Hey Brad,
Rick, you do care about blame as much as you do cure...how do you know what to cure without blame?
Maybe it comes down to definitions, I see blame as going after someone or something with an intent to censure ("the rider's an idiot, don't be an idiot" I prefer "look for the following and take these steps to try to avoid it"). You are right, you have to know likely causes to develop a cure, if you are equating blame with cause.
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If you had ever been badly lofted by an excessive gust, we have more here than many other places in this hemisphere, we wouldn't be talking about this.
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My mistake. It's just most of the guys I meet, not all mind you, that have almost been killed or seriously injured requiring rehab/time off the water by these conditions seem to take a real hard look at hazardous weather. It takes on a whole new reality and importance but there are exceptions.
Are you trying to tell me the guys out that day didn't know the dangers? That they didn't know about an approaching storm? Of course they did...thats why they were out!
Yes, in a sense that is what I am saying. Saying a hazard exists is one thing (Storm winds are blowing, we're going), appreciating the nature of the threat and taking reasonable precautions is quite another. Here's an example, a real one. You have a tourist from the other side of the world. He doesn't know about high wind kiting, local conditions, hazards whatever. People warn him for a couple of days, he ignores them. It is blowing like stink, making the hazard apparent even to our tourist. Still, he DOESN'T APPRECIATE the nature or extent of the hazard, he blows it off. That was before he got lofted over a powerline and into the second story of a build then off to the hospital. There is a difference between acknowledging a hazard and appreciating what it can do to you and taking sensible steps to reduce the odds of getting trashed by it. This doesn't necessarily mean not riding for advanced riders but it does mean doing proper risk assessment and monitoring before and throughout the session. Remember a guy was killed just two days before in a seasonal squall not even a significant tropical storm with squalls hammering through all day long.
Look Rick, we both care about everyone's safety...I don't want to see anyone get hurt any more than you do! I just feel the real problem lies deeper within the human nature of risk/reward.
Like a lot of us, I've been doing action sports for a long time. I try to go at these activities in a thoughtful way with reasonable precautions dictated by conditions, training and good judgment. I even succeed at this, sometimes. I think a lot of this comes down to appreciating the hazard and going to the effort to reduce the odds of getting messed up through reasonable precautions. Otherwise it is like taking an ultralight up for a trip to Miami from Islamorada through something like Fay. Could be exciting and memorable but also potentially short.