Dangers in tourism, imaginary and real

Great book. On the one hand, it is very easy to read (unlike official safety instructions). On the other hand, it perfectly “straightens the brain” and sobers up. In short, the main source of danger in tourism is not rocks, ice or bears, but a bad head on your own shoulders.

Yuri Alexandrovich Sturmer

DANGERS IN TOURISM, imaginary and real
(problems of preventing injuries in tourist travel).

Moscow, "Physical Education and Sports", 1972.

Accident on a hiking trip... What are its causes, its nature? Is it possible to foresee and prevent it? All this is described in the book. It contains information about safety experience, practical recommendations for selecting a group, training and educating tourists, examples of overcoming dangerous situations on routes, and analyzes of the circumstances of travel accidents. The book will be useful to tourism workers, active tourism sections and route qualification commissions, a wide range of athletes, travel enthusiasts and local historians.

ABOUT THIS BOOK

The problem of ensuring travel safety is one of the most important (if not the most important!) and at the same time one of the most difficult problems of the tourist movement. There is always an element of chance on a hike, and we cannot eliminate it, just as we cannot eliminate chance from our lives altogether. However, if it is useless to set yourself the task of eliminating any chance, then it is quite possible to strive to reduce it to a minimum.

Unfortunately, we are only just beginning to develop a set of measures to ensure travel safety. The experience gained in the past is rather negative. Misunderstanding of the nature of chance sometimes led to hasty and ill-considered conclusions. Everyone remembers the time when, having become convinced that accident-free hiking was absolutely unattainable, a decision was made to completely ban any complex tourist hikes. Therefore, the search for specific ways to resolve the safety problem in tourism should be based on a scrupulous analysis of emergency cases and the collection of statistical material.

The book by Master of Sports Yu. A. Sturmer “Dangers in Tourism, Imaginary and Real” is the first serious attempt to systematically analyze the data available today on the causes of accidents in tourist travel.

Until now, all publications on this topic were published only in periodicals (and very rarely) and, as a rule, were limited to the moral and ethical side of individual cases. The journalistic brilliance of such articles was sometimes inversely proportional to their business, practical significance. This level of information, and even more so the generalization necessary for certain practical conclusions, is certainly insufficient and does not correspond to the social significance of the problem. The book by Yu. A. Sturmer is intended to fill, or rather, begin to fill this gap in sports literature.

Essentially, Yu. A. Sturmer’s book lays the foundations for systematic work on the creation and implementation of a system of measures aimed at ensuring the safety of tourist trips in the specific conditions of our country. I especially want to emphasize the latter, because the experience of rescue services that operate well in the West - such as Bergretungsdienst in Austria or Bergwacht in Germany - cannot be transferred to our soil. In the West, tourism associated with active modes of transportation is comprehensively concentrated in very local areas, taking this into account the organization of the rescue service is built. Given the vast expanses of our country, we cannot copy the system used there.

In his book, Yu. A. Stürmer examines the positive experience we have accumulated in ensuring safety (the work of consultation points and route commissions, the appointment of checkpoints and deadlines, etc.), outlines possible ways of improvement and focuses on the knowledge of the principles of danger by each hike leader, each tourist.

The author's undoubted success is the analysis of the question of the causal role of the route. During the two decades of the existence of the sports classification in tourism, unfounded “bans” of a particular area have repeatedly arisen, under the influence of the emotional reaction of some heads of tourism authorities to the latest accident. Yu. A. Stürmer convincingly showed, for example, that the Kola Peninsula, which for many years was a kind of scarecrow, is many times inferior in sad consequences to the traditional Caucasus, although travel in the latter always evoked the most complacent attitude.

The same can be said about the meaning of equipment. References to its insufficient quantity and unsatisfactory quality are widespread and for many tourism workers they replace the practical training of tourism personnel and the organization of travel. At the same time, in reality, there is not a single accident known that was clearly and unambiguously caused by equipment, and, on the contrary, there are many known cases caused by inability to handle it.

We have highlighted these two questions because Yu. A. Sturmer was the first to pose them in this way and convincingly substantiate his position. But other main provisions of the book are no less indisputable, since they are based on actual facts and on extensive long-term experience, which has been accumulated by route and qualification commissions, accumulated, but not generalized, and certainly not published for the general reader.

The book by Yu. A. Stürmer will be of greatest importance for those who are entering big tourism and want to engage in it seriously. Having now sufficient opportunities to select and develop a route (literature on the main areas, travel reports, a system of consultations, mutual information), these people are faced with the lack of modern literature on the fundamental issues of ensuring travel safety, which would help them develop the correct principles of their own behavior in tourism. The book is obviously of great importance for route and qualification commissions. And, finally, for the widest range of tourist readers, the book will be useful and interesting due to its comprehensive approach to the issue, the specificity of the facts and examples given, and finally, the closeness of what is noted and analyzed by the author to his own experiences and impressions.

V. Tikhomirov, Master of Sports of the USSR in Tourism, Chairman of the Central Route Qualification Commission.

K. Bardin, Master of Sports of the USSR in Tourism, member of the Central Route Qualification Commission.

FROM THE AUTHOR

What injuries are in general and what damage humanity suffers from them is easy to imagine if we remember that injuries resulting from accidents in all parts of the planet are now one of the main causes of death. For a number of economically developed countries, death from injuries is several times higher than mortality from all infectious and many other diseases combined. Road traffic accidents alone kill about 200,000 people around the world each year, which, according to one English researcher, amounts to “a constant state of medium-scale war.”

It makes its sad contribution to injuries and tourism. In France and Japan, for example, more than 100 people per year die on mountain routes; in the Alps, 300 - 400 climbers and mountain tourists are buried annually. Accidents with travelers on the water cause even more casualties. Of course, of the main types of accidents - at work, at home, in transport - sports injuries (namely, injuries on tourist routes are usually included) constitute, according to the Central Institute of Traumatology and Orthopedics, only 2 - 3% of their total. The absolute number of accidents in our tourism is also significantly lower compared to a number of Western countries. However, such a comparison should not reassure: foreign indicators cannot be a standard in this matter, and, as you know, someone else’s disease does not cure one’s own...

In the Soviet state, the fight against accidents is not just a humane call, but a natural consequence of the basic principles of society, where the main value is people. The fundamentals of the USSR healthcare legislation specifically stipulate the duty of a citizen to take care of his own health and the health of others. Therefore, it is annoying when, instead of improving health, tourism brings illness to some, and instead of sports improvement - sprains, fractures, burns, frostbite. Of course, such people are an absolute minority, and their share in the total mass of many millions of tourists due to the increase in the skills of travelers, the improvement of equipment, and the accumulation of experience is decreasing from year to year. But we must not forget about the unusually intensive growth in the number of those who join the army of travelers every year, joining, perhaps, without the necessary experience and skills, without knowledge of the dangers that can await a person on the route, without the ability to successfully avoid or overcome them.

Helping to ensure the safety of such people is the purpose of this book. At the same time, let the reader not look for a specific description of all the dangers on the tourist route, or try to find instructions on how to save a drowning person or provide first aid to someone bitten by a poisonous snake. Below, only the issues of preventing tourist injuries are touched upon, and in their most general form.

The author is aware that his conclusions may require some revision, and the concept may require clarification and development. At the current level of our knowledge about the nature and sources of accidents on hiking trails, this shortcoming is explained by the lack of accounting for all “emergencies” (especially mild and moderate severity) both in the conditions of hiking trips and when people spend their leisure time in general. Unfortunately, many people tend to consider rest time only as their personal time, and the misfortune that occurs during this time as an exclusively personal matter. Hence the low awareness of organizations that could take measures against the recurrence of unwanted incidents.

In the absence of literature on the prevention of tourist injuries, the author tried to find a solution to the problem by attracting data from other areas of knowledge and disciplines - recreational geography, safety precautions, social traumatology, psychophysiology. Another productive path was the study and generalization of the circumstances of accidents known to tourist organizations over the past 5 years (of which, injuries on tourist trails in 1968-1969 were analyzed in particular detail).

The greatest role in the creation of this book was played by the collective experience accumulated by tourists - members of public control and rescue teams and tourist route qualification commissions, those with whom the author had the opportunity to work closely for many years and to whom he expresses his deep gratitude for the materials provided and ideas expressed.

STATEMENT OF THE QUESTION

Tourism accident...

What is it? Since it is an accident, we can assume that we are talking about an event or phenomenon that is random and unexpected. For example, one of the tourists fell on a ski slope and was injured. For the victim, this happened unexpectedly: he was not prepared for the fall, did not expect a painful result, and the harm (from his point of view) was caused to him by accident. To an outside observer, such a fall and injury could appear, on the contrary, as a natural consequence of a person’s inability to use ski equipment or as a consequence of the excessive steepness of the slope.

This means that despite all the external unexpectedness of accidents, it cannot be said that they are impossible to foresee. This means that the unexpectedness of an accident is, to a certain extent, a subjective assessment, reflecting the point of view of the “interested person.”

The second feature of an accident is its unintentionality and lack of purpose. Without this quality, it ceases to be an “accident”, but moves into the category of deliberate and pre-planned actions aimed at causing harm to others or oneself. The lack of purposefulness of erroneous actions does not mean, however, that the one through whose fault the sad incident occurred is not responsible for his action.

The definition of “unfortunate” reveals the third feature of the event: it brought trouble, misfortune for human health. Therefore, accidents cannot include so-called dangerous situations that did not cause harm to the health of tourists, for example, a successful overturn of a kayak on a rapid section of the river. Apparently, the term “tourist accident”, which has become somewhat widespread as a synonym for an accident, is also unjustified, since it does not reflect injuries to people, but damage to a ship, machine, mechanical part or equipment in general, and associated losses, which is usually not decisive in a tourist trip.

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People in the icy kingdom of the Eastern Sayan seem small and helpless. A terrible waterfall is about to bury them in a remote gorge. But... this is an imaginary danger: frozen cascades of water are just a beautiful natural phenomenon, for the sake of which it is worth contending with the real difficulties of the winter route. Photo.

Harm to a tourist’s health can be caused in various ways: by a stone blow, an animal bite, or water getting into the respiratory tract, so injuries usually occur due to dangerous exposure to the external environment. For camping conditions, internal painful processes in the body sometimes have to be classified as accidents - a heart attack, an acute attack of appendicitis, an attack of epilepsy, when damage to the body occurs quickly, and the event itself is short-lived. At the same time, damage to the body associated with prolonged exposure to unfavorable factors should probably be considered a kind of tourist “occupational” diseases.

By analogy, the latter include many of the excerpts below from the “List of some occupational hazards and occupational diseases in topographic and geodetic work” *.

* G. A. Minaev, N. I. Shatko. Safety precautions during topographic and geodetic work. M., 1962.

And finally, about the extension of the concept of accident to various types of tourism. It is probably wrong to classify all sad incidents involving people being injured during travel as “tourist” accidents. After all, a tourist, according to the encyclopedic definition, can be understood as anyone traveling “out of curiosity or for the purpose of rest and entertainment,” and according to modern foreign concepts, in general, anyone who has temporarily and voluntarily changed their place of residence not for the purpose of earning money. Analyzing their injury rate is as futile as assessing, for example, the work-related injuries of hairdressers by how many of them were hit by cars on the streets, hurt in a fall at a skating rink, or poisoned by spoiled canned food. Attributing an accident to tourism is probably only fair when we are talking about the active part of tourism, which is included, along with gymnastics, athletics and other sports, in a unified system of physical education. And injuries received in other forms of tourism should be taken into account as received at home or in transport.

Highlighting travel with active modes of movement, carried out within the framework of the requirements of the All-Union Sports Classification, it can be noted that in them, injuries often have their sources in accidents that occurred in an environment far from sports (for example, a burn from a fire while cooking, a concussion as a result of a car accident while driving a car, a leg wound with an ax at a rest stop). But since such actions (cooking, transport, organizing camping life) are an organic part of the trip, the injuries received during this should be taken into account as tourist ones.

