rhunt wrote:steep4me wrote:My primary emphasis was to address the people who have held onto the cam instead of the brake and allowed climbers to deck this way. I have seen it 4 times and know of countless other instances.
And to this point....why use a GriGri at all. How many times have you seen a climber deck while being belayed with a non-auto-locking belay device? I mean it seems crazy to me that after seeing 4 people dropped because of accidentally holding the cam down that you would continue to use those belay devices. Why? .
I do know stories of people being dropped with an ATC. The one that comes to mind most prominently was an accident at the New a couple of years ago, when a guy decked on Greenpiece, but I think I've heard of a few more second-hand.
Why use auto-locking devices? Because of convenience, of course. And because of the safety, too, when used correctly. When I belay someone who is working a route, I am sure glad that I don't have to hold on for dear life the entire time the climber is hanging. And in case of belayer error, the locking-assist devices have an excellent chance of still wroking and saving the climber's life. You KNOW that an ATC won't lock if the belayer is knocked out, but gri-gri would, almost always.
Isn't time that we as a climbing community just conclude that auto-locking belay devices are not as safe as we thought were....or at the very least not safer than non-auto-locking belay devices.
No. Any belay device is only as safe as the person using it.
I would be curious to see a statistical analysis of accidents where belayer was at fault vs. the number of years of experience that the belayer has. I don't know that there is this information compiled anywhere, but I am pretty sure that you would see the overwhelming majority of accidents involving belayer failure to involve people with less than 1-2 years of experience with whatever belay device they failed on.
