the autobelay pulling the wire up the wall is also eliminated.
I think most gyms should have a system like that.
Should just have it in a contract with a little boulder pad to ask them to jump down from the first hold and maybe like a voice recording so that when try to climb by moving the triangular mat it will say "Step one clip in Step 2 step up and Step 3 jump as high off the first foot hold and land on the mat... If they dont follow the procedure then they get their rights are revoked
My gym has that too
Here in the UK, in a gym I have been, you need to be supervised by an expert even to auto belay. The "expert" can be anyone who passed a test, where you need to demonstrate you can effectively belay. So, a noob can't really climb auto belay, not if not supervised by someone who is more experienced. I think that should be the rule if a system like you have described is not in place.
Jeez guys, you all own a gym, you are like Sharma and Ondra...@@hynesherlihy2145
@@biomorphicdo the "experts" need someone to supervise them too? Cause if not I think most places do that. The people who died or hurt themselves on auto belay most likely are people who were trained in it, they just slipped up unfortunately.
Please look up the McDonald coffee lawsuit before using it as an example of rampant lawsuit. What you parroted is the deformed, PR version from McDonald. The lady had incredibly serious third degree burns on her thighs and genitals from a coffee served KNOWINGLY much, much hotter than regulation. She only wanted to sue to cover her medical expanses and it's actually the judge who awarded her the equivalent of one or two days (can't remember) of coffee sales at McDonald when he learned that the McDonald the lady had gone to knew about the problem and had already received complaints.
Don't fall for McDonald PR and smear campaign
However I agree that this lawsuit is stupid and who knows how it might affect climbing gyms...
Even more than the seriousness of the injuries, what really makes this bad for McDonald's is that they intentionally made the coffee too hot, to force people to wait for it to cool down, in order to discourage free refills. They charged extra for "free refill" coffee but then put hurdles in the way as cost cutting measures, and people were hurt by their greediness.
Maybe it's because I do climbing professionally in Industrial compounds (Factories, Malls, Towers, etc.) that it seems crazy to me, but this shouldn't happen and if it happens YOU are at fault, YOU need to check your gear and if you are not a seasoned climber, you NEED to have a buddy check, there is no excuse for this, the half-clip happens a lot, especially in my job, but there is NO WAY you'd EVER go up anywhere with that, if you can miss that, you shouldn't be doing anything dangerous that needs YOU to make sure you are safe.
Climbing Gear has gotten so good that the possibility of failure without human interference or misuse is nearly 0%.
I am sorry if this is shitty towards the person that fell or their family, but sometimes we need the hard truth, my condolences still go out and I hope the person has made a good recovery!
100%
Exactly!
If you have amateurs using auto belay devices, just change it so that you have carabiners which lock explicitly and maybe use a second like you have to clip in, too. Would reduce chance of failure for non routine climbers by a lot.
Somebody got injured from a fall in Sweden too while "climbing autobelay" about 6 years ago. The difference is that the guy here forgot to clip in altogether. He had headphones on and climbed to the top when he realized he wasn't clipped in then pumped out and fell.
Can't really blame the auto-belay company/gym when you don't clip in or clip in wrong 😭😭😭 doesn't make sense to me
Just moved to Sweden this year and was surprised that I needed a certification to use the auto belay. How long has it been like this?
whether you can or cannpt blame - that's what for courts to decide
Ngl I worked at a rock gym and people actually either forgot to clip in to the auto belays or just straight up thought god had them on top rope 😂
"god had them on top rope" gave me such a good laugh lmfao
The coffee McDonald’s thing was really bad if you look it up
In my old gym, there were two incidents where people were not clipped into the auto belay at all, one fatal. After the first incident, they added the triangles at the bottom and after the second they enlarged them. In my new gym, there has been the same incident recently with someone starting to climb around the corner to avoid the triangle...
By its very nature, auto-belay does not allow any error
You just gave three examples when errors were allowed, what does your last statement mean ?
@@dmitripogosian5084It means that if you mess up, you are going to get hurt. There is nobody to double-check. You have to be aware of that and behave accordingly
In my area all auto-belay devices have 2 carabiners. Also is extremely helpful not to accidentally let lose of the rope. (one carabiner is always attached somewhere)
Right? I thought it would be like that everywhere. Also they are safety carbiners, you would really need to mishandle them for this to happen.
