He Was an Expert Kayaker: How Reporters Get Paddling Fatalities Wrong

As we move out of winter and into the early paddling season, we’re bound to see reports of deaths of paddlers due to cold water and not wearing life vests. This happens every year. Journalists will often write, “He was an strong, experienced paddler by all accounts,” but if they researched their actual experience they would often find that they weren’t. Instead they would find that they were considered to be experienced by their friends and family, but by any objective measurement they wouldn’t be consider that.

This is a common mistake that journalists make when reporting on paddle sports tragedies. It wouldn’t be a problem, except that it builds a perception that even experienced kayaks die while paddling. This is true, but in most incidents it’s likely not going to be an experienced paddler. Paddlers’ inexperience is one of the top five contributing factors to paddle sports fatalities. There are likely lessons to be learned by inexperienced paddlers who may be making the same mistakes and see themselves in those who lost their lives if they were portrayed correctly by the media.

An example of portraying an incident correctly might look something like this:

That should be a template for these types of articles, because it’s almost always how these incidents happen. The water was cold. The paddler thought he was experienced. The canoe flipped. The paddler wasn’t wearing a life vest. He drown. EVERY. SINGLE. YEAR. And it’s usually a male paddler.

I know it isn’t polite to say this, but most of the people involved in paddling accidents are not the “strong, experienced paddlers” that they get reported to be. While sometimes that’s the case, in most accidents it isn’t. They thought they were. Their friends and family thought they were, but by any objective measure they weren’t.

BECAUSE an experienced paddler with the the knowledge, skills, and training to be able to safely paddle on cold water knows that you dress for immersion AND you wear your life vest. Wearing your life vest is the single most important factor in determining whether or not you live in a cold weather incident.

Seriously, if they weren’t wearing a life vest in those situations, then they weren’t experienced enough to be in those situations, which means that they lacked the experience, and they weren’t experienced even though their family and friends made the claim.

Journalists, don’t trust what they tell you; trust what they show you. Show us their actual training, their actual experience, what they were wearing or not, and don’t just say that they were “experienced.” They likely weren’t. Show us why or why not. Provide us the facts, and not someone’s subjective opinion that they were “experienced.”

Most of the time when paddlers read these stories, we want to know more. So, we research it. We eventually find out that the recreational kayak they were paddling wasn’t designed for the conditions or that they had no clue about cold water or a life vest. In most of these situations, if the person was still alive and you took them out paddling with actual experienced paddlers who have training, seat time, and knowledge, there’s not a single experienced guide, canoeist, or sea kayaker who would look at the victim’s experience, his skills, his training, his knowledge and say, “He was experienced.”

Experienced paddlers wouldn’t make the bad decision of not dressing for immersion, especially in those conditions. Experienced paddlers can see what they were going to experience from shore, and they know the weather reports. They know when not to go. What paddlers wear on cold water is a major indication of their experience level. Experienced sea kayakers dress for immersion. Inexperienced ones don’t. Experienced paddlers wear a life vest. Inexperienced ones don’t. IMHO, the reason the victims died in these incidents, taking into account contributing factors, is likely because they were inexperienced. Everything usually indicates that.

But for some reason, journalists claim that they were “experienced” paddlers.

Maybe you could call them “avid” but “experienced” implies that they knew what they were doing. They may have thought they did, but they didn’t. They were likely suffering from Dunning-Kruger, which is something that we experience a lot in instruction. When suffering from Dunning-Kruger, people believe they are more highly skilled than they really are. You can break people out of Dunning-Kruger by teaching them. And when trained, they eventually realize how unskilled they really were.

Many victims of the paddling accidents get reported as “experienced” kayakers, but they are in reality people over estimating their skills. Their friends and families also overestimate the skills the victims had. The paddlers experience Dunning-Kruger. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. It happens, and experienced paddlers are aware of this. Inexperienced ones aren’t.

I think the best term is “avid” if they kayaked often. For experienced, there needs to be evidence that they were actually experienced. The reader should know what type of training they had. What kind of conditions did they usually train in or paddle in. Did they take into account the weather or water contains. We need that evidence. The public needs that evidence. Other inexperienced paddlers need that evidence. We need to be able to relate to the person who died. Once we can relate to them, we can start to learn a lesson about why they died. That lesson is often the lack of a life vest.

I’m not claiming that every incident that results in fatality is because of inexperience. Sometimes shit happens. Often when experienced paddlers get in trouble, it’s because the decision process was faulty. It likely had to do with decision heuristics. When people fall back on decision shortcuts, they often make the mistake that costs them their lives.

But most of the time, early spring paddling fatalities are due to inexperience. They didn’t understand the risks of cold water. They didn’t mitigate the risks of cold water, and they died. They probably weren’t wearing a life vest. Journalists, try to report it correctly without shortcuts. These are important stories, and your story could save a life because someone saw themselves in the victim. They saw their own level of skills and then think, that could have been me. They learn.

AND

Wear a life vest out there this spring. Don’t die.