Complacency

[markra]

Imagine your surprise to find that I have in fact experienced a major accident/injury. It was very early in my career and thankfully its ripple effect brought 2 of the best mentors I have ever had into my life..The universe is weird like that, ain't it...

Do you honestly think that I have lasted this long by being "dangerous", and by putting both myself and those I work with in peril? Fucking please..

Not really sure why I am defending myself to someone who has ZERO comprehension of what my day to day tree-life looks like. Instead, please accept my friendly invitation to come out and spend a day wreaking a big Fir or Red...Earn while you learn... A paid vacation, if you will...An your fucked up assumptions concerning my job sites? Proven 180 degrees wrong.

View attachment 75030

No arguments with your high skill level and your experience and knowledge, what scares me is the attitude.

That you say you wouldn't have lasted this long by being dangerous,(I never said you were being dangerous)

It's the "it won't happen to me attitude, like your immune to anything going wrong" Like you know every possibility that might happen.

What comes across to me is the smugness like you know it all because of your experience and have nothing to learn.

Below is an excerpt from
a copy Accident in North American Climbing 2018 by the American Alpine Club page 43 Analysis of a climbing accident. I quote verbatim
----------------------------------------------
"Beware of complacency. "Niels Tietze was a climber of the "absolute highest caliber. He had spent years of his life rescuing people off the walls of Yosem-
ite. It only takes one bad rappel after thousands of well-executed ones for
something like this to happen. """Stay sharp""". (Source: Yosemite National Park
Climbing Rangers.)
---------------------------------------------
This guy was probably a far more skilful climber than you , it's of course my assumption but anyway he is now dead.

I am sure you know Yosemite, lot's of Big wall and trad climbing. The guy was an expert.

I wouldn't jump out of an aeroplane, climb a wall or even a tree with someone that thinks like this.

Hey when I exit an aeroplane I never assume that I have seen it all, what makes me nervous is anything that can go wrong will at some point. Will I react correctly, will I survive the learning process? Hopefully.

My accident was caused by pretty small lapse of judgement, that people could make and would often get away with .
I didn't.

I am always learning. I am always sharp and ready for problems. I have to be. I can't sit up in a canopy and take my time, the ground is coming and I need to react correctly and quickly.

In just 5 seconds in freefall I fall a 1000 feet, with opening height at 4000, given it takens a few seconds for my parachute to open, I have around 7 seconds to save my life(deal with malfunctions, track, find clear airspace and separation before my reserve is firing, if that gets tangled, or has a problem it's likely over for me.

I am never too experienced or proud to accept criticism from anyone, no matter who they are or how qualified I think they are , or not.

I have taken your criticisms onboard as well.

Some of the stuff I have written has been a bit rushed and maybe not that clear.

But I am calling out the attitude I am detecting from you.

Please do Not take offence as I am not intending to offend you. Sorry about some of the previous comments by the way.

Thanks for the offer but I am in New Zealand.

PS. Nice pic by the way

Also provided a pic of my office

 

[rico]

More silly assumptions and utter nonsense... Were done here for now buddy, but if I in the future need some advice from some dude who fucked up will jumping out of a plane for fun, I'll be sure to hit ya up......

 

[markra]

More silly assumptions and utter nonsense... Were done here for now buddy, but if I in the future need some advice from some dude who fucked up will jumping out of a plane for fun, I'll be sure to hit ya up.....

 

[markra]

your assumption and another insult,

I am the cameraman working in that photo, my job. Another day at my office, it was not always fun. But hey what would I know?

ok all the best meant to say really liked your pic,

 

[markra]

Markra, Don't dissapear, Sky diving is on my bucket list and I'd love to talk to you about it. stick around, the temperature changes. Your input is appreciated as much as everyone else's input.

thanks for that although I don't wanna bore anyone about skydiving, just rock on up to your local dropzone and they will sort you out.

I come to learn about tree climbing, never meant to get involved in such a lengthy discussions, Rico just wound me up with the attitude, which I must admit I got a bit carried away with the posts, I guess talk of complacency is still a sore spot with me.

At the end of the day everyone's got to make their own way and learn their own lessons, it's not for me to judge and I don't pretend to be an authority.

I guess I just am just aware, the more I learn about everything in skydiving, life how little I truly know. I think that is the safest way to be for me.

