Danger and risk are not synonymous. Danger is something that may cause an unpleasant effect of our own or another person’s unfortunate action, a particular situation or object. It is an inherent aspect of skiing motion that exposes us to a potential accident. A risk is the level of threat displayed by something that may cause consequences. The lack of or low-risk perception is a common cause of skiing accidents.
Teens and young adults seem not to have the perception of risks and this is because, according to Sowell et al. (1999), in brain development, the frontal lobes are the last areas to mature, affecting the control of risk impulses and behaviors as well as planning, advanced reasoning, strategic thinking, and creative problem solving.
In skiing, for our own safety and for the safety of others, we must identify the potentially dangerous situation as also should know our own capacity for dealing with them, and the best way of doing it is by anticipating them. Hazard anticipation includes knowing to recognize risky situations and imagine if its development becomes possible threats. If we know how to establish the actions to be performed, our risk sense decreases and stays within a safety zone.
One reason the beginner skier does not foresee a potential risk is that he did not learn yet how to visually anticipate his future trajectory, then he may not know what to expect. Perceiving danger generates an emotional feeling motivating us to find a solution and the process to achieve this starts with the detection of potential hazards, evaluate them, select the appropriate actions, and finally, know how to execute them.
Danger can be classified as the following:
- Predictable dangers are observable potential hazards as for example, beginners taking too long to stop because of inadequate skis controlling, trail junctions, congested areas, closed forests, reckless skiers, avalanche exposed slopes, or icy mogul fields.
- Unpredictable dangers may include experienced skiers failing to stop and venturing into other persons’ way, a ski that suddenly comes off, ice patches, or rocks covered by a thin layer of snow producing the ski to stop abruptly.
Distractions are considered as not perceived risks
Skiing is an activity requiring constantly perceiving changing environmental events and we suffer the consequences of our distractions. It is considered as when something or someone attracts our attention deviating it from our motion activity. Distractions are considered as not perceived risk factors because it is generally believed they appear sporadically so we frequently underestimate them. When a distraction is produced, it increases the potential danger response time delaying our stopping reaction.
Distractions types could be the following:
- Visual distraction, in which we direct our gaze towards a distractor during more than appropriate time.
- Auditory distraction occurs when, for example, we listen to music since it generates an additional cognitive load and a decrease in attention dedicated to skiing motion.
- Cognitive distraction is thinking about things not related to current actions performance.
- Technical distraction could be an imbalance or an execution error that momentary or extensively takes our attention.
There are also internal and external distraction factors. Internal factors are understood as our own and external factors are when distractions are caused by outer reasons.
- On internal factors we tend to pay attention repeatedly towards what we are experiencing rather than concentrating on our motion behavior. Situations in which we are distracted may be focusing a second activity (listening to music, self-filming), assessing how we are feeling at a particular moment (altered emotional state, sick, tired, sore, dizzy, etc.), general cognitive tasks (thinking something else), technical tasks (correct an error, improve technique), and inattentional blindness or ‘seeing without looking’.
- External factors distracting us may be other people’s motion, someone gesticulating, skiing in groups, slope signage, an accident scene, someone falling, observing a snowmobile, or a ski patrol carrying somebody hurt.
Subjective factors influencing the perception of danger
Perceiving danger is to subjectively recognize potentially hazardous situations. While skiing experience is important when it comes to perceiving these conditions, it may occur that reckless skiers do not perceive them because of their own careless skiing style. Presuming that his technical level allows managing danger situations will not consent him to perceive these situations as such. In this case, he may not see the need for skiing with more care or paying attention to hazard signage because he believes is meant to less skillful skiers.
Another observable behavior on the slopes is the subjective risk level in which some skiers have a constant perception of losing control. It is noted that skis’ controlling capacity has a direct relationship with subjective risk perception. A skier stopping on the side of a slope could be unnoticed by others, but doing it in the middle of a congested slope will be perceived as a potential danger. In these cases, it is commonly observed a phenomenon called attention capture that is present when, in a potentially threatening situation, we fixate our gaze to the endangering person u obstacle instead of orienting it towards the adjacent space to avoid it.
In congested slopes, risk perception can be given in relation to the safe space we perceive around us, the capacity of avoiding other people’s maneuvers, or our own braking skill. The ability to anticipate the maneuvers of others is gained from experience. The expert skier looks further than the beginner, increasing the ability to identify more distant hazards.
Risk perception in skiing generates opposite feelings of attraction and rejection. We would tend to ski in a conservative way to avoid the frightening feeling associated with risk perception. It may also occur that we adjust our skiing to keep risk perception level constant. Related to this, there are two types of skiers: those who seek risk and those who avoid it. The skier considered an expert tends to take more risk. According to Björk (2007) in risk perception, we build our own skiing reality and evaluate risk according to our perception. If noticing there is no risk, we may look for signals to confirm it.
Slovic & Peters (2006) suggest that people perceive risk in two ways: risk as sensation and risk as analysis. The first refers to our intuitive reaction to danger. In the second, risk is processed through logic and reason. We try to repeat pleasurable sensations while sliding, which may lead to risk underestimation and not seeing or wanting to see signs of danger (Björk, 2007). While skiing in poor visibility, we have the propensity to ignore or underestimate danger since it is not easily observable.
