Guilty, a well-known Dutch rigger, has instigated a very interesting survey on rope related incidents. I have yet to digest it fully so I can’t really comment on the conclusions, e.g. his apparent debunking of the claim that lighter is safer for suspension. Having made some study of quantitative methods as a social sciences student, I’m aware a correlation is not the same as causation and other traps for the unwary. There may be many factors at play. For example, lightweight rope bottoms might engage in more extreme suspensions that carry a higher risk. It is also likely that heavier ones are suspended with more wraps and loadbearing lines thus distributing the pressure that could cause injury. These things are rarely straightforward. Hopefully, some useful conclusions can be drawn or, at the very least, it will provide a starting point and highlight some important issues.
One apparent anomaly has been that bottoms who have been to bottoming classes tend to have more incidents. I think it would be wrong to take this on face value, however. There are clearly other factors at play so I have decided to dig a little deeper with my own survey focussed specifically on rope bottom education. Please circulate and complete this very short questionnaire if you feel it is relevant to you.
You can see what he says here:
“I just uploaded the first part of the analysis of the Rope Bondage Incidents Survey 2014. It contains the first three chapters in a preliminary draft version. The chapters included are:
•Chapter 01: Introduction
•Chapter 02: About the survey population
•Chapter 03: Rope bondage incidents and their social impact
Two interesting highlights:
The weight myth
Being extremely light does not increase bottoms safety. For both suspension and non-suspension bottoms the lowest overall incidents rate is in the area of normal to curvy (60 to 100kg range). Further analysis by accident type might shed additional light on this finding,
The education myth
There is no significant overall relation between bondage education and incidents rates. By education source and contents there are both slightly positive and negative effects. Partly this could be caused by educated people being more prone to more inherently dangerous types of bondage, but as riggers into suspension without suspension workshops have a lower incident rate than those with, we might need to rethink our curriculum. Here too further analysis might shed more light on this finding.
Enjoy.
Download PDF (36 pages) from: ropebondageincidentssurvey.org“
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