 

[Redtree]

@Arborspective great to bring awareness to complacency with your post. Great thread. Good references. Long read. I read slowly and attentively, I should climb like that too.
I only saw the word ignore or ignorant 2-3 times. fatigue? was that mentioned. focus? neglect.
Complacency is hard to define and is being perceived in different ways here. In one reply, as incompetence, in another, as ignorance.
My accidents have involved rushing complacency, lack of fear, fatigue, lack of focus and ignorance. Over booked too. I didn't fear or respect my height off the ground, 20-25'. I think complacency has to do with doing things repeatedly and becoming robotic or overly relaxed, tired or fatigued on top of that perhaps. Errors happen when several components come together at the same time.
You don't need fear to be rushed. I was comfortable, fatigued and rushing. Perhaps anxiety driven too, distracting focus by poor scheduling amongst other things in life or lacking in life.

Arborspective put forward a motion that wasn't understood but correct I think. Perhaps regarding differences in genetics. I've worked with a guy who was naturally more scared of heights. This person did not give up. And shouldn't have, just because he was more fearful than others. He gains comfort slowly, without gaining big ego perhaps. Doesn't let his attention down. Doesn't rush.
Some guys are fearless. Perhaps those guys should find a new trade to save them from themselves. But no, they should be shown some videos and told stories and told to read this very thread. They wont, so just read excerpts to them at lunch. Had I died when I fell after twenty years in trees, I'd rather I'd got out of it early. I'm alive, loving being an arborist and a tree guy.
Think of the positive terminology. Gals and Guys, be careful, attentive, focus, comply, take your time, manage your time wisely, eat breakfast, drink water, talk about safety lots.
Be sure, anything over 40-50 feet, you may as well be 1200 feet up. Fall between 20 and 40, and depending, you may wish you were 1200. Not that I felt that way when I came to, wondering if I was going to die or not. Apparently not even close but I felt like it, winded, wondering if I collapsed a lung or had internal bleeding. Anyway I was at least five feet away from that. I think the only thing they found on the x ray was a horseshoe up my ass, and a few cracked ribs.
Otherwise, man I forgot how good and civilized the discussion is here on treebuzz compared to fb and others. Criticism is mostly constructive and of course like good hockey some good players flex muscles and get a bit rowdy.
Now I'm seeing the irony of staying up very late, writing a comment about how tiredness is unsafe.
nighty night. Tall century plus oak tomorrow with safety freshly in mind.

Sent from my SM-G930W8 using Tapatalk

 

[markra]

@Arborspective great to bring awareness to complacency with your post. Great thread. Good references. Long read. I read slowly and attentively, I should climb like that too.
I only saw the word ignore or ignorant 2-3 times. fatigue? was that mentioned. focus? neglect.
Complacency is hard to define and is being perceived in different ways here. In one reply, as incompetence, in another, as ignorance.
My accidents have involved rushing complacency, lack of fear, fatigue, lack of focus and ignorance. Over booked too. I didn't fear or respect my height off the ground, 20-25'. I think complacency has to do with doing things repeatedly and becoming robotic or overly relaxed, tired or fatigued on top of that perhaps. Errors happen when several components come together at the same time.
You don't need fear to be rushed. I was comfortable, fatigued and rushing. Perhaps anxiety driven too, distracting focus by poor scheduling amongst other things in life or lacking in life.

Arborspective put forward a motion that wasn't understood but correct I think. Perhaps regarding differences in genetics. I've worked with a guy who was naturally more scared of heights. This person did not give up. And shouldn't have, just because he was more fearful than others. He gains comfort slowly, without gaining big ego perhaps. Doesn't let his attention down. Doesn't rush.
Some guys are fearless. Perhaps those guys should find a new trade to save them from themselves. But no, they should be shown some videos and told stories and told to read this very thread. They wont, so just read excerpts to them at lunch. Had I died when I fell after twenty years in trees, I'd rather I'd got out of it early. I'm alive, loving being an arborist and a tree guy.
Think of the positive terminology. Gals and Guys, be careful, attentive, focus, comply, take your time, manage your time wisely, eat breakfast, drink water, talk about safety lots.
Be sure, anything over 40-50 feet, you may as well be 1200 feet up. Fall between 20 and 40, and depending, you may wish you were 1200. Not that I felt that way when I came to, wondering if I was going to die or not. Apparently not even close but I felt like it, winded, wondering if I collapsed a lung or had internal bleeding. Anyway I was at least five feet away from that. I think the only thing they found on the x ray was a horseshoe up my ass, and a few cracked ribs.
Otherwise, man I forgot how good and civilized the discussion is here on treebuzz compared to fb and others. Criticism is mostly constructive and of course like good hockey some good players flex muscles and get a bit rowdy.
Now I'm seeing the irony of staying up very late, writing a comment about how tiredness is unsafe.
nighty night. Tall century plus oak tomorrow with safety freshly in mind.