The problem with autobelay is that there may not be a partner-check in place before you go at it. That's more dangerous than having four eyes on the setup which means the gym probably has to post staff there at all time to check if people use it correctly.
this lawsuit is probably gonna fall harder and faster than that dude did. At the gym I go to you are required to sign a waver, and take a tour/safety course before you are allowed on the wall. Also how do you just forget to clip in all the way? I am terrified of top rope (which is why I stick mostly to bouldering) and every time I clip into the auto belay, I triple check that sucker before I so much as put a hand on the wall.
There’s a dude at my gym who forgot to clip in, fell and broke his knees. He still climbs autobelay at the gym pretty much every day lol
i go to vertical world in seattle and they have triple action auto lockers, signs that tell you to clip in at every auto belay station, and a pretty rigorous testing/belay certification system where you have to be very confident about clipping in to be cleared for climbing. i can assure you that it was most likely this guys fault and suing the manufacturer and gym is a bit unfair.
If you think about it, having arms counts as aid.
Whenever I climb an autobelay (and I've done it many times, since I have no friends) I always check that the carabiner is locked, and give it a tug and look at my belay loop to make sure everything is good. It's super quick, and it feels kind of like a nice ritual to get me in the right head space to start climbing (like how a bowler blows into their thumb hole, or a pitcher shuffles their feet on the mound, or a tennis player bounces the ball before serving).
I also like to rotate the webbing around so it has no twists, but I know that doesn't actually matter.
On one occasion I climbed on an autobelay that actually did have a faulty carabiner, when you squeezed the gate open it wouldn't always spring all the way shut. You could still close and lock it manually, so I did so and sent it anyway, but immediately afterward I went and told the front desk about it.
In the end, also a self check is crucial just like a partner check
Yes! Where I climb they also teach you to do a testfall at the beginning of the climb before you climb all the way up when using autobelay, just to make sure everything is in order.
Apparently it happens quite often that there are falls in climbing gyms, in the netherlands there was another death, 11 yr old kid fell to his/her death like 2 dags ago
Maybe climbing gyms should start using clips with a 2-step locking system so it takes a bit more time to clip in, but then you're clipped properly.
@@MarliesReukers have not top-roped before (just bouldering), so i didn't know, but good that they have such measures in place
In the gyms I climb at the autobelays have sensors that will beep loudly if you try to climb without clipping it at all. However, they wouldn't detect the situation where the gate is half open since you'd be putting weight on the belay system. I can imagine that it would be possible to also detect this by running a very low current through the carabiner. If the sensors detect a climber they could also detect the case where there's weight on the belay system but the gate isn't close. How exactly would this work I dunno, I'm not a mechanical/electrical engineer.
Edit: Also, the autobelays all have _two_ biners on them and the orientation explains that you should clip both. I think they're there partly to prevent people letting go of the belaying end and having it shoot up the wall, but it does make this half-clipping scenario a bit less likely. You'd have to half-clip _both_ biners and then have _both_ pop when you let go at the top of the wall or fell.
Someone recently fell on an autobelay in poland as well, there's video of it, he just straight up forgot to clip in. This happens way more often than it should.
1:29 The coffee spill thing you mentioned in passing isn't actually how you think it is. There was a coffeemaker in a chain restaurant that made boiling coffee. As you well know, coffee isn't boiling when you pour it into your cup. The person who spilled on themself actually got second degree burns from it. There was a campaign to make the victim look stupid, and that's what you were parroting.
When I was younger and climbing, one gym had an auto-belay device with an auto-locking carabineer that had chalk in the locking device. The carabineer gate wouldn't rotate and the collar wouldn't slip up without being manually rotated. The problem wasn't the auto-belay, it was the carabineer.
When I clip into the auto belay, I always pull on the autobelay cord to ensure that the gate is closed and pulling into my harness. I also take a look at the top before dropping off.