So, if in the most general form we define accidents in tourism as unintentional injury or death of a person that occurs as a result of an unexpected traumatic impact in the conditions of active tourist travel, then what are the reasons for their occurrence?

The reservations made when assessing the unexpectedness of tourist injuries make it possible to consider accidents as the result of a combination of natural and random and, accordingly, to identify objective and subjective factors of their occurrence.

However, not all factors can be divided into those that do not depend on the will of a person and those that depend on it. It only emphasizes that the subjective factor is more associated with mistakes and violations committed by the victim than the objective one. As a rule, there are rarely accidents on the route caused by objective reasons alone. These include, for example, those caused by unpredictable manifestations of natural forces - earthquakes, floods, thunderstorms, or those associated with hidden (not pre-identifiable) defects in camping equipment.

Usually all the causes of an event are closely intertwined and mutually influence each other. Often they are even difficult to figure out and differentiate, because in each specific example the same circumstances can act as an objective or subjective factor, reflecting the regularity and randomness of the event. Thus, an extremely dangerous section of the route creates objective conditions for tourists to be injured, and who gets hurt on it will largely be a matter of chance. Conversely, injuries to an undisciplined, inattentive and inexperienced person are a natural phenomenon, and the location of the accident will be determined by chance.

Such complexity, interdependence and complexity of factors in the occurrence of accidents allows us to consider the traditional division of dangers in tourist travel into two large groups as far from exhaustive: dangers caused by insufficient physical, technical and moral training of people and their incorrect behavior, and dangers caused by relief and climatic factors. It is also difficult to agree with the statements that the main danger of tourism is only difficult routes and dangerous sections of the route (i.e. objective reasons). At the same time, it is impossible to recognize the culprits of all accidents in tourism to the same people (subjective factor). Such a denial of objective causes in tourist injuries brings this hypothesis closer to the assertion of the bourgeois scientist H. U. Heydrich, which does not require criticism, that in production 88% of accidents occur due to the fault of workers due to such personality flaws as greed, carelessness, incontinence, nervousness, excitability, recklessness, 10% - due to the fault of machines and 2% - unpreventable injuries "due to God's fault."

The most productive way to create a real diagram of hazards in tourism (reflecting reality, and not the assumptions or wishes of individuals) is to analyze statistical material on injuries.

To clarify the specific weight of the factors causing incidents, it is advisable to consider them separately. At the same time, the analysis for “established” positions (failures on rocks, failures on ice, rockfalls, avalanches, insufficient experience of a leader, insufficient caloric nutrition, poor knowledge of the travel area, etc.) seems to be very fragmented and not indicative in everything, since it takes into account different and sometimes incommensurable causes of events located in different planes.

Below, for the analysis of injury factors, a grouping according to the so-called “epidemiological” features is chosen as a working scheme. The fact is that a number of foreign researchers, in connection with the intensive growth of accidents in road transport, proposed using methods adopted in the practice of studying epidemics to study ways to combat injuries. Accidents are proposed to be considered as the result of the interaction of all forces involved in the competition between a person and his environment, which, according to researchers, makes it possible to apply a similar method as a scientific approach to the problem of accident prevention.

Indeed, even in tourist injuries, if we look at it from such an unusual angle, one can find a number of interesting analogies with epidemiological diseases.

Firstly, the carrier of the “epidemic” of tourist accidents is a person who acts as such most often through the power of personal example, an erroneous sense of impunity for violating safety measures.

Secondly, there is a clear geographical localization of accidents. They usually have clearly defined “foci of the epidemic”, confined to certain areas, and a “smeared periphery.”

Third, an “epidemic” affects different populations differently, just as real infectious diseases do. Men, women, teenagers, children, residents of cities or rural areas, people of different ages do not suffer equally from accidents in tourism.

Further, the frequency and severity of accidents, as in epidemics, are affected by such factors as the season of the year, meteorological conditions, the nature of the contact of the “sick” (offenders) with the “healthy”, etc.

Finally, the means of combating tourist injuries are the “vaccination” of knowledge, skills, experience, increasing the general moral and physical resistance of people to the “disease,” and active mass explanatory and educational work with the population.

Approaching tourist injuries with the yardstick of epidemiological research, it is possible to identify four of the reasons that determine the occurrence of an accident, forming the formula: "route - equipment - traveler - society". For each type of tourism, the first elements of this complex will look specific, for example, as "river - boat - helmsman", "road - car - driver", etc.

Within the framework of such a conditional formula, it is easier to assess the factors leading to accidents and distinguish between imaginary and real causes of danger on routes.

But first, a few words about the nature, distribution and severity of tourist injuries.

The most common injuries for tourists are minor injuries to the extremities: bruises, abrasions, abrasions, minor cuts, bruises. As a rule, legs are especially susceptible to injury - they account for up to 3/4 of all hiking injuries. Light burns and local frostbite are also typical. Sprains and other damage to the ligaments of various joints, dislocations and fractures, wounds from sharp (axe) and blunt (stone) objects are not excluded. The most common diseases are poisoning, stomach upsets, and colds.

By type of tourism, the “localization” of injuries is most simple in walking travel: most injuries fall on the feet and, as a rule, manifest themselves in the form of abrasions, swelling of the skin of the foot and damage to the ligamentous apparatus of the joints (ankle or, less commonly, knee).

On water active routes there may be hand injuries - abrasions, skin tears, cracks, sprains of the wrist joints. Sometimes abrasions of the buttocks and back, sprains of the spinal muscles, bruises. Radiculitis, sore throats, and burns from excessive sun exposure are common.

The greatest risk of injury on water is associated with possible drowning (asphyxia).

When engaging in winter types of tourism, damage to the bursal-ligamentous apparatus of the ankle and knee joints is typical; injuries to the anterior ligaments and ankles of the ankle when falling forward, meniscus and lateral ligaments of the knee joint when falling backwards. Frostbite on the toes and heels of the feet, fingers and wrists, noses, ears, and cheeks is common. There are frequent cases of burns from fire flames and hot food.

Injuries in mountainous and speleological (cave) travels are varied: abrasions of the skin, burns of the palms (sometimes the back and buttocks) due to friction due to improper handling of the rope, bruised wounds, in some cases concussions, damage to internal organs, broken limbs. Mountain tourism is also characterized by local frostbite, burns and eye diseases due to the blinding sun.

In bicycle travel abrasions of the inner surfaces of the thighs to the palms of the hands and sprains of the ligamentous apparatus of the lower extremities may occur. Sometimes, while driving fast, specks and small insects get into your eyes. As a result of falls, extensive abrasions and bruises are possible. Sometimes fractures (usually the collarbones), concussions and bruised wounds occur.

The same injuries are specific to motorcycle tourism.

In terms of severity, most tourist injuries are mild and are not accompanied by loss of ability to work. But a certain percentage of injuries in tourism are classified as severe injuries. Since there is no direct data on such relationships, we have to use analogies. Thus, according to statistics on sports injuries*, very severe injuries account for 0.3% of all accidents in sports, severe ones - 2.7%, moderate injuries (with loss of sports ability for up to 2 months) - 10%. The remaining 87% of injuries are classified as minor or very minor.

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* 3. Mironova, L. Heifetz. Prevention of injuries in sports and first aid. FiS, 1966

Data on road traffic injuries give a different picture: according to British sources, for motorcyclists there are 14 severe injuries and 36 minor injuries per fatal accident; for cyclists, for every one fatality, there were 15 severe and 61 minor cases of injury.

In terms of the ratio of heavy and light injuries, domestic injuries are relatively favorable, in which up to 9/10 of the injuries fall on the latter.

In tourism, as is known, it is difficult to distinguish between the elements of sports, domestic and transport injuries (even if we clearly distinguish only sports travel). Therefore, it seems realistic that the ratios between injuries in terms of their severity during tourism will be close to a certain average proportion, taking into account data on injuries in sports, everyday life and on transport used in tourism. This means that in active tourism (dividing injuries into 3 degrees of severity) for one severe (deadly) case there are 30 - 50 moderate injuries and up to 200 - 300 mild ones.

These same ratios are confirmed by the results of a random check of the journals of first-aid posts of tourist bases and a survey of instructors. However, they can only be taken as average for all types of tourism, since in some trips (in particular, mountain, water and especially “wheeled”) there is an increased mortality rate and severity of injuries. In any case, it is known that in Austria over the course of a year, for the 86 fatalities involving mountain tourists, climbers and skiers, there were about 6 thousand injuries that required transportation of the victims.

To reflect the true picture of the severity of injuries, it is necessary to collect information from various institutions related to the organization of hikes and servicing travelers on routes - tourist checkpoints, route qualification commissions, tourist centers, clubs, sections, physical education groups. It must be remembered that when only documentation from medical centers or forensic medical examinations is taken as a basis, the data turns out to be incomplete, because most of the injuries are not taken into account by them. You cannot limit yourself to analyzing the reports of group leaders and instructors, since injuries that were not severe or ended in recovery during the trip are most often not shown in them.

A more complete picture is provided by an oral analysis of the results of the trip with the participants of each group (although here, too, there are cases of victims hiding their injuries) and written surveys of group leaders conducted by public commissions dealing with tourism safety issues. In the latter case, surveys should be conducted without regard to the tourist trip and have the goal of accumulating statistical material.

ROUTE AS A SOURCE OF DANGER

How should we approach tourist routes in order to assess their causality in injury? How to determine their danger? The existing opinions on this issue are contradictory. Some believe that there is a simple relationship between the number of travel accidents and the remoteness and complexity of the routes: the more complex and longer the routes, the more frequent and dangerous the injuries. Consequently, accidents can be avoided if tourists are limited to hiking on unpaved trails in suburban recreation areas and do not organize multi-day trips to geographically remote and uninhabited areas.

Others are convinced that it is not areas, but dangerous areas and obstacles on routes that are the main sources of injuries. It is also generally accepted that the negative role of these areas and obstacles manifests itself when weather and climatic conditions worsen and that the majority of accidents occur in conditions of poor visibility, in the evening or at night, and in fog, rain, wind, and snowstorm.

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Altai Mountains... Steep slopes, unstable screes, treacherous fog and other obstacles often stand in the way of tourists. To skillfully pass, and if this is impossible, then successfully overcome them and achieve victory over the blind forces of nature - this is one of the goals that people set for themselves in sports travel. Photo.

One can understand such a discrepancy in assessments: a tourist route is a very capacious concept. It includes, for example, the geographical characteristics of the area and, first of all, an assessment of its orohydrography based on the ruggedness of the relief, slopes and power of water flows, the presence of swamps, sands, rocks, ice, etc. Each of these natural elements is at a certain stage of development and poses for humans the danger of landslides, avalanches, and drift by fast currents; complicates the path with a difficult climb, a difficult crossing, an insurmountable threshold, a taiga blockage or, conversely, a lack of vegetation.

The route includes an assessment of weather and climatic conditions and is always specific by season, month and even hour of day. In the same area at any given moment it can be hot or cold, dry or rainy, calm or piercingly windy, light or twilight. Within one season, under the influence of meteorological conditions, the snow cover, for example, can give more than a dozen modifications that are noticeable to skiers and increase the danger of the route to varying degrees: dry snow, loose snow, loose, damp, viscous, dense crust, strong firn, treacherous “board”, hard “cement”.

The route includes and often predetermines the method, type and characteristics of the tourist’s movement. And sometimes with a very high degree of specificity: only on collapsible kayaks, only on inflatable boats, only on mountain skis with braking devices... The route dictates the features of organizing camping life, types of camp work, the daily routine, the ratio of simple and potentially dangerous sections of the route.

Based on such a broad understanding of the tourist route, we will try to analyze the causation of injuries depending on the area of ​​travel, season, day of the week, time of day, weather, type of movement, the presence of dangerous areas and the category of difficulty of the hike.