Sent from my SM-G930W8 using Tapatalk

Glad you are ok. Enjoyed reading your post. The comments you made really resonate with me.

especially the comment you made,
"I've worked with a guy who was naturally more scared of heights. This person did not give up. And shouldn't have, just because he was more fearful than others. He gains comfort slowly, without gaining big ego perhaps. Doesn't let his attention down. Doesn't rush."

This guy you mention was just like me early in my Skydiving career, I was scared to the point of terror early on(probably the most nervous jumper in class and was even repeatedly questioned by instructors why I was doing this?), but I was committed to not letting fear rule me. It took me about 200- 300 skydives before my nervousness started to settle down to a more manageable level, slowly but surely I stuck with it and put irrational fears to bed through finding answers to a lot of questions, training, drilling emergency procedures , visualisation, increased knowledge and reflection. I eventually passed many in my class and a 1000 jumps later I was all but Tandem rated and an instructor and a respect jumper before a making a minor mistake coupled with a bit of bad luck.

I have heard the comment made by many in skydiving who are very experienced saying they wish to get back a bit of the fear or respect they had earlier into their jumping career because it's easy when you have done 1000s of jumps or the same task thousands of times, to be fooled into a false sense of security.

The actual risk may not have changed apart from and increased skill level, but only our perception of it.
Skydive number 20000 will kill you just as easy as the first.

The approach I am bringing to my tree climbing are lessons from skydiving, to be very slow, deliberate and cautious, seeking out as much information, points of view from other experienced climbers as I can. And asking lots of "what if" questions.

I am convinced of the importance of keeping a respectful mindset, and as soon as I say to myself, "I got this all worked out" or "I am getting good at this", alarm bells must come on.

Cheers

 

[Lemonjello]

For quite a few years, I conducted all the root cause analyses for accidents in a heavy industrial setting. 1500 employees at 29 locations. The most common factor in my experience was a lack of hazard recognition. People tend to be cognizant of the obvious hazards, but often fail to anticipate all the "what ifs" of what can go wrong. Also, workers seem more likely to be injured performing low attention, high familiarity tasks than when performing high attention (high risk), low familiarity tasks, as the latter tend to prompt a heightened focus on safety considerations. Another common theme is workers taking a risk and having no consequence many times, leading them to minimize their assessment of the risk (which is kind of getting at the complacency issue.) We required all employees/crews to perform a written job safety briefing (JSB) prior to each job, identifying the tasks, hazards and hazard mitigation strategies. Even though a JSB can never really list every possible hazard, industry research shows a significant benefit from performing JSBs (also called JSAs, JHAs, etc.) We had great support for our safety programs from the top down and rewarded safety success.

Quote: “Another common theme is workers taking a risk and having no consequence many times, leading them to minimize their assessment of the risk (which is kind of getting at the complacency issue.)”

Yes! This is something I deal with especially on. Trimming palms that are way too tall, skinny, malformed, wounded, or rotten. I get the “it’s fine I just did that one 6months ago” ... till one day... didn’t actually see climber fall but Palm snapped right at the slight bottleneck and lean. Sickening.

 

[dmonn]

Quote: “Another common theme is workers taking a risk and having no consequence many times, leading them to minimize their assessment of the risk (which is kind of getting at the complacency issue.)”

Yes! This is something I deal with especially on. Trimming palms that are way too tall, skinny, malformed, wounded, or rotten. I get the “it’s fine I just did that one 6months ago” ... till one day... didn’t actually see climber fall but Palm snapped right at the slight bottleneck and lean. Sickening.

OMG. That would be hard to witness. I'm in Wisconsin but just got back from a Florida vacation. I looked at those tall, skinny palms and thought to myself "how can you possibly climb those and feel safe about it?"

 

[rico]

This thread is beginning to remind me of the motivational speaker who lives in a van down by the river-

 

[markra]

This thread is beginning to remind me of the motivational speaker who lives in a van down by the river-

I like it, Thats funny never seen that episode wasn't that way back in 1993, SNL. would like to see more of them.

This thread also reminds me of the movie Jaws, with the all archetypes represented,

----as written in a recent article
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

40 years later, ‘Jaws’ is still teaching us important life lessons​

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"....in his recent essay “Jaws: A Triumph of Cowardice,” critic Tom Shone notes that the original summer blockbuster—the one that ushered in all those mighty, invincible superheroes—was “an exercise in dramatic downsizing, attuned to the lily-livered last-ditch heroism of ordinary men.” Brody, the police chief, is scared of water. Hooper, the ichthyologist, is a rich boy with soft hands.