I just got my dad into rock climbing, he's 66. Also I never encountered any gatekeeping, everyone is so welcoming and helpful.
gatekeeping a sport is dumb, there may be many cases in games etc where lack of gatekeeping ruined the hobby but I can't think of a sport where gatekeeping isn't pointless and unhelpful
I mean regarding the liability of the gym when you improperly clip in, when I started going to a climbing gym near my student room I had to sign a paper that it was my own responsibility if I got hurt because of my incompetence (anything outside of products actually failing). How is this not normal in the US where lawsuits are so common?
Edit: just got to the point where he said that you probably signed a waiver, if so how is it ever possible to sue somebody and is that part of the case not immediately dropped because with that it should be your own responsibility.
Those waivers often due not hold up in court if there is gross negligence found on the part of the party giving that waiver. What this lawsuit will determine is whether there was gross negligence on the gym's part and so the waiver is void. They could also find the climber the liable one.
Waivers don't prevent lawsuits, they can prevent being found liable in lawsuits.
Yeah I think every gym makes you sign a waiver
A waiver is basically a contract. My attorney once told me you pay attorneys a lot of money to write a contract and then you pay them a lot to figure out how to break the contract. Unfortunate.
@ClimbingStuff At 2:50 you talk about having problems getting the carabiner to close, are you clipping to your belay loop, or the attachment points for rope? Because I have a VERY hard time seeing how that could be a issue if you clip it to the belay loop...
I can maybe see it happening if you clip to both of the loops that you use for tying in rope, but that would be both uncomfortable, and as far as I know, not recommended... (If nothing else it causes incorrect loading on the carabiner).
In the Netherlands last week, some kid died because he wasn't strapped in correctly
In my home gym there have actually been two cases of people falling from the top of autobelay walls, both breaking their back but surviving without paralysis
Bro someone died last friday in a climbing gym by falling 11 meters, here in the Netherlands.
That's sad, just looked it up, 11 year old kid
It's really terrible...
I would actually suggest taking this video down for a few days. Your Dutch viewers would really appreciate that.
Do you know what was the cause? Faulty machine or did the lock come undone?
@@B1gLupu this was not on an autobelay, but rather at a kids party where a parent / adult was belaying them under supervision of a staff member. Based on preliminary reporting the gym staff seems not responsible, so my guess is panicking and pulling down on a grigri lever instead of letting go
A climber in my gym broke their ankle while bouldering because the mats didn't cover enough of the concrete ground, but no lawsuit was filed, probably because it would end up taking down the gym and causing him to have no where to climb anymore. The climbers in the gym with the guy who sewed them must hate him.
I climb at another location of the same gym, and I don't have any ill will toward them (I have no idea who it is), as the video mentioned they settled for a reasonable amount considering how inflated our medical system's costs are. Vertical World is also awesome, they not only still have auto belays but have replaced all of them with a new brand.
my gf broke her ankle bouldering over the gap in the matts, it happens. I broke a couple ribs on a top rope route that went way out to the side of the top anchor, it happens. I can't imagine suing someone because I lost a bet on a risk I chose to take.
I ripped a hole in my leg on my motocross bike ……..can I sue the bike company? Or the guy I bought it from? Or the landowner? Or the ground or the sky………???? 🤷🏻♂️🤯🏴
@@williamcapps6120 when i go to a bouldering gym i expect matts to be solid. I don't expect there to be any gaps or whatever and i wont check the matts for gaps and holes before bouldering (since thats part of the job of the gym). I also dont expect biners or anchor to break in climbing-gyms. Ofc still something can go wrong but thats why climbing gyms have insurances. So i think there are valid reasons to sue a climbing-gym when it fails to deliver what was promised.
@@makoko6812but you have eyes don’t you? You can see the gaps, you have to actually walk on the matts for you to get to the climb regardless , you still have to post your landing
I guess that's an upside of the gym situation in germany: There is basically no autobelay anywhere. For the most part it's lead climbing with a select few pre-installed top ropes in some beginner corner of the gym. For both of these things you need a belay partner and since people are supposed to double-check on eachother, it's essentially their own fault if they get injured. Unless something like a bolt breaks, which really never happens.
This also imposes a gym culture where people scald other people for bad belay technique, inattentiveness and stuff like that, which can seem toxic, but on the other hand we are generally pretty safe.