There is a certain difference in the frequency of accidents between different geographical areas of the country,

In general, for all types of travel and categories of travelers, in order of the greatest frequency of incidents for 1968 - 1969, we can name the Caucasus, the mountains of Central Asia and Kazakhstan (Tian Shan), Altai, the Urals, the Center of the European part, Karelia, Crimea, the Pamirs, the Baikal region and Transbaikalia, the Kola Peninsula, the Sayan Mountains, the Far East, the Carpathians. The first 3 of these areas account for more than half of the known cases of severe injury, the last 4 - less than one tenth.

Data taken from five years ago for control, although they somewhat change the order of areas according to conditional danger, at the same time confirm that the majority of serious injuries occur in areas that have long been developed for tourism. In first place among them is the Caucasus, and not the Central, high-mountain and inaccessible Caucasus, but usually the Black Sea slopes of the Western Caucasus and the Northern Caucasus.

The Center of the European part and Crimea, areas of mass tourism development, are distinguished by a significant frequency of injuries, especially in comparison with the small number of natural hazards or their clear localization.

Closing the list are territories that are relatively little developed and mostly visited by fairly experienced tourists, including, for example, the Kola Peninsula and the Far East, which are usually considered to be of increased danger. The above gradation of territories is not a division of areas into dangerous and safe: the number of tourist injuries only partially depends on the characteristics of the natural factors of the area.

To a greater extent, it is related to the quality of preparation and conduct of trips, the presence of organized or “wild” groups, types of travel practiced, the level of tourist services (in particular, the quality of control and rescue services).

The frequency of injuries is primarily related, of course, to the intensity of movement of groups along routes, to the total number of people arriving in a particular area. Therefore, considering the relationship between the actual number of injuries for which natural factors were the primary cause and the number of travelers exposed to danger in a given area, it is more appropriate to talk about the apparent difference between areas.

From the distribution of accidents by season it can be established that a clear “peak” of injuries occurs in June - September (about 70% of injuries). The most severe months are July and then August, when more than half of the tourist injuries of the year occur. The most “prosperous” period is the second half of November and December (less than 1% of injuries). An intermediate position is occupied by January, February and March, which together “bring” about 10% of accidents, of which from half to two-thirds occur during the winter “peak” - the time of student holidays. Approximately 10% of accidents also occur in spring (late April - May) and autumn (October - early November).

These ratios quite clearly reflect the dynamics of people’s tourism activities throughout the year and generally coincide with the idea of ​​summer holidays as the period of the most massive trips. However, injuries and mass numbers are not always directly proportional to each other. In percentage terms, they give a kind of indicator of the seasonal danger of routes, which is highest for the months of the tourist off-season.

The latter should attract special attention. Indeed, over the past five years, the number of injuries received by travelers during the transitional spring-autumn period has sharply increased. So, if in 1964 accidents with serious outcomes in the period April-May and October-November accounted for 5% of their number for the year, then in 1968-1969 their share increased to 20%.

This trend is partly explained by the extension of the tourist season, the availability of several days of rest during the May and November holidays, as well as the growing popularity of travel during the transition period. But the increase in the number of injuries outpaces the increase in the number of hikes at this time, which indicates the real complication and increased danger of routes in off-season conditions and the unpreparedness of those who go on them. Therefore, this trend should be taken into account and certain “antidotes” must be found, for example, in the form of increasing requirements for the tourist experience of those going on off-season trips.

The frequency of accidents on routes is also associated with certain days of the week and time of day.

Saturday and Sunday are the most dangerous. These days in 1968 - 1969 accounted for more than 4/7 of cases of severe injury, which is mainly explained by the high proportion of injuries during weekend hikes and one-day excursions. Obviously, the increase in injuries on certain days reflects the influence of subjective reasons depending on the travelers themselves. Some exceptions may be car, motorcycle and bicycle travel, the safety of which is also determined by changes in traffic intensity on the roads by day of the week, independent of tourists.

Based on the time of day, night hours are sometimes considered the most dangerous. Indeed, it is at night that the air temperature usually reaches its minimum. This is the period of greatest activity of nocturnal animal predators and human passivity. And most importantly, this is the period when overcoming natural obstacles on the route becomes incomparably more difficult and dangerous due to poor visibility, fatigue, etc.

But since tourists, as a rule, do not move along the route at night, but rest in securely sheltered bivouacs, the share of night accidents in the total number does not exceed, according to preliminary estimates, 5%. (At the same time, taking into account that the percentage of tourists traveling at night from the total number on the routes is incomparably smaller, this once again confirms the fact of the increased danger of crossings at night.)

A relatively small number of injuries (up to 10%) occur in the evening, twilight, which sometimes coincides with a protracted dangerous descent from the pass or the inconvenience of organizing bivouac work in semi-darkness. The vast majority of accidents occur in sufficient natural light and are not confined to particularly difficult areas, but occur in the afternoon, which is obviously explained by the fatigue of tourists.

This is also confirmed by the ratio of the number of injuries for equal periods of daylight hours - morning (7 - 11 hours), middle of the day (11 - 15 hours), afternoon (15 - 19 hours). According to data for 1968 - 1969, the number of severe injuries during these periods is expressed in a proportion close to 1:2:3.

For some types of tourism, in particular mountain tourism, an increase in injuries in the afternoon also reflects travelers’ ignorance of the real complications of movement in the afternoon, when mountain streams swell, the snow “loses,” and the danger of rockfalls and avalanches increases, or their neglect.

Thus, the degree of danger of routes varies by time of day, which is associated both with the objective features of the state of the area and with the subjective circumstances of travel.

The relationship between weather-climatic factors and injuries is usually beyond doubt. Indeed, from our own life experience, everyone imagines that frost, strong winds, thunderstorms, snowfall, rain, and fog make travel difficult and can lead to injury or illness. In mountain and especially ski travel, up to 1/5 of all cases of serious injuries are to some extent associated with worsening weather and climatic conditions - blizzards, blizzards, low temperatures. If we also consider minor injuries (frostbite of the fingers, sunburn of the skin, “snow blindness”), then the proportion of such cases increases by 2–3 times.

However, in other types of tourism (hiking, water) this percentage is much lower and allows us to assume that in general, in 7-8 cases out of 10, weather conditions do not play not only a decisive, but also a secondary role in severe injuries. It is curious that similar data are provided for road accidents in the United States, where more than 80% of car accidents occur in clear weather, about 10% during rain, and less than 10% during snowfall and fog.

It is now difficult to draw a conclusion from all of the above about the magnitude of the danger of natural atmospheric forces for tourists, since there is no accurate data on the number of injuries caused by these forces, related to the kilometers traveled or time spent in unfavorable weather conditions. In addition, it is not the weather complications themselves that are dangerous, but the unpreparedness of travelers for them, which, in particular, happens with sudden changes in weather and its uncharacteristic manifestations for a given geographical area or season. Thus, tourists going on a winter hike to the Kola Peninsula know in advance that they can expect 30-degree frosts, stormy winds on the passes, and snowstorms in “charges” for two or three days in a row. Treating this as normal, i.e., characteristic, climatic conditions of a particular ski route, they take the necessary protective measures and safely endure the hardships of travel. At the same time, for example, drops in air temperature to 0° with strong winds in summer conditions on the grassy passes of the Western Caucasus or Crimea have repeatedly led to serious injuries precisely because of the unexpectedness of such weather in the warm season.

The distribution of the number of serious accidents by the main types of active movement on routes gives a ratio between hiking, water, mountain and ski tourism close to 10: 4: 3: 3, although in terms of the number of participants and multi-day trips completed, these types correlate as follows: 10: 1: 1: 1. The proportion of injuries, falling on other, not currently widespread, types - caving tourism, bicycle tourism, automoto tourism, as well as injuries in excursion and transport tourism and on radial routes, are not taken into account here.

The above proportions, although they refute the assumption that hiking is safe, do confirm the discrepancy between the amount of travel undertaken in the main types of tourism and the number of injuries in them. In particular, the proportion of injuries on water routes that is significantly higher than the specific gravity of this type is noteworthy. This discrepancy suggests that types of tourism differ in their potential danger. The increased danger of water routes can also be confirmed by the fact that half of deaths in walking are associated with water. At the same time, this indicates poor discipline of the participants in the hikes and their poor preparation for another, related type of tourism. By the way, for example, 25% of serious injuries on hiking routes occur when tourists unplannedly encounter mountain or winter travel conditions (rockfalls, avalanche zones, glaciers, extreme cold).

It is necessary to note the higher severity of injuries on water, mountain and ski routes, as well as the more severe outcome of dangerous conditions in them. For example, an accidental loss of consciousness or balance by a tourist on a flat section of a hiking route, as a rule, leads only to minor bruises. On the Mountain Slope it can cause a fall of tens of meters, broken limbs, a concussion; on a water trip it can lead to a fall into the water, injury from rocks at the bottom, or drowning; on a ski route - can be a prerequisite for frostbite. Of course, in order to avoid such an outcome in these types of tourism, special insurance measures are taken: moving along difficult sections of mountainous terrain in bundles, on water in life jackets, etc. But the objectively increased danger of some types of movement over others still remains.

This conclusion fully applies to “wheeled” types of active tourism, among which there are also more dangerous types of travel. Thus, according to English statistics, “for drivers and passengers of motorcycles, the likelihood of a fatal accident is approximately 10 times higher than for drivers and passengers of other types of vehicles.” This ratio conceals the technical danger of movement, since it does not take into account the different age composition of motorcyclists and motorists (the former are on average 10-15 years younger than the latter and, therefore, more prone to risk and recklessness). However, even adjusted to take into account the latter by a factor of 2-3, it still emphasizes a noticeable difference in the danger of types of tourism.

If we consider tourist routes by the presence of dangerous sections, obstacles or other factors complicating the trip, we can identify many dozens of specific dangerous moments or their combinations.

Practical tourism guides usually devote enough space to listing the dangers of mountains or water: rockfalls, avalanches, mudflows, ice collapses, cracks in glaciers, rapids, shoals, river debris, bulk currents - and possible sad consequences if they are ineptly overcome: breakdowns, falls, coups, freezing, drowning. However, in large lists of potential hazards, it is difficult to identify the main ones that account for the bulk of tourist injuries. Below is the distribution of accidents depending only on the main causes of severe injuries on active routes (based on the results of 1968 - 1969).

With additional consideration of participants in passive types of tourism, the proportion of drownings (due to swimming accidents), as well as car accidents, sharply increases, which gives up to 3/4 of all cases to these two indicators.

The data presented, however, does not contain an assessment of the actual role of difficult areas and obstacles in comparison with the incorrect actions of the tourists themselves. As will be shown later, neither swimming, nor traffic accidents, nor the vast majority of diseases have anything to do with the natural hazards of the route. In combination with unplanned and practically impossible crossings (there were more than half of them), facts of solo walking and group panic of unprepared beginners, as well as facts of indiscipline and deliberate neglect of basic insurance, the number of accidents that do not depend on the danger of obstacles makes up the vast majority. The smaller part can really be considered as a combination of objectively existing complex natural obstacles and tourists’ mistakes when overcoming them.

Interesting material for considering the route as a source of danger is the frequency of accidents classified into travel complexity categories.

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The upper reaches of the Chulyshman River are difficult and dangerous for water travel. At numerous thresholds and clamps, the possibility of overkill cannot be ruled out. Only experienced tourists who have unsinkable watercraft, life jackets, and protective helmets are allowed on such rivers. Thus, a sudden revolution does not yet threaten an accident. Photo.

Taking into account both registered and unregistered trips, information for 1968 - 1969 gives the following distribution of severe injuries by categories of route complexity: weekend trips and trips below class I. — 45%; travel I k.s. — 30%; II class. — 8%; III class. — 8%; IV class - 6%; V class — 3%.

According to materials for 1964, the indicated ratios were slightly different (58, 19, 6, 5, 8 and 4%, respectively), but there is a clear predominance of simple routes over complex ones. The concentration of 3/4 of cases of dangerous injuries in the simplest tourist trips, of course, does not indicate the safety of high-category travel. The proportion of 1:25 between the number of injuries in hikes of the highest and lowest categories should not be understood as evidence that an experienced participant in a difficult trip is 25 times less exposed to danger than a beginner in weekend hikes and trips of the first category of difficulty.