-Both are mocked by Quint,

"...a "real man" who kills sharks and crushes beer cans.
But Quint’s macho shtick turns him into fish food, while Brody and Hooper paddle off into the sunset.

The message? Being a wuss will save your life, kids.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

40 years later, 'Jaws' is still teaching us important life lessons

Steven Spielberg's mechanical shark told us it's okay to be a wimp.

lasvegasweekly.com

Am happy to take my time, be the wuss any day.

​

 

[Njdelaney]

.

 

[rico]

The message? Being a wuss will save your life, kids.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Am happy to take my time, be the wuss any day.

​

I hate to be the one to point out the obvious, but you are living proof that this is a false premise.

You have admitted multiple times that you were "never comfortable", and were instead operating in a state of fear. How the fuck did you managed to damn near kill yourself? What was it that caused you to take an unnecessary risk, miss a hidden danger, cut a corner, or become complacent? It certainly wasn't comfort, or confidence in your skillset....

Staying safe isn't about a "macho shtick", being "a real man", or being a "wus". Its about always being extremely detail oriented, and slowly/methodically going through all the potential dangers that may arise from any given scenario...Call me fucking crazy, but I would much rather go through that process with a calm, clear, and respectful mind, than with a mind swimming in fear and cortisol.

 

[markra]

Ok Quint Run along now, You don't sound like you are have a calm clear and respectful mind. Go and sip some coolade.

Am bored with you , was learning some useful stuff from others on here. Thread was looking better until you piped back up gain. The guy with all the experience but with nothing positive or useful to offer.

You sure do love your F.. words old timer.

Yep you are the archetype of Quint to the T

 

[markra]

The lesson is not about fear, it's called Humility.

Quint had plenty of skill(like you) but not a lot of Humility.(he thought he had seen it all) Sounds of lot like you my friend, a too high opinion of yourself.

You see I don't, I know I know little and am not scared to admit it.

Even when you think you are a big fish there are always fish way bigger. I am not in claiming that I am the biggest fish.

Like I said , am bored with attitude and the big ego. (and the rude comments)

 

[markra]

One last point you stated a few posts back
" Not really sure why I am defending myself to someone who has ZERO comprehension of what my day to day tree-life looks like. Instead, please accept my friendly invitation to come out and spend a day wreaking a big Fir or Red.."

Then you post a picture, I guess it was to impress me of what kinda of work you do with a pic, I guess it was you up a tree.

Well "touche" my friend you have no concept of the reality that I have been working in either and my photo was posted for a laugh. Try exiting from an aircraft 15000feet 6 times a day sometimes in bad weather 8/8 cloud and over mountains and we'll see how comfortable you are.

AnywayI am not interested in getting into a "pissing competition" with someone I don't know, but I have found it mildly amusing.

How about we just agree to post no more rude comments and you let me learn and and say my piece like everyone else on here, anyway I thought you had moved on to something else. Just let it go bro. and Move on.

 

[Njdelaney]

I deleted my post to be nice but now I wish I wouldn't have. This is not a skydiving forum. Keep talking out both sides of your mouth by saying how humble you are and how you "don't want to bore anyone" with skydiving and then talk about the details in a tough guy way. You're just losing credibility. We get it, you have done scary things lots of times. That doesn't mean you know how everyone should act in every situation that involves being off the ground or any other sort of risk. I think you should be the one to let this go. The members here are forgiving(except Rico hahaha) but only up to a point.

 

[Njdelaney]

Now this is just a movie, not an allegory about toxic masculinity, but this scene flips the whole Jaws angle you're taking. Also, those scaredy cats wouldn't have ever been near the shark if Quint didn't have the nerve to take them out in the deep water.

 

[markra]

I deleted my post to be nice but now I wish I wouldn't have. This is not a skydiving forum. Keep talking out both sides of your mouth by saying how humble you are and how you "don't want to bore anyone" with skydiving and then talk about the details in a tough guy way. You're just losing credibility. We get it, you have done scary things lots of times. That doesn't mean you know how everyone should act in every situation that involves being off the ground or any other sort of risk. I think you should be the one to let this go. The members here are forgiving(except Rico hahaha) but only up to a

 

[markra]

Now this is just a movie, not an allegory about toxic masculinity, but this scene flips the whole Jaws angle you're taking. Also, those scaredy cats wouldn't have ever been near the shark if Quint didn't have the nerve to take them out in the deep water.

Yes I know it is just a movie and It's humorous to see Rico's reaction. He obviously understood the dig, just as I understood his Matt Foley Digg.

However the Humility is what I have been pushing more than fear. Am not scared of a little fear but am vary scared of loosing Humility.