That just sounds german.
Auto belays are great, it allows anyone to climb without needing a partner. I don't always want to belay someone, I just want to train strength and endurance, and auto belays make it MUCH more efficient and I don't have to resort to shit like bouldering. I don't always have 3 or 4 hours to burn trading belays with a partner, but I can get almost the same workout in 1/3 the time on auto belays.
@@ryanpenrod1859 Oh I'm not saying autobalys are bad. I'm just saying they don't really exist in germany, even in big, fancy gyms. We do have a gym with a 100ft lead wall nearby however.
My work hours fluctuate and I live a big distance from my climbing gym, so rarely able to get a climbing partner. For this reason I really miss having autobelays in my gym. I do love bouldering, but really miss the total wiped out pump of doing a hard sport route.
I live in berlin and there are autobelays in gyms here.
Whenever I go on the autobelay, I always climb up a few holds then jump down, just to make sure. Originally it was just because I'm paranoid and don't trust the magnetic device, or that the gym has meticulously checked to make sure it's working. But I see that it can be applicable to this partial clipping thing as well. Maybe they should make that behavior the standard. Similar to the safety check of yanking the rope up from the grigri to make sure the locking mechanism is working.
In a gym i go to in milan they require you to do the fall test at the first clip in the wall before climbing all the way to the top, there is always some gym instructor that keeps the auto belay zone in check
Yes! I always do do a test jump/falll too, in my (dutch) gym we're also taught to do so when using autobelay.
Warming up once and realized halfway up that I hadn’t clipped in the autobelay, Downclimbed on a 4 and since I triple check every time before climbing and usually also jump off on the first bolt when starting climbing to put my mind at ease…
My gym now requested us to sign a liability form, it was a bit random but maybe it was because of this incident (and they only have bouldering)
Nah, that was long before the incident. At least 3 gyms I climb in Haifa are requesting it for a long time.
@@kirsaakov8808 ?? I was talking about my gym, not yours. Mine started requesting us this week
Every gym since the 80s has required this.
@@aspuzling I've never went to a gym and had to sign anything ever up until last week. Maybe in your country you have to (which given the fact that you are specifying a date leads me to believe you are either talking about the US or something) or maybe they just didn't do it here (in any of the gyms)
Seb Bouin in shambles rn after only being known as "guy in kneepads"
i feel that the reason that these auto belay incidents are more common is because of the lack of buddy checks, whit an auto belay there is no one to make sure that you are safely clipped in. Everytime i am being belayd by someone they always do a check on themselves and me
Well it’s fucken common sense to clip in😂 you gotta be ducking stupid to not clip in like wtf
The lack of buddy checks is exactly why my local gym doesn't use them
for me personally i cannot understand how you can not see that you arent clipped in properly since when you learn to climb in germany people cant stress enough that self checking your belay and equipment before starting the climb is very important
Well, it is stressed a lot during the training how to safely drive a car, people still get into accidents
i really disliked you using the spilling coffee on yourself example since you do not know that actual story of the McD incident
The auto belays I know have at least two carabiners, so that at least one is functioning correctly. The gyms I go to even have warning signs to check your carabiners are clipped in properly and in the legal statements you sign that you took a class to the right use of auto belays and clip in correctly.
Idk in my gym( not a big one btw) in the past 3 years we have had like 4ish incodents that i can recall of people just falling 10m not because of autobelay problems but because they straight up forgot to use it, they just started climbing with the autobelayer still clipped to the ground.
Only change that it made is that they prohibited using headphones while use the autobelay so that if you forget it they can shout at you to tell you( even tho they still let you use rhem)
Wow, that’s actually a lot of incidents. How did the people just forget about the autobelayer? I think that in most gyms it’s connected to a large mat that covers the first meter or so of the climb.
There are a couple of different systems you can use to mostly prevent this. I climb at the gym this lawsuit involved, and they now have giant red flags that the belay line is clipping to which prevent you from even reaching the starting holds unless you unclip the flag and clip into the auto belay.