If the indicated distribution of accidents is correlated with the share of travel of the corresponding categories in the total number of trips (for multi-day trips I - V class it is rounded to 70, 20, 7, 2 and 1%), then the relative indicators will indicate a slight increase in the danger of complex tourist routes. On the other hand, you need to remember about the inaccuracy of information about tourist injuries. The fact is that hikes of IV - V categories of difficulty are carried out, as a rule, under the careful control of organizations, and comprehensive data is accumulated on them, and weekend hikes, unfortunately, often take place without proper registration, and cases of injury in them, especially mild ones, remain the property of only the nearest first-aid post and the tourist section of the physical education team. Therefore, we can say with a high degree of confidence that the probability of injuries in light and difficult hikes is expressed by values ​​of the same order.

Summarizing the above, we can come to the conclusion that the vast majority of accidents in tourism are not directly related to the high complexity of hikes, routes in remote areas, or dangerous obstacles. As a rule, neither weather conditions, nor poor visibility, nor time of day have a decisive influence on the likelihood of injury. A certain increase in risk is observed with certain types of movement and in certain seasons.

All this suggests that it is impossible to reduce tourist injuries, for example, by recommending the replacement of difficult trips with hikes along easily accessible routes. Such a path pushes away the most experienced activist-athletes who carry out great public work from organized tourism and deprives newcomers of instructors.

Refusal of complex routes would at the same time mean rejection of the most interesting routes that run through the most picturesque and exotic areas of the country, where there is a natural attraction for all those interested in tourism. It is now not possible to replace complex routes in these areas with simple ones, while maintaining the same amount of useful information received by people and the same positive emotions. The main direction for “neutralizing” routes at present, obviously, can be consistent and systematic (but not destroying the landscape and not depriving it of its main advantages for travelers) improvement of the most popular hiking routes. The construction of simple shelters or strongholds with food kits for tourists, medical aid, funds of rescue equipment, radio transmitting devices for communication with the tourist control and rescue service, establishing and strengthening crossings, hanging safety cables and chains at passes, marking, cleaning and strengthening trails in difficult areas, as well as publishing competent descriptions of routes and their good diagrams - all this, of course, will help eliminate sources of danger that depend on the routes themselves.

In the future, as technological progress develops, devices will be built that will almost completely eliminate the risk on the route “due to the fault of nature.” An example of this is foreign high-altitude cable cars that take people to the highest peaks, where tourists find themselves in carefully fenced cages-enclosures... However, when constructing “cages,” it will be necessary to take into account the annually growing interest and craving of people for places where there are no “cages” yet...

The improvement of tourist routes, of course, does not exclude reasonable restrictions on the participation of people in difficult trips. It is advisable to allow only groups with an increased “margin of safety” on routes characterized by an increased danger of the method of travel and the season (for example, in the spring along rapid rivers, when the weather is usually unstable, the nature of natural obstacles is often little known, and tourists have not yet managed to get into proper sports shape).

Applying restrictions to routes requires thoughtful consideration. Motor transport has brought thousands of times more casualties than tourism, but no one raises the question of reducing the speed of a car to the speed of a pedestrian. Although this alone could probably bring the number of fatal transport accidents closer to zero. Obviously, such a price for security would be excessive. At the same time, speed limits of up to 20, 40 or 60 km are successfully applied, depending on the specific danger of an emergency situation. The same approach is advisable in relation to complex, not without danger, sports routes - routes that bring undoubted benefits, in that they cultivate courage, perseverance, determination, provide important applied skills, hone a sense of collectivism and mutual assistance, and form persistence in achieving the goal.

In conclusion of the analysis of the “guilt” of routes, it should be noted that when determining their danger, one cannot proceed from the objective conditions of the area, season or type of tourism alone. A characteristic feature of organized sports tourism is precisely that for each category of people their own limit of permissible complexity of travel (in a certain type of movement) is established, above which, given the level of their experience, they have no way. In other words, the less experience the traveler has, the objectively safer the route allowed to him.

Such strict regulation puts the novice tourist in a more advantageous position compared, for example, with a young motorcyclist or geologist. And it also allows us to take a different approach to objective indicators of the danger of a route.

Thus, the owner of a motorcycle, having barely received a license, joins the general flow of intense street traffic. The most difficult routes around the city, the most dangerous intersections, are open to him. And then we have to note that motorcyclists with less than 6 months of driving experience have twice as many road accidents as the average.

A graduate of the geological exploration faculty, sent to work in a remote party, will cover dozens of routes in a few “field” months, although without an established category of difficulty, but nevertheless not without difficulty or danger. It will take place, guided by production needs, and not by mandatory compliance with the rules “from simple to complex.” Perhaps he will climb a steep, rocky slope or raft down a little-known river. And, of course, at first he will be at greater risk of accident than his more experienced comrades.

In these examples, it is legitimate to say that there are classes, work; the routes are potentially dangerous and the degree of their danger varies from minimum - for experienced people - to maximum - for beginners.

In relation to properly organized tourism, one can say something different: there are routes and types of travel that are potentially dangerous, but the degree of their danger is minimal for people who have the right to travel through them. Other categories of people on these routes should be excluded.

IS THE EQUIPMENT TO blame?

Let's consider the causal role of equipment in accidents - the second component of the formula "route - equipment - traveler - society." By equipment we mean all the technical and material support of the traveler: means of transportation, camping items, clothing, shoes, insurance, food, first aid kit, etc.

The role of the condition of vehicles in the safety of travel associated with the use of motors or mechanical drives is obvious. According to domestic data, every fifth accident caused by a technical malfunction of a car leads to death.

The most common cases of injury to tourists riding cars, motorcycles, mopeds or bicycles are caused by faults in the brakes, tires, steering and lighting equipment. Thus, according to the results of one technical inspection in the USA, every 2 out of 5 tested vehicles were in a condition that did not ensure safe operation. The first items on the list of defects were headlights (24% of all cars), then brakes (17%), taillights (15%) and steering (10%).

No less important, although usually not fraught with such serious consequences, is the quality of equipment for safe movement and overcoming obstacles on water, mountain, ski and speleological routes. A low reserve of buoyancy, poor stability, low seaworthiness of the vessels chosen for the trip, the absence of devices on them that ensure unsinkability, or insufficiently strong skis, incorrectly selected in terms of width, flexibility and material of the sliding surface, skis without metal edging on the mountain crust, with a small toe bend on deep loose snow - all this can cause an accident.

Since 2/3 of the travel time is spent on halts, overnight stays and bivouac work, to prevent injuries it is by no means indifferent to the suitability of camping household items for their intended purpose: tents, sleeping bags, campfire accessories, heating devices. In some conditions - in severe frosts, prolonged rains, in the absence of natural fuel on the route - a bivouac can be the most labor-intensive, stressful and even unsafe part of camping life. In any case, it is alarming that 1/10 of the known cases of severe injuries and illnesses during winter hikes are confined to halts. The reasons for most of them are the wrong behavior of people, but to some extent they are also explained by the easy wetness of standard tents, the insufficient thermal insulation qualities of sleeping bags, the inconvenience and unsafety of commercially available camping utensils, the lack of camping stoves in production, etc.

The equipment of a group member, his clothing and shoes determine the possibility of personal protection from adverse environmental factors. A small amount of woolen or other warm clothes, the lack of wind- and moisture-proof clothing can put a person, especially in winter and in the highlands, in a dangerous situation. Even such little things as short mittens, an unsuccessful hood style, or a broken zipper can easily lead to local frostbite. In summer, poor design of clothing, making it impossible to regulate its thermal insulation qualities, leads to overheating of the body. Travelers especially often suffer from foot injuries due to shoes that are inappropriate in size, style, and other details: sores, calluses and water blisters form, and toes become “knocked down” and “caught” by frost. The prevalence of the latter is evidenced by the fact that up to 9/10 of all frostbites usually occur on the lower extremities. Due to poor adhesion of shoe soles to soil, rocky surfaces, and ice, sprains and ruptures of ligaments, breakdowns and falls occur, which can lead to serious injuries on difficult terrain.

A dangerous situation cannot be ruled out due to the poor quality, low-calorie or inappropriate climatic conditions of the food supply route. The cause of malnutrition and exhaustion may be food spoilage due to weak factory packaging, lack of initial preservative treatment, or too short shelf life. This sometimes leads to stomach diseases and food poisoning.

Finally, the most serious consequences on a trip are clear if the group does not have safety, protective and rescue equipment or it is of unsatisfactory quality. Theoretically speaking, it is generally impossible to make any difficult mountain hike without main and auxiliary ropes, safety (climbing) belts, ice axes, avalanche cords, safety glasses and masks; water - without life jackets and means guaranteeing the unsinkability of ships; speleological - without protective diving suits, safety helmets with headlamps, ladders and ropes; motorcycle - without helmets that protect the heads and cervical vertebrae of drivers and passengers; and any trip without a medical kit equipped with all the necessary supplies.

In practice, it sometimes turns out differently. The absence or small quantity of certain types of tourist equipment for sale or rental pushes individual undisciplined people to travel with unsuitable means and “great bloodshed.” As a result, you can find tourists in the winter taiga on narrow skis and running low shoes, in the mountains - in sneakers with worn-out corrugations and with a clothesline for insurance, on the water - without basic life-saving equipment. Typically, such groups consist of beginners and follow relatively simple routes. But it is precisely such routes, as already mentioned, that give rise to the lion’s share of incidents.

However, one should not look for the causes of injuries only in the lagging behind the industrial production of equipment from the growing need for it. Increasing the quantity, improving the quality, and diversifying the range of technical equipment items will not yet eliminate accidents due to the fault of the equipment. Much here will depend on the travel participants themselves.

Firstly, tourists must ensure that the equipment in the group is complete and of the same type, so that some of its items correspond to others and allow interchangeability in emergency conditions. It is known that a camp stove and a tourist flat bucket, which work well separately, cannot be used together, because the coefficient of their combined useful action is negligible. When using different types of bicycles or boats in a group, participants will be stretched along the route, and if some cars or boats malfunction, they will not be able to put parts from other cars or boats on them. A “trifle” such as different ski widths for tourists will significantly complicate a winter hike and cause an increased susceptibility to accidents due to premature fatigue of some members of the group while others are uselessly working. However, it is easy to defuse a dangerous situation if it is possible to replace one type of equipment with another. Thus, in case of loss of mittens and the risk of rapid frostbite, travelers were more than once helped out by woolen socks that successfully replaced mittens, and in case of damage to ski boots, felt boots for duty officers, which are usually taken based on the largest foot in the group.

Secondly, in the process of preparing for a trip, it is advisable to specially adapt the equipment to the specific conditions and dangers of the route, and strengthen its individual parts and components. So, for a winter route in the mountains, it is advisable to attach leashes-ski holders to your shoes to prevent the loss of skis when the fastening spontaneously unfastens, make additional braiding of the rings of ski poles, and install homemade “brakes” on the skis. For water travel, as a rule, it is necessary to glue the shell of the kayak along the keelson and the lower belt of the stringers with rubber protectors, sew an apron (if there is none), etc.

It is also important to carefully check the availability of reserve items of material support: a repair kit, spare parts for a ski binding, material for repairing the shell and frame of a kayak, spare parts for a motorcycle, spare goggles and mittens, electric batteries and light bulbs for a flashlight, an emergency reserve of food, matches. We must not forget that not having spare equipment on hand can put the group in a dangerous position. So, if a raft row breaks down on a difficult section of the river, there is no spare one, an accident may occur in the first seconds after the incident.

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A heavy backpack on your back, the straps of a cargo sled over your shoulders - this is not a tribute to false romance, but a harsh necessity. Without carefully thought out, fitted and tested equipment, no one can guarantee the safety of ski trips in the Polar Urals. Photo.

