Snowsport Instructors: Their Actual Maximum Speeds, Their Estimation of Maximum Speed and Speed in Slow Zones, and Their Knowledge of Helmet Effectiveness

Abstract

Snowsport safety strategies include resort and equipment design, trail management, emergency response, and public education. Snowsport instructors are well placed to inform their students about snowsport safety both in the behavior they model and the information they provide. To contribute to the evidence-base of snowsport safety and helmet awareness, this research explores the actual and estimated maximal speeds of ski and snowboard instructors across a normal work-day as well as their knowledge of helmet effectiveness. During winter 2012/13, a convenience sample of 109 instructors was recruited across six resorts in Western Canada and were issued with iPhone 3 s loaded with the Ski Tracks app. An anonymous questionnaire investigated their prior snowsport experiences, their knowledge of snowsport safety, and their understanding of helmet effectiveness. Results indicated that snowsport instructors: (1) underestimated their maximal speeds by 12 km/h on average; (2) overestimated the overall snowsport injury rate as well as the proportion of head injuries; and (3) overestimated the effectiveness of helmets. Based upon these results, if snowsport instructors are to contribute to the knowledge and understanding of the snowsport safety of their students then their own knowledge needs to be developed with regard to helmet effectiveness.

Managing risk in ski resorts: Environmental factors affecting actual and estimated speed on signposted groomed slopes in a cohort of adult recreational alpine skiers

“…should take the necessary steps to make skiers aware of how speed increases the chances of suffering severer accidents and of the advantages of speed self-awareness, and to train them in speed estimation, which, in the words of Ruedl et al [ 16 , p.122] “could easily be integrated into ski education courses”. Besides, new GPS-based devices, such as smartwatches, navigators or googles, can help skiers to improve their ability to estimate speed and, in general, their understanding of their own behaviour [ 28 , 36 ].…”

Injury prevention: Individual factors affecting adult recreational snowboarders’ actual and estimated speeds on regular slopes

“…For this purpose, the study benefited from using GPS-based technology, which has been showed to be adequate for snow-sports speed measurements [26,27]. It consisted of a smartphone new GPS-based application that provided advantages in terms of flexibility, affordability, and simplicity of operation or public accessibility compared to the radar guns that were previously used for measuring on-slope speed [25]. In general terms, the main results of this research were that all the individual factors under study seem to affect the actual speed of recreational adult snowboarders, and that snowboarding actual speed, gender, skill level and age seem to affect snowboarders' ability to estimate their actual maximum speeds, whereas risk-taking behaviour does not.…”

“…Speed measurements were gathered in different environmental conditions and at different times by a team of experienced snowboard instructors in their normal day's instructional activity [25]. Each was furnished with a smartphone preloaded with a recent (December, 2019) version of a GPS-based snow-sports application for Android (Ski Tracks 1.3.17; Core Coders Ltd.), previously and satisfactorily used in snow sports speed measurements and which, among other variables (altitude, number of runs, slope inclination, route followed, etc.…”

“…Each was furnished with a smartphone preloaded with a recent (December, 2019) version of a GPS-based snow-sports application for Android (Ski Tracks 1.3.17; Core Coders Ltd.), previously and satisfactorily used in snow sports speed measurements and which, among other variables (altitude, number of runs, slope inclination, route followed, etc. ), could record maximum actual speeds [25]. We had its precision previously validated by comparing Ski Tracks' results with photocells measurements on a closed racing stadium; the results proved negligible mean time differences with no systematic bias [26].…”

“…The Pearson correlation coefficient and the intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC) were used to investigate the relationship between actual maximum speed and estimated speed for all participants [3,15,18,19,25]. Multiple linear regression analysis was used to estimate the effect of individual characteristics on both the snowboarders' actual maximum speed and their EE.…”