@@avrilyu ikr its absoutelly insine, its quite hard to miss,
This happened in Arkansas to a girl while I was climbing at the gym. She was half clipped and fell about 25 feet after reaching the top of a pillar with autobelays. She thankfully went down feet first and was injured but I don’t think she hit her head. I think she bit through her lip. We actually all heard either the carabiner click, or maybe the carabiner hit the top of the autobelay and hear her hit the ground. It was pretty scary. I don’t think two locking biners was standard protocol then.
*It happened in 2011
I wish I could just assume my own risk and not have to pay for these lawsuits (cause it has to come back to the colustomer). Also, I'm pretty sure auto belays might be the safest form of climbing anyway.
It should be pretty clearly stated that the fact that both companies settled instead of losing is a big factor here. They didn't lose the court case they settled which is much different in means no precedent is set in court because it was not resolved in court
3:36 "both investigation showed they were not clipped into their auto-belays correctly". Where did you get your information from? All the articles and worksafe reports on the Australian incident never discussed the actual cause behind the fall. Could you share a link to your source?
I have multiple stories from my gym, but the main one is some dude forgot to tie in right, and fell the full 35 feet (shortest wall in our gym) and got rly lucky to only break a heel and compress vertebrae.
Happebs here in Europe all the time. People forget to clip in or get distracted and forget to finish their knot and fall...
And what kind of autobelay doesnt have 2 screw-lock biners?!
Also, here ypu have to register in every gym and you also sign a document that you are responsible for your own safety and understand the risks
i saw a guy at my gym falling on autobelay in panick reach for the carabiner and in one motion opened the carabiner and fell to the ground. luckily he wasnt injured but it was 100% his fault for touching he carabiner while clipped on it
Girl in my gym fell from the top of the wall on auto belay just last week, fractured her pelvis in 5 places. Similar situation with the half clipping.
I was climbing this morning at 30 ft. I saw a kid (10-11 y. o.) reaching this height in the route next to me without the auto belay. My heart almost exploded. It took me a couple of seconds to realize that he was lead climbing, but I couldn't see the rope at first. The biggest panic moment in my life.
I forgot to clip into and quto belay once did notice till the top 3 moves from the finish pretty near my limit too, thankfully I was able to down climb the 16m to the ground on the 5.9 beside mine. 😅
I think the whole kneepad/ aid debate is actually just as you said, it's contextual. If the FFA sent a route with a kneepad then great that's the grade. If someone comes along and does it without a kneepad and says it's harder or softer, then great that's the grade when not using a kneepad. If someone sends the route with nothing at all, well that's fucking magical and i'd have more questions for them than what the grade is haha.
I don't think people realize how easy it is to half clip if you're not careful. I was half way up an auto belay once when I realized and decided to climb down.
At my college gym, for years now, staff are required to clip you into the auto belay. If you’re caught clipping in yourself, you could get banned.
Although an annoying policy, it definitely helps them with insurance. Either way, it’s an interesting example of what was discussed during the first section of this video
America
Mine requires them to check everything, def works better with a smaller wall.
bringing up the mcdonalds too hot thing was a pretty big L, that was highly propaganized lawsuit, and mcdonalds was very much in the wrong
Man, all auto belays in Europe I've seen use an auto-locking carabiner. I can't imagine how possibly anyone could half clip that. These should be the standard. On the other hand, I've personally stopped climbers who were not clipped just 2-3 meters above the ground. People get distracted.
damn, I briefly worked a zipline guide and that kind of half clipped sticky carabiner was my nightmare
I have been to that gym in Colorado. They have a really cool set up to train overhang climbing. The auto-belays at that gym are right next to it. That gym seemed to recover from that incident which happened years ago now. The reasonable course of action is to just not offer auto-belays at climbing gyms. There are many that just don't have them.
Multiple people at my gym in the past few years have gotten seriously hurt by not clipping into the auto belays. They were either 50ft walls or 30ft walls the fell from.
The fall story is why even though i check that ive properly clipped in 15 times; my fingers still turn into 10 slimy, little slugs when i get towards the top of a top rope route 😂
Actually abt a month ago one of the guys in my gym didn't clip into the auto bely. It doesn't seem like a manufacturer issue. Love the videos man!