It is vital for the safety of travel and at the same time it is relatively easy to independently produce protective and rescue technical equipment. Many water tourists successfully use homemade vests and bibs from medical pads, lifebuoys from automobiles, and belts from bicycle inner tubes. To keep afloat and protect against impacts from stones and logs on stormy rivers, homemade protective and rescue kits have recently begun to be used, consisting of foam life jackets, hip and shin guards, helmets, and pads for the shoulders, elbows, and knees. To make kayaks unsinkable, many people retrofit them with homemade air tanks (usually rubber bladders).

Small design improvements, the use of new materials, and improving the quality of items not directly related to safety actually also reduce the likelihood of injuries and illnesses while hiking. Thus, the use of homemade foam mats and foam mats reduces the risk of colds, and the use of shoe covers (protective stockings worn over ski boots) reduces the risk of frostbite.

Even a simple change in the shape, material or color of objects matters. Let's take the last one as an example. The bright coloring of individual objects or signal cords attached to them prevents the loss of things along the route. In addition, well-chosen colors of clothing and equipment “pleasure” the eye, distract from the hardships of travel, and reduce fatigue in conditions of monotonous movement. Uniform dirty green uniforms, backpacks, sleeping bags and tents are one thing, but it’s another thing when the equipment is brightly and differently colored.

Sometimes color has a lot to do with safety; If you take light-colored skis on a hike, then during heavy snowfall or at dusk they may not be visible on your feet, which will make movement difficult. When searching from the air for a lost group, it is not easy to spot a white tent in the snow. And if tourists traveling in the taiga are dressed in traditional rain jackets and do not have any bright and noticeable details on their clothes and backpacks, they can sometimes be mistaken for something else, which can cause an accident.

In 1966, a tourist group from Novosibirsk traveled around Primorye. On one of the days of the hike, the leader allowed two tourists to go ahead to hunt. The hunters moved down the valley, crossed from bank to bank several times, and after half an hour of travel they noticed on the other side of the river, in the gaps of the bushes, the flickering of a gray spot, as it seemed to them, “the side of an elk.” A shot rang out - the "side" flashed in another gap, another shot - and... a man's cry was heard. This is how one of the participants in the campaign was wounded. It turned out that the group had caught up with the hunters and was moving parallel to them at a distance of 60 - 80 m along the other bank. If the tourists had bright clothes (after all, in some places hunters wear bright headbands for this purpose), such violations as inconsistency in the movement of subgroups, lack of agreement about the hunting zone or shooting at an unclear target might not have ended so tragically.

The choice of a specific tone for equipment and clothing depends on the travel conditions. The colors that are most striking and cause an involuntary concentration of attention are both on a white background of snow and on a green or gray background of a forest, field, mountain slope, and, to a slightly lesser extent, red and yellow. The alternation of yellow and black stripes involuntarily catches the eye, which is widely used in warning signs (with the help of which, according to foreign press data, at some industrial enterprises it was possible to reduce the number of accidents by more than 50%). Such contrasting and inviting color solutions are needed primarily for those items that are directly related to safety (avalanche cords, life jackets), or for those that themselves are a potential source of an accident (gas cylinders, gasoline cans).

Much more often than due to technical deficiencies, incompleteness or lack of thought through various little things in equipment, the threat of injury is created due to simple (more correctly, criminal) negligence - loss of axes or matches, drowning of buckets, burning of sleeping bags and tents, damage to clothes and, especially, shoes due to inept drying by the fire.

Sometimes the cause of an accident is the use of equipment for other purposes and not in the conditions and modes for which it was designed.

In 1969, Kyiv tourists made a mountain trip through the Western Caucasus. When climbing the Hokel Pass, the group leader, due to poor grip of his shoes on the slope, fell off and began to fall. The rope used for insurance could not withstand the load. The man flew 150 - 200 m along a steep ice slope and got stuck in a bergschrund, receiving bruises to the body, a cracked skull and damage to the ankle joint.

The investigation of the accident showed that the group, sufficiently equipped with everything necessary: ​​mountain boots, crampons, main and auxiliary ropes, simply did not use the equipment for its intended purpose. The leader's breakdown occurred when he, wearing crampons, tried to overcome the smooth rocks of the "ram's foreheads." The rope broke because it was not the main one (at the time of the accident it was in the backpack of one of the participants), but a thin rope.

According to technical conditions, the rope does not ensure safety of movement on mountainous terrain and can only be used for auxiliary purposes, and crampons are used only for movement on ice and firn.

Thus, assessing the role of equipment in injuries, it can be noted that most activities aimed at reducing the dangers associated with equipment currently depend on the initiative and desire of the travel participants themselves. At the same time, it is clear that in the future, more and more problems of special material equipment for tourism will move from the sphere of tourist technical creativity and “self-service” to a broad industrial basis. This will make it possible to introduce into production equipment necessary for amateur tourism, such as lightweight radio transmitting devices for two-way communication, magnetometric equipment for searching for avalanches, and much more.

When designing new protective and safety devices, it must be taken into account that they should be as simple and easy to use as possible. Excessively heavy, inconvenient life jackets that complicate movement, and sunglasses that quickly fog up and tire vision hinder tourists, and therefore they are rarely used. Devices that increase the number of working movements when overcoming an obstacle and cause loss of time and energy for travelers are also unsuitable.

Reducing injuries should be facilitated by constructive improvements in products already produced by the industry, for example, hiking shoes. In particular, it is necessary to increase the “adhesion” of shoes to smooth surfaces (possibly through deep corrugation of the sole or through combined tricones). For most types of tourism, you need shoes that are “sparing” to the ankle joint, that is, with a high top and cuffs that rigidly fix the ankle in a vertical transverse plane. At the same time, shoes should allow free movement of the toes and maximum amplitude of leg bending in the vertical longitudinal plane.

So, some types of equipment cannot be considered dangerous and others safe, since these qualities are directly dependent on the correct use of the equipment. In addition, danger must be understood not only as the possibility of a direct negative impact of an object (for example, an explosion of a primus stove), but also as an increase in the risk of traveling in the absence or damage of equipment (the danger of frostbite if there is no warm clothing, the danger of loss of orientation when the compass is damaged).

At the same time, we can identify those types of equipment that, if the tourist is incompetent, cause the most severe injuries. These primarily include vehicles: cars, motorcycles, bicycles, kayaks, rafts. Special attention should be paid to more correct use and retrofitting of their safety devices. Statistics of road accidents indicate that in places where safety belts and protective helmets have been forced to be introduced, the number of injuries has more than halved,

Improving tourist equipment and using safety and protective devices will, of course, reduce injuries. However, it is also clear that the percentage of accidents where poor condition and incorrect selection of equipment would be the main cause of injury to travelers is small. Much more often, equipment can appear only as one of the secondary circumstances contributing to the creation of an unsafe situation on the route.

PERSONAL EXPOSURE

As shown above, tourist injuries caused by material factors—the route and equipment—are relatively small. Let us dwell on the so-called personal factors. After all, the safety of any element of the route or type of equipment is largely determined by the level of training, consciousness and other data of a particular person. In other words, the transformation of everything that surrounds a tourist on the route into a potentially dangerous environment is, as it were, a function that depends on the degree of deviation in the traveler’s behavior from some average norm.

Therefore, we can talk about a certain, greater or lesser, exposure of each tourist to the danger of an accident,

The most striking example of this is the presence in any sufficiently large hiking group (as in any group in general) of its “loser”, with whom all sorts of incidents most often happen. There are even special institutions dedicated to identifying “losers” and determining the propensity for accidents among drivers, machinists, pilots and other workers. And such selection brings good results. Thus, according to the Institute of Aviation and Space Medicine of the German Air Force, timely screening of a candidate who does not meet job requirements using psychological tests saves at least 150 thousand dollars.

At the same time, speaking about such a predisposition, one cannot assume that individuals in any place are obviously exposed to danger. It is more correct from among the factors that increase personal exposure to danger to highlight those that increase it sustainably and those that increase it temporarily. The first in tourism include various physical disabilities, chronic diseases, functional disorders of the nervous system. The second is inexperience, poor physical and technical preparation, fatigue, etc.

For convenience of presentation, in this section we will consider two aspects of exposure to danger: 1) associated with a person’s individual suitability for participation in tourist travel and 2) dependent on fatigue. And then we will analyze the exposure due to insufficient experience, incorrect attitude towards danger and lack of discipline.

So, is it possible to talk about a certain fatal susceptibility of a certain circle of people to accidents while hiking? Indeed, abroad, they sometimes try to explain the death of travelers according to Freud’s theory: a person went to travel because of a conflict between the conscious and subconscious, because of an “inferiority complex.” A feeling of impasse, an internal readiness to end his life, an innate susceptibility to misfortune pushes him to unconscious suicide - all that remains is to find the situation and the occasion to carry out the fatal sentence.

There is no basis for such conclusions. Among other things, the personality of a tourist is a product of social development; By participating in hikes and actively working in a tourist team, travelers improve and over time usually get rid of individual characteristics that can negatively affect safety.

However, one cannot ignore that traveling places certain demands on people, which, if ignored, can actually contribute to the emergence of dangerous situations. In this sense, one can even identify a category of people for whom engaging in complex types of sports tourism is contraindicated.

The first group consists of persons suffering from a number of diseases. Among such diseases (the list of them was approved by the Committee on Physical Culture and Sports under the Council of Ministers of the USSR) includes: organic heart defects; hypertension, diseases of the heart muscle, active pulmonary tuberculosis, acute diseases of the lungs, bronchi, nasopharynx; chronic catarrh of the stomach, duodenal ulcer, chronic colitis, inflammation and colic of the gallbladder, hemorrhoids with frequent bleeding, rectal prolapse; inflammation of the kidneys, renal pelvis and bladder, kidney stones; acute inflammation of the middle ear, conjunctivitis, purulent inflammation of the eye sac; infectious skin diseases, some chronic diseases of the female genital organs, malignant tumors, hernia and postoperative scars with a tendency to herniation, chronic articular rheumatism.

Contraindications for travel are diseases of the musculoskeletal system and the supporting apparatus of the spine, which make walking difficult, habitual dislocations in large joints of the arms and legs, injuries to sore joints of the arms and legs received shortly before the trip, contusions and concussions in the past with periodic headaches.

Persons who have had acute illnesses such as persistent flu, malignant tonsillitis, typhoid, or scarlet fever during the previous month cannot participate in a multi-day trip with active modes of transportation. Even one-day hikes can be hindered by mental illness, neurasthenia, and epilepsy.

Such a list, of course, does not apply to all tourism. We are not talking about the “best form of recreation” (mild forms of which are not contraindicated for anyone), but about sports trips. In addition, a specialist at a medical and physical education clinic can positively decide the issue of participation in a particular journey for a person with a specific stage of the diseases indicated here.

However, the incompatibility of most diseases with participation in travel is obvious; exacerbation of the disease in the field, in the absence of qualified medical care, is fraught with unpleasant consequences. The trouble is that diseases (both those that cause sharp exacerbations and those that occur without dangerous “peaks”) cause a number of persistent pathological changes in the body: periodic weakness, malaise, fatigue, headaches, insomnia, irritability, depression, depression.

All this seriously affects a person’s behavior while traveling and increases his exposure to the potential dangers encountered along the route. At the same time, pathological changes weaken the body's resistance. For a certain period, physical weakness or illness can be compensated for by willpower, perseverance, and determination. Such a person goes on trips, as they say, “by the teeth.” But the reserves of nervous energy are finite, and since a sick but strong-hearted tourist spends a significant part of his attention on fighting his illnesses, his attention and strength may not be enough to overcome a natural obstacle.

In terms of the frequency of severe consequences during travel, cardiovascular diseases of an ischemic nature, epilepsy and acute surgical diseases (for example, appendicitis, perforation of an ulcer) predominate. Heart disease and epileptic seizures are also dangerous because they can lead to loss of consciousness on a rather difficult section of the route. Every year, asphyxia occurs when bathing (or simply washing) tourists suffering from these ailments, and according to foreign researchers, due to sudden heart attacks in drivers, up to 700 car collisions occur annually on US roads.