My friends’ and my motto is, we signed a waiver for a reason! Especially when goofing around doing dynos and other things that aren’t intended
I saw a guy not clip into an auto belay and then fall 15 ft when I was in Florida. I literally held the auto belay up to him twice and he juat waved at me. Dont think he spoke english but it was tragic to watch him break his leg.
Another friend also didnt clip in to the auto belay and broke his back when he fell. Hes fine now but its a lot more common than you think. That said, not the fault of the auto belay...
My gym took out their auto belays on the 50ft walls because of this. We only have them on the 25ft walls now. We also installed these GINORMOUS signs you have to unclip the auto belay from before you can clip onto your harness.
funny to think no one has finsihed the video yet
Just moved to NV and the only gym near me has no autobelay because of their “high injury rate”. 🙄
Especially lame since people are hopping off 15ft boulder problems in the same gym
The guy who downgraded lapsus has a name it's Seb Bouin a pretty well known climber
One of the first climbers, if not the first, to climb a 9b I think
I go to the gym at Colorado where the woman died, and they totally rebooted their whole auto belay system. They have special harnesses specifically for those auto belay routes
What kind of harnesses? Or how exactly are they doing it now?
I witnessed the last part of a fall from a guy who wasn't clipped into auto belay in Aus.
Never clipped in and started screaming after he jumped to hit the buzzer 😐
I’ve noticed many places that used to have a climbing wall with autobelays don’t have them anymore. I wonder if it was due to this case or insurance in general. REI, Dicks and a few others. I don’t understand why the liability waiver didn’t protect the gym from a lawsuit.
I'm one of the regulars at said gym and omg!!! So much happens at that gym, It's like not destined for normal things. 3 top junior climbers, old coach scandal, this lawsuit and a kid 3 weeks ago who did the same thing and hit the deck. Our moonboard there is also #8 in terms of points on the world leaderboard. Also there's another frivolous lawsuit in regards to a new landlord trying to steal equipment through proceedings with an unlicensed attorney happening at one of the other local gyms. I think they feel may feel encouraged by the bs decision made here.
If nothing broke as stated and the autobelay and harness functioned as intended then it comes down to user error and the person being irresponsible and not checking their own equipment. I'm sure there were waivers and forms that they signed to be able to climb at the gym, like any other normal gym. You are responsible for checking your own equipment. If you don't clip in properly, that's on you bud.
I always just down climb on Autobelays because my gym is pretty good about putting something below 5.10 on every auto lane. Used to just be to get a better workout, but then about 2 years ago at the end of the pandemic a tether snapped on a guy at the top of the tallest wall. My understanding is that it had been visibly worn for a while, so negligence on the part of the gym, not the manufacturer or climber. Now I see the owner in there every Tuesday clearly inspecting each one himself
I climbed for a few years around 1980. There was quite a bit of discussion as to whether chalk was an aid.
The autobelay accident happend in my gym this year too (in Spain) but in this case the climber forgot to clip it to his harness 🤷♂ The climber is okay, he just broke some bones in his legs, but he obviously didn't sue, since suing for having an accident because you made a mistake is stupid
America lol...
Does he have medical bills ?
@@dmitripogosian5084 No, Spain has Universal Healthcare
Went to a sweet cave this summer during my vacation and while I was flopping around on a 6a, two local climbers came to the cave, one of which was working a wicked 8a+ and I'm a friendly guy, started talking with them, during which the guy told me he broke both his legs the previous year. My mind immediately went to a wicked, epic fall probably on a equally wicked multi-pitch or something and after asking how, he told me he forgot to clip into the auto-belay at his local gym. I don't think accidents are once in a blue moon, deaths are, because gyms are not usually high enough to die. Not every auto-belay accident because most are: "I forgot to clip in and broke my legs" type situation that don't even get reported in the media.
I completely agree with you on the autobelay case. If you don't want to fall, triple check that you're clipped in properly
I'm new to the climbing gym. I signed a waver and took an orientation class. I'm a responsible adult taking on what can be a risky activity so I am therefore responsible for making sure my harness is worn correctly and I'm clipped in to the auto belay correctly. So unless one of the staff members cut my rope when I'm on the wall I don't see how it could be their fault if I fall.