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The ability to independently make life-saving equipment and adapt existing types of tourist equipment to specific conditions can be useful for all travelers. Look at the catamaran these tourists made from kayaks for a relatively simple but unsafe trip around Lake Baikal. Photo.

Much more often than in trips with active modes of transportation (primarily because the patients themselves do not dare to take the risk of participating in them), cardiovascular diseases affect passive vacationers at tourist centers, campsites, and boarding houses. Strictly speaking, such cases cannot be attributed to tourism, since the likelihood of an attack for a particular person in another place might not be less. However, this may signal insufficient medical control over tourists at tourist centers and their use for other purposes, that is, the sending there of people who need sanatorium treatment.

The second group of people for whom active tourism is contraindicated are persons with various sensory impairments.

Partial vision loss or hearing impairment steadily increases the risk of accidents.

Such defects have varying degrees of development and have different effects on the likelihood of injury. But even a slight weakening of visual acuity or hearing can significantly weaken the safety of the route, especially if the traveler does not realize or hides his deficiency, and his comrades, not knowing about it, do not take safety measures. In practice, there are many cases when such tourists lost their orientation, fell behind the group and became victims of rockfalls, breakdowns, overkills, because they physically could not see or hear a danger signal or notice an obstacle in time. Group leaders do not always take into account that travel participants may have hidden visual defects, defects that are not strong enough to require wearing glasses, but in low light conditions make tourists half-blind.

The one who is aware of his shortcoming and tries to overcome it with the means available to him, to compensate for it by heightening other senses, increased attention, and careful development of tourist techniques, is at much less risk. An example of this can be tourist groups of deaf-mutes who undertake hikes of high degrees of difficulty. Therefore, one cannot categorically assume that deafness is an insurmountable obstacle to tourism. According to one survey, the fatal crash rate for deaf drivers was only 0.14%, compared with the average for all drivers of 3.9%.

However, we must not forget that in the conditions of a difficult journey, no matter how great a person’s compensatory capabilities are, it is sometimes difficult to foresee whether their development will lead to damage from an unexpected direction. Thus, in people with one sighted eye, collisions often occur on the side opposite to the blind eye.

The third group of people predisposed to injury are those who have certain functional impairments in the connection between sensory - “feeling” and motor centers and impaired coordination of movements.

A traveler with such disabilities normally perceives external signals, including signals of danger, but cannot react to them quickly and accurately enough. A delayed and inaccurate reaction, inconsistency and uncertainty of movements or excessive fussiness significantly increase the personal risk of the tourist; he needs more time to start braking when falling on a snowy slope, he will miss the precious fractions of a second needed to maneuver the boat before an obstacle on the river, and finally, he is more likely than anyone else to injure his arm or leg with an ax during the usual preparation of firewood.

This danger, unfortunately, is usually mistaken for a temporary disadvantage that characterizes an untrained, inexperienced and untrained tourist. Of course, the “symptoms” are close here. And the “medicines” are the same - gradual development of the necessary skills, development of automaticity of movements. However, the similarity does not extend further. A novice tourist without deviations in the nervous system eventually becomes experienced and trained, and a person with disturbances in the coordination between sensory and motor processes or with movement defects only to some extent adapts to the conditions of travel, but remains more susceptible to danger than others.

By the way, many researchers studying the causes of accidents in production and transport believe that it is disruptions in communication between the senses and motor centers that play a major role in the occurrence of most accidents.

Significantly reduces psychological readiness to withstand danger imbalance in the course of emotional processes in individuals.

The imbalance of emotional processes is expressed in an overly acute reaction to stimuli, in thoughtlessness of actions and haste in their implementation, in an unexpected change of joy and sadness, rise and fall of mood. Such instability of some is easily transmitted to others in a closed group. Even a small discord or conflict in a group, an injustice committed by someone or an offense against comrades causes absent-mindedness, anxiety, nervousness and, as a result, disrupts attention, coordination, and obscures the perception of impending danger.

However, not only negative emotions are fraught with unpleasant consequences. Quite the contrary, no matter how strange it may seem at first glance: it is the strong joyful experiences from communicating with picturesque nature, good friends, and from successfully overcoming hiking difficulties that often precede injury. This is explained simply - tourism itself is so interesting that it gives more reasons for joy than for despondency. Another person with increased emotional instability of the psyche, who has been cut off from a clear work schedule and familiar everyday environment during a vacation, vacation or on a day off, simply cannot cope with the positive emotions that overwhelm him.

Such activity, if not controlled and directed along a reasonable path, does not always stop when energy runs out or time is limited. Twisted legs, sprained joints, broken noses are a common ending to harmless fun caused by a cheerful attitude. And in the presence of potentially dangerous objects or activities, serious injuries cannot be excluded, associated, for example, on weekend trips with games on the water, playing with fire or sharp objects.

Such injuries occupy a special place among young tourists. However, impulsiveness, insufficiently developed inhibition, little life experience, weak self-criticism and other age-related characteristics of minors are not dangerous in themselves. Only ignorance of these features on the part of the organizers and leaders of travel leads to the fact that teenagers, in a fit of enthusiasm, lift unbearable weights, are easily carried away by an excessively high pace, and at rest stops they start pranks and fights using steps and other unsafe techniques. Experts believe that up to 1/4 of all school injuries from falls occur as a result of tripping*.

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* R. Ya. Usoskina. Organization of the fight against injuries in children. L., 1969.

On more difficult journeys, the negative effect of positive emotions for some is manifested in a feeling of inspiration and faith in the unlimited power of one’s own, which arises after overcoming the next obstacle, for example a pass. More precisely, apparent overcoming. Having reached the culminating point of the ascent, an unbalanced person, even knowing perfectly well that the descent in the mountains is more dangerous than the ascent, can, under the influence of emotional experience, lose vigilance and make dangerous mistakes. Therefore, to ensure safety, it is very important to be able to maintain composure and consciously regulate the flow of emotional processes.

It is difficult to determine how much misfortune the increased exposure to danger brings to individuals, since this quality is not always obvious to others, and its bearer, as a rule, is not aware of his “guilt.” It is also difficult because in a number of accidents one can assume (due to the obvious absurdity of people’s behavior) the presence of some kind of deviation in the health of the victims. If we take as a basis only the number of known serious accidents that were preceded by a hidden serious illness or obvious physical disability in the victim, then according to data for 1968-1969, they will be about 15%. total number of serious injuries.

The main ways to reduce injuries associated with increased personal exposure to danger can be considered to be strengthening medical control over those setting off on a serious journey and improving testing (a special form of testing is needed) of their comprehensive readiness to endure the hardships of traveling.

The question is not about conducting mandatory tests for those who want to engage in tourism (among other things, there is currently neither an exact list of qualities that everyone specializing in a particular type of tourism should have, nor a specific test methodology), but about prohibiting participation in high-risk trips for people who have a greater exposure to danger than others.

The gradualism and consistency in increasing the complexity of routes, which forms the basis of classification standards for tourism and the rules for organizing amateur tourist travel, largely make it possible to solve the problem of safety, since during the time required to gain experience in relatively easy routes, the traveler is in front of his comrades, the tourist section, the route-qualification commission, and the physical education team. They determine his personal suitability for hikes of increased complexity. Unfortunately, the formal right of a tourist to participate in a hike of a certain category of difficulty is sometimes recognized as sufficient to include him in a group setting off along a very risky route, where, due to his personal qualities, this person certainly should not go.

On the role of fatigue. Its influence is a temporary factor that only periodically increases the tourist’s exposure to danger. However, with prolonged overwork, residual, chronic deviations from the norm may appear, and then serious violations of travel safety are likely,

It is not easy to take into account fatigue as a cause of injury in quantitative terms. On the one hand, tourists often confuse its mild form - fatigue - with fatigue, and on the other hand, having gotten used to overloads, they do not notice fatigue where it exists even in the severe stage. It can be tentatively assumed that fatigue appears as one of the causes of severe injuries in at least 1/4 of accidents on routes.

In hiking conditions, everyone can sooner or later feel tired. It leads to a slowdown in reactions, to the appearance of erroneous actions, or (in the easiest case) to the need for additional attention and control over one’s actions, which were previously performed as if automatically (for example, rowing on a raft or releasing a rope on a belay). One of the dangers of fatigue lies in the need for additional stress on the brain system. Distracted by extra efforts to control “mechanical” activities, the tourist relaxes his vigilance. His readiness for emergency action drops sharply.

Fatigue significantly reduces attention. A tired person can concentrate for only a short time, and his periods of relaxation are prolonged. It is also more strongly influenced by factors that involuntarily distract attention.

Passing through difficult sections in the afternoon coincides with the culmination of tourists’ fatigue, when the most pronounced changes in the functions of a tired person appear - deterioration in sensitivity to external stimuli and the ability to concentrate, slow thinking, emotional instability, decreased coordination and strength of movements. It is no coincidence that more than 50% of the average daily “norm” of injuries occurs in the afternoon hours, although actual walking time during this period of the day is limited.

To successfully combat fatigue, you need to know its causes. The main ones are the lack of training of the travel participants; an excessive route, an overly busy schedule, worsening weather. Untimely and insufficient nutrition, lack of sleep, disruption of the daily routine, especially late rises and movement in the dark, contribute to rapid fatigue. In addition to excessive eye strain, slower speed and increased monotony of movement, such a violation of the regime inevitably breaks the rhythm of a person’s biological activity of rest, associated with the alternation of day and night, which, in turn, also increases fatigue.

Fatigue, which significantly increases the risk of an accident, is preceded by a feeling of tiredness. The team leader should not ignore this natural signal, but must take preventive measures to reduce fatigue;

stop the group for an unscheduled vacation, organize the intake of easily digestible and fortified food (for example, glucose with vitamin C).

If safety conditions allow, it is advisable to change the pace or line of movement, distract people with singing, interesting conversation, i.e., try to reduce the monotony of the path. Therefore, the professional suitability of an instructor on a planned route should also be determined by the ability to relieve fatigue from novice tourists, the ability to properly engage them in active activities at a small rest stop, without turning it into a passive relaxing holiday, after which time is required to mobilize forces.

DANGER OF INEXPERIENCE

The inexperience of tourists includes insufficient general and special physical training, lack of clarity and coordination of movements, hiking skills, dexterity in field work, and a poor understanding of possible dangers. In other words, with inexperience, the lack of practical experience is combined with theoretical illiteracy and weak tactical thinking.

Inexperience can lead to disaster even on the simplest of hikes.

Thus, according to data for two years, 86% of serious injuries occur among beginners and “Tourist of the USSR” badges, 12% among travelers of the III and II categories, 2% among first-class athletes, candidates for masters and masters of sports in tourism (with the share of these groups in tourism being 94.2, 5.5 and 0.3%, respectively). Analyzing these figures, we must remember that minor injuries have not yet been taken into account - the most widespread among beginner tourists, as well as the fact that, compared to beginners, dischargers and masters always have an increased level of difficulty of travel and objectively more dangerous obstacles on the routes.

The high number of accidents involving inexperienced people is, of course, not limited to tourism.

Thus, according to the Central Institute of Traumatology and Orthopedics of the USSR Ministry of Health*, in general, it is typical for athletes of various specializations that 3.7% of those who received a sports injury are masters of sports. first-class athletes - 7.8%, athletes of categories II and III - 52.5% and beginners - 36%.

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* 3. Mironova, L. Heifetz. Prevention of injuries in sports and first aid. FiS, 1966.

What does experience give to a traveler? Firstly, experience prevents, in general, quite understandable mistakes of poorly prepared, little-knowledgeable, inept people who have not yet learned to adapt to all the requirements of the field situation; secondly, it allows you to avoid mistakes due to uncertainty, anxiety, and fear of a possible mistake. Newcomers sometimes try to suppress such uncertainty by decisive action or even ignoring established security measures, which only complicates the situation.

Experience allows you to feel confident in a camping environment under adverse environmental influences (cold, wind, lack of oxygen), to know when you can ignore them, and, therefore, save the expenditure of nervous energy.

An experienced traveler moves, navigates, and overcomes obstacles, so to speak, automatically and with the least expenditure of effort, as a result of which, on the same route, he has significantly more energy in reserve than his less prepared comrade, and is more protected from possible danger.

The lower susceptibility to injury among an experienced tourist is also explained by a different degree of concentration of attention compared to a beginner (the latter refers to the readiness to react to an external stimulus on the route). He can simultaneously easily perceive both his own actions and the environment and act depending on the situation.

The attention of a beginner, especially when passing through sections of increased difficulty or worsening weather, often turns out to be scattered. His involuntary attention is heightened, which is attracted by intense external influences on the route, for example, the roar of an avalanche, wind blows, the flash of lightning. In these cases, the concentration of voluntary attention decreases - the most important in such conditions (for example, in relation to the sound signal of the leader, the go-ahead signal from the ship ahead, the slight trembling of the rope used to secure a comrade on a rocky area).

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The complexity of the routes or the quality of the equipment do not in themselves determine the dangers of travel. Technical literacy and tactical experience allow many tourist groups to successfully overcome high mountains and spend the night almost comfortably under the protection of walls made of snow bricks or in a snow hut. Photo 1, photo 2.

As a rule, external distractions (for example, extraneous conversation in a group) easily destroy the stability of a beginner’s voluntary attention and cause a temporary inhibition of the reaction to a really necessary signal, which leads to inaction or incorrect action, which contributes to the occurrence of an accident.

To develop stable voluntary attention, special training sessions with novice tourists are desirable. At the same time, we must not forget about maintaining high conscious discipline in groups, eliminating unnecessary noise, fussiness, and disorganization along the route.

One of the possible types of attention training could be classes to develop observation skills. Students are given the task of observing the surrounding nature and are led along a short (3 - 5 km) but rather difficult route passing through rough terrain. Then the leader asks several unexpected questions (what types of trees or traces of which animals were encountered along the route, how many times the route crossed paths, which direction the wind blew) and suggests drawing the terrain along the route. A limited time is allotted for a written response (5 - 8 minutes). Questions may be more specialized in nature and require attention to a narrower range of objects, which must be communicated by the trainer before the lesson. To make the training more difficult, the route is completed at a fast pace or with heavy backpacks.

This method of developing concentration will require considerable stress and effort from beginners, especially when introducing any artificial interference, but if used regularly, it can probably serve as a fairly effective means of teaching tourists how to properly distribute their attention and help reduce their exposure to danger.

At the same time, we must not forget about the real abilities of a person: experience shows that it is almost impossible to simultaneously observe more than 2-3 objects in tourism. If you watch even just one object with a high degree of tension (for example, while on a belay), then after 15 - 20 minutes, as a rule, attention weakens and at the same time sensitivity to distractions increases. In such cases, it is necessary to often change the observer, work with a backup, or alternate objects of observation between tourists, because conscious switching of attention always requires less stress than its long-term concentration.

By the way, another advantage of an experienced tourist over an inexperienced one is the ability, if necessary, to gather one’s attention “into a fist”, and when necessary, to weaken it and create a pause for rest. It is important to know when and where it is permissible to switch your attention. An experienced tourist can sometimes do two things at the same time on a difficult section - one related to overcoming the obstacle, and the second, on the contrary, distracting from it. And the latter will not always be a hindrance in the main activity. As long as distracting actions - be it memories, conversations, songs - do not cause inhibition of the nerve centers serving the main work of the tourist, their influence can only be positive. After all, these extraneous activities relieve the monotony of the load (for example, monotonous movement under a backpack), act as an internal stimulating factor and thereby have a positive effect on the traveler’s performance without weakening his attention to ensuring safety.

Determining the specific significance in accidents of the factors that make up the concept of “inexperience” is complicated by the fact that they, as a rule, are closely intertwined: low physical training is usually accompanied by technical illiteracy, ignorance of dangers and ways to protect against them - tactical helplessness. In general, the main causes of injuries lie in insufficient technical and tactical training of tourists. It causes almost half of all severe injuries on routes. Insufficient physical training is typical for 30% of such injuries.

Ignorance of technical techniques or their incorrect execution due to poor command of the arsenal of technical means is dangerous in large and small ways.

Take, for example, falls. When tourists (like other athletes) fall, they must automatically take the necessary stance and group their body in such a way as to avoid serious injury. And the spread of such injuries is evidenced by the fact that, according to Moscow emergency medical services, 71% of all accidents on the city streets are associated with falls that are not dependent on transport.

Failure to apply technical techniques in tourism can lead to an accident, as they say, “out of the blue.” Such incidents often indicate poor physical fitness and ignorance of basic safety measures.

An example is a severe injury (spinal fracture) received by one of the students at a seminar on training public tourism instructors in the Kalinin region. During morning exercises, two girls performed a paired exercise: standing with their backs to each other and clasping their hands behind them, they alternated lifting their partner while bending forward. One of the girls lost her balance and, falling, dragged her friend with her, who hit her head on the ground.

To avoid this, in the process of practical training you need to learn 2 - 3 standard positions for the correct fall. So, if a tourist slips and falls on his right side, he should quickly press his chin to his chest, bend his knees, and stretch his arms forward. When touching the ground, transfer the weight of the body to the right buttock, roll towards the right shoulder blade and hit the ground as hard as possible with the outstretched right hand. When falling backwards, you also need to quickly group yourself - bend your knees and tuck your chin to your chest, and when you lower yourself onto your buttocks, bend at the back and make a smooth roll back. It is best to learn these positions as part of a group on the beach or lawn with thick grass.

Technical and organizational preparation cannot guarantee safety if travelers have neglected tactical preparation. Any serious omission in tactical knowledge i.e. in developing a campaign plan, its schedule, in choosing the correct line of movement on the ground, sharply increases the possibility of an accident.

In the winter of 1963, five doctors and students of Moscow medical universities set off from the Sivaya Maska station (Komi Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic) towards the ridges of the Polar Urals. Solid technical preparations were made for the trip: a tent and stove were specially designed, sledges with reindeer skins were taken, which were supposed to replace sleeping bags for the night in the tent. However, the doctors were tactically unprepared for the hike and, knowing that they would not be allowed on the route, hid their plan from their friends at the institute and from the route-qualification commission of the city tourist club.

The first half of the journey went well. Traveling several tens of kilometers a day on hard crust with a tailwind, the skiers reached the Khoyla Pass and, after waiting out a two-day snowstorm, reached the eastern, Ob, slopes of the Urals. It was here that the group’s tactical miscalculations manifested themselves: the snow in the Trans-Urals turned out to be of a completely different quality - loose, deep, without any hint of a crust. The tourists had to abandon their sledges, which meant they were deprived of a warm overnight stay. Falling into the snow above their knees on skis that were not wide enough (taken for hard snow), they now did not even do 10 km a day. Food ran out, people were freezing and falling into apathy. The target date for returning to work and college was missed by a week. Friends of the missing, based on fragmentary data, reconstructed possible routes for tourists; Rescue teams left Vorkuta and Salekhard; Search planes were circling over the Polar Urals.

Everything ended well: the exhausted tourists themselves reached the Northern Lights station. Safely, except for the worries of family and friends, the lost time of dozens of people cut off from their main work, and the costs of equipment used to rescue the missing.

Another dangerous consequence of tactical inexperience, or more precisely, topographical illiteracy of tourists is cases of loss of orientation. If they occur in densely populated areas or where there is an extensive network of tourist checkpoints, the matter is limited to one or two days of wandering and searching.

However, loss of orientation does not always end so simply. There are known cases when those who got lost died of hunger or, heading along the wrong path, came to dangerous, impassable areas and lost their lives. It can be assumed that at least 5% of serious injuries during travel are the result of poor orientation on the ground. The percentage of minor injuries and especially diseases is even higher. Here is one of the typical cases.

In 1967, tourists from Makeevka went on a trip to the Eastern Sayan region. The group had neither the necessary map nor a clear idea of ​​the upcoming route. No one had any experience of taiga treks. Therefore, already in the first days, having found themselves in the upper reaches of the Durgomzha River, the Makeevites lost their orientation and for more than a week unsuccessfully circled in the area of ​​the Iya, Khoito and Oka rivers. Soon the team split into separate subgroups. As a result, the two got lost and, wandering through the taiga, accidentally reached the Oka River, where they were picked up by local residents on motor boats. Those who remained (among them there were two sick people) experienced acute malnutrition, some began to suffer from dystrophy, but the lack of practical ability to live in field conditions did not allow them to take advantage of fishing, collecting mushrooms, berries, and wild edible plants. After 10 days, the tourists came to an unknown river. Convinced that they were unable to build even the simplest raft (this saved their lives, because there were rapids ahead that were impassable for beginners), the Makeyevites walked along the river. Here they were discovered by a tourist fisherman from Perm. He fed and cared for the would-be travelers for several days, and then rafted them to Saram.

Thus, due to ignorance of the travel area, due to poor training, tactical and technical illiteracy and lack of basic practical skills, which were the result of the people’s lack of experience, 11 people were almost injured.

Since the issues of general physical training are quite well developed in sports, and its main provisions are applicable to tourism, there is no need to dwell on them. It should only be noted that regular, year-round physical training for tourists is also important as a means of hardening and acclimatization. In the process of intense training and long-term physical activity in the pre-hiking period, a lack of oxygen arises and is compensated for in the human body (“oxygen debt”). This means that acclimatization upon entering the route will be more painless and will not temporarily increase the susceptibility to the danger of an accident.

At the same time, belated attempts at hardening during a hike are often not only useless, but also harmful.

In 1964, in the Pamirs, an accident occurred in a group of Kharkov athletes - one of the participants in the trip died of pneumonia within two days. It turned out that before the hike he had never seriously engaged in hardening, and in the harsh conditions of camp life he suddenly decided to douse himself with cold water and wipe himself with snow. The unprepared body responded to this with a cold, which in the highlands turned into fleeting pneumonia.

And now let’s turn to the most important problem of increasing the technical and tactical experience of tourists and the topic closest to ours - training in safety measures.

The fundamental principle of such training is that safety issues are inseparable from the technology and tactics of a particular type of tourism, and compliance with safety measures is not some kind of addition to the requirements for a tourist as a specialist in his sport. In other words, a “good trip” also means a “safe trip.”

The implementation of this principle begins in the process of training tourist organizers and tour leaders, the curricula and programs of which provide theoretical classes on topics related to safety measures on tourist routes. However, one should not limit oneself only to lectures, i.e., to obtaining information about the types of hazards. It is necessary that students’ logical comprehension of specific factual material on safety measures occurs constantly. It is advisable to include in any topic of classes, be it “Tourist Equipment”, “Orienteering Techniques” or “Bivouac Setup”, questions related to the prevention of injuries and explain the dangers of, for example, low-quality equipment that has not been repaired in advance, or the inability to navigate. local items, incorrectly chosen place to set up a tent in the mountains.

At the same time, one should strive to ensure that a person’s figurative representation of danger is combined with the simultaneous mental reproduction of ways to protect against it and evoke actions that help eliminate the danger.

When separately considering safety measures and the possible consequences of their non-compliance, impressions may be deposited in the memory of the trainees, which in a real field situation will give rise to fear or helplessness rather than a readiness to repel danger.

You need to be especially careful and sensitive with young tourists. Safety lectures for them should not turn into horror demonstrations with naturalistic details and predetermined fatal outcomes. Beginners should be given an analysis of travel accidents, not a scary list of accidents that teaches nothing positive. And give with a clear emphasis on precautions that could (if they were taken in time) prevent misfortune or reduce the damage caused by them.