And if they do not maintain the rope and let it frail ?
Can half-clipping even happen if you're using proper, locking carabiner? I've never seen the type without a screw lock or push&turn spring lock. So basically they were using carabiners that are only safe for hanging stuff on... not your self.
Autolockers can sometimes jam in a not-quite-latched position. I see it mostly if I've got it a bit fouled with whatever I'm clipping to, but then it stays stuck when I clear the blockage. Have to twist a bit so the gate and nose can seat together properly.
Well yes and no, to turn the locking dial on a carabiner you need it to be properly closed , so an half-clipping can't happen like that (beside a freak accident inside the dial or the threaded part).
On spring loaded locking carabiner there have been death/injuries thanks to users not checking (visual confirmation or giving it a tug) if the carabiner is properly closed.
The last part of your post is wrong/smug as there are safe ways to use carabiners like that for personal protection
Click bait. In my local gym the carabiner is attached to the autobelay device. It is a tri lock device. It is actually quite difficult to clip to the harness. I guess technically you could clip a carabiner to the harness and then to the carabiner on the Auto Belay but that would be pointless.
I think more could be done in gyms to ensure that nobody gets onto the Autobealy for the first time without proper training and demonstrating correct technique.
Honestly the first time I used the Auto Belay I was kind of nervous so you can be sure I triple checked I was clipped in and actually down climbed part way the first time.
as a climbing instructor sadly we are obligated (at least in our gym) to thoroughly check our climbers about safety maners (not interuppting the workout just checking from about 3-4 meters away if anything is wrong)
the one thing I find wild about the removal of auto belays is that now anyone who wants to do more than bouldering needs a person to belay them in gyms without auto belays and in my opinion for beginners an auto belay is probably way less dangerous for them than lead climbing
The german alpine club has a slogan that is posted all over climbing gyms in germany “Partner-Check sonst Partner weg” - Check each others gear and that you are correctly tied in otherwise this might be your last climb
Thats why we use 2 triple lock carabiners on our Auto-belays. There are still some people who completely forget to clip in at all though.
Love that this video popped up right after I was laying in bed wondering what I would do if someone clipped the auto belay while I was halfway up it....or if the rope somehow fell off on its own after I got to the top.
I'm not kidding I just finished climbing at a gym earlier today and this was going through my head seconds before opening YT lol. The cult of dynos is in my head today.
I always check before I climb and tug on it make sure it's clipped and when I get to the top I check it again or before I'm gonna fall I always look and make sure it's attached cause forces are strange and sometimes they open up your gear
my gym had half clip autobelay fall over the summer, the woman fell from the 7th lead clip and got taken out in an ambulence and then the gym didnt fix the carabiner that always half clips
The problem I have with “this is the hardest bolder in x country!!” Is that in every country ever there’s “boulders” that just can’t be climbed. Like “behold my flat featureless 40ft wall. It’s V23.”
Like half a year ago a guy fell at my gym after forgetting to clip into the auto belay. I’m sad I wasn’t there that day to see it. Apparently it was bloody
holy shit. the first accident happend to me almost.
i was new after 2 times the gym guy said he didnt need to check it. i dont know what happend but my friend was halfway up and i saw the carabiner being open. legit gave me an heart attack. yelled at my friend to grab the wall so i could fix it.
afterwords friend askd me what happend but it was to hard do explain without knowing the names of the materials
Here in Germany we‘d probably just be like „ohh no unfortunate, but you shoulda checked your carabiner mate“
I now only boulder, but when I used to do top rope with a friend and belayed for each other, we had instances where we would run half way across the gym to pull on the rope of someone who got distracted and weren't pulling it through. People do dumb shit, they aren't careful. Thats on them. I think this is why they have us sign a waver that basically says "if I do dumb shit, its not the gyms fault."
And this is why I prefer top rope! But i'll still use the auto belays.. two person safety checks seem lame until you hear about stories like this.
If you climb long enough, partner checks eventually catch a screwup. After that, they never seem lame.
They will just have to put up security cameras that show whether someone was clipped in properly - or only thinks so because they hit their head on the way down.
Love the news content, keep it up big man 😃