You need to be attentive to the psychological effect that stories about the most formidable natural dangers on the routes have on an inexperienced person. Experienced travelers know that being carried away by the pressure of water on a tourist who is not protected by a rope while crossing a powerful mountain stream with a steep drop in the riverbed or getting caught in an avalanche does not give a person much of a chance to live.

But if a misfortune does happen, the last chance for salvation cannot be neglected. Therefore, beginners should also be taught techniques for staying on the surface of an avalanche using swimming movements, ways to preserve life in a water stream or under a layer of snow, no matter how problematic these techniques and methods may be. And the main thing is that you need to tell a person about a mountain river and an avalanche: “Do everything not to fall into it!”

Theoretical safety lessons must be combined with practical training on the ground, where the tourist could observe the actions of more experienced comrades and imitate them when reproducing actions related to the prevention and liquidation of an “emergency” situation.

During classes, it is necessary to instill in tourists a certain “defensive reaction,” that is, teach them to perform certain technical techniques in a completely reliable way and not only personally avoid dangerous situations, but also be prepared for possible mistakes of other group members. Unfortunately, this idea of ​​safety measures is not always consistent with practice: many tourists expect that their friends will always be precise in their actions.

The entire educational process at seminars, training camps, and schools of tourism skills should be structured in such a way as to instill in students a firm belief in the immutability of safety rules. At any more or less lengthy seminar or gathering, it is necessary to assemble a rescue team, create a fund of rescue equipment, and assign an instructor responsible for safety (“chief rescuer”). All departures for training sessions must be scrupulously recorded in the duty log, indicating target return dates, and violations of safety rules must be the subject of demonstrative discussion. Practical classes on any topic should be carried out only if all safety requirements are fully met.

It should be remembered that an indifferent attitude to safety issues during training gives tourists the idea that violations are permissible, fosters irresponsibility and a frivolous attitude towards real dangers.

Special reminders about safety measures are of some benefit (they should be provided to all tourists, and not just to participants in seminars or training camps). It is recommended that the leaflet include brief information about possible dangers during hikes and instructions for preventing injuries. The main place should be taken by specific advice and rules of behavior on the route. The memo should be laconic, and the requirements for the safety responsibilities of travel participants should be categorical. In the form of direct prohibitions, it is necessary to indicate the inadmissibility of swimming without the permission of the instructor, drinking alcohol, walking alone, etc.

To create a kind of “safety margin”, in some cases it is useful to deliberately (but controlled) overload the trainees or put them (with mandatory safety net) in conditions close to dangerous. Thus, when preparing for winter travel, in order to guarantee a successful outcome in case of accidental damage to equipment along the route, it is recommended to practice in advance various methods of emergency overnight stays. During a training weekend trip, tourists put aside tents, stoves, sleeping bags and organize training bivouacs in shelters, in snow huts, pits and caves.

In the process of training mining tourists and skiers, it is necessary to practice the techniques of proper falling and subsequent self-arrest on steep slopes. Those who specialize in water travel need skills in “free” handling of the water element, which are acquired, in particular, by swimming in clothes and by deliberate overkill.

In the 50s, in the tourist camp "Torpedo" (Novo-Melkovo), a procedure was established in which all tourists, before going on water trips along the Upper Volga and its tributaries, underwent a series of tests. One of them was conventionally called practicing rowing techniques. In fact, tourists in bathing suits (they were warned that they might get splashed) in double boats sailed 15 - 20 m from the shore. Then, at a signal from the person conducting the lesson, the instructors, who were one by one on the boats, stood on the sides and, sharply rocking the boats, turned them over. Having surfaced after an artificial overkill, the tourists transported the boats and oars to the shore, as they had been taught in previously conducted theoretical classes. The safety of the test was guaranteed by duty boats with rescue equipment and swimmers, as well as by the insignificant (no more than 2 m) depth of the river in the place chosen for the exercise.

When training, you need to try to ensure that a certain range of safety skills is practically mastered by all tourists without exception. The minimum practical skills that everyone needs are: correct use of self-belay, working with a rope, applying a bandage to a wound, the ability to perform artificial respiration and chest compressions, and transport victims using available means.

To better master the material, you need to use various methodological techniques. Particularly interesting opportunities open up during a training trip, when solving specific problems of a real, rather than fictitious, trip. It is possible, for example, while moving along the route, to hold competitions (relay races) with transporting the “victim” in various ways over a long distance, and at the bivouac, organize the work so that each tourist does what he is currently doing poorly.

Training alarms and the use of the game method have proven themselves to be effective for practicing actions during rescue operations.

The game-lesson is preceded by a certain preparation of the entire assembly (seminar), the organization of a rescue team, the creation of a fund of emergency equipment and the maintenance of moral readiness among students to provide assistance to those in distress. To make the incident more believable, the topic of classes is not indicated in advance in the curriculum. On the contrary, the staged “emergency” seems to disrupt the curriculum.

A specific reason for organizing search and rescue operations can be an allegedly received distress signal or a missed deadline for the return of 1 - 2 tourists who are aware of the planned game. In connection with the declaration of an emergency, the rescue chief immediately begins to organize search and assistance: allocates forward and auxiliary groups, a reserve detachment, ensures the issuance of the necessary equipment, stipulates the movement plan, means of communication, checkpoints and points.

Depending on local conditions and the time allotted for the activity (at least 3 - 4 hours), tourists conduct a selective, linear or area search, then provide first aid and transport the “victims”. The game ends with a detailed analysis of the actions of each of the “rescuers” in the presence of all tourists.

Practical classes in tourism technology with an emphasis on safety make it possible to achieve such skills formation that would organically include in the motor ensemble techniques and movements that meet the requirements of safe passage of the route. But this method of training gives good results in cases where safety requirements are regulated by the work movements themselves. Thus, when rowing a kayak or steering a raft, the correct working movements (and combinations of movements) allow you to best avoid all obstacles on the river, move quickly and with the least amount of effort. At the same time, the same movements allow you to complete the route without accidents. Another example is climbing a steep snow slope using the “three stroke” method, when the movement itself is impossible without proper work (support) with an ice ax, and this same work is the main action to ensure the safety of the mining tourist.

It’s another matter when compliance with safety rules does not depend on the tourist’s working movements and requires the implementation of additional actions, which are subjectively, perhaps, “unnecessary” and interfere with the main movements. Thus, the use of a safety rope, the use of a life jacket or mittens on the belay do not directly facilitate the tourist’s movements. On the contrary, they cause additional energy consumption, hinder movement or reduce travel comfort. In these cases, it is necessary to develop independent skills so that the tourist automatically, despite the apparent inconvenience, takes actions that ensure the safety of him and the group. Here it is necessary to create such a stable connection in the tourist’s nervous activity that would be easily reproduced in the sequence in which events and facts were repeatedly repeated during the process of his learning.

In other words, the purpose of training in sections related to travel safety is to ensure that actions determined by safety measures are themselves included in the dynamic stereotype of tourist behavior. This is possible when such actions are presented to the learner not as something independent, but as an integral element of the journey. And they present themselves constantly and persistently, without making any allowance for the conventionality of the learning environment, the training nature of the classes, or the simplicity of the technical skill. With such an impact, over time it will simply be impossible for the traveler to perform actions in a different sequence than he is used to. Thus, for a mining tourist, it becomes a necessity caused by habit to fasten a carabiner to a safety rope, check the knots tied, and put on mittens before descending the rope. Just as mechanically, returning from a hunt, an experienced taiga tourist unloads his gun before leaving the forest to join his comrades.

It is clear that learning safety measures is not like learning, for example, swimming, which, as is known, is an irreversible skill in a person’s life and allows him, once he learns to swim, to successfully stay on the water after a long break. Knowledge and skills related to accident prevention require control and reinforcement, since a certain developed sequence of actions is carried out accurately only as long as the conditions that caused it persist.

In this regard, it is useful to draw more attention to sources of danger from those who already have travel experience. This is necessary, first of all, in order to retain in their memory the awareness of danger, which, having become accustomed to it, they forget about. In this case (as opposed to working with beginners), you can more boldly address the facts of injuries in tourism, and more clearly demonstrate the sad consequences of non-compliance with safety measures.

Another effective means of reducing injuries and checking whether tourists’ preparedness meets safety requirements is the so-called control standards. They already exist in a number of types of tourism (for example, in caving tourism and partially in mountain and water tourism).

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The front helmsman pulled back, the rowing hung helplessly in the air - the blow could no longer be avoided. In a second, the powerful jets of Ka-Khem will pile the raft onto the rock. This is what a moment of confusion and miscalculation when entering the threshold cost the travelers. Photo.

The widespread introduction of uniform control standards, specified by type of movement and categories of difficulty, would make it possible to determine before the trip the degree of development of the basic physical qualities of tourists (strength, endurance, dexterity, balance), and their technical training.

At present, when a group is released on a route, its members are most often checked only for the degree of theoretical knowledge, familiarity from the literature with the intended area of ​​travel, and compliance of previous experience (according to the certificates presented) with the planned route. But no one can objectively judge the physical and technical preparation of these people at this particular moment; even they themselves, despite the fact that they had conducted several training trips before the trip. Quantitative indicators of standards would be very helpful here.

To summarize, it should be emphasized that the insufficient level of experience of tourists and especially cases of discrepancy between the preparedness of travelers and the complexity of the routes are one of the most common causes of injuries.

Increased experience will minimize the negative impact of many factors that temporarily increase the susceptibility of tourists to accidents. It is experience, as experts say, that forms a kind of “block” in the brain system of people, designed to insure against any surprises. By maintaining this unit in standby condition, the traveler automatically turns on the necessary propulsion systems in a dangerous situation. Thus, experience warns against wrong actions and helps to easily endure the difficulties of hiking; it also forms a person’s vigilance and readiness for emergency action in dangerous areas.

PANIC STATE

Recalling the circumstances that preceded a particular travel injury, victims often recall a kind of failure in thinking and are surprised at the obvious illogicality of their behavior that led to the accident. Group comrades who observed the incident from the outside and provided assistance also usually note the strange confusion and abnormal mental state that the person responsible for the misfortune had at the time of the incident.

Of course, such an abnormal state - let's call it panic - does not always precede an accident. There cannot be, for example, confusion before such fleeting events as the breaking of a rope or the explosion of a kerosene stove. And yet, for more than 1/6 of all cases of severe injury, it is necessary to note certain temporary shifts in the psyche of travelers. And if we take into account that such abnormalities in people’s behavior occur in a critical situation, often without witnesses and are not recorded in the memory of the victims, then their role in the causation of tourist injuries will increase even more.

What is a panic state? Confusion, fear, confusion, loss of control over your actions and thoughts. Manifestations of panic while traveling are varied.

A person caught off guard by impending danger may become paralyzed with terror. From literary descriptions, many people know the confusion of a person who suddenly encounters, for example, a poisonous snake or bear; fear freezes all limbs, cold perspiration covers the body, nausea rises in the throat, and the vision becomes cloudy. A person wants to run and is unable to take a single step. He was dumbfounded. Another moment - and fainting may occur. When meeting wild animals, this is not so dangerous: most likely, the snake or bear will immediately move away without causing harm. It’s worse when the cause of horror is such “inanimate” phenomena as a rockfall, an avalanche, or a water flow.

Numbness and sudden inhibition of actions on the water are fraught with the most dire consequences. Death from heart failure in the absence of water in the lungs - this is the doctor’s statement for a significant proportion of those who drowned during tourist travel. Such an end seems especially offensive when all measures were taken to save the person: he was wearing a life jacket, a rope was thrown to him, or a boat was heading towards him to help, and he, it turns out, had already died from fear.

Another, so to speak, active type of manifestation of panic is instinctive defensive actions performed without control by the mind of travelers: rapid flight, jumping to the side, screaming. Sometimes they are useful and help to avoid danger: for example, jumping to the side saves you from a flying stone. But often (especially in technical types of tourism) actions taken only under the influence of an unconditional defensive reflex lead to the opposite result.

The instinctive desire of a person who has fallen into the water during an overkill to immediately swim to the shore contradicts reasonable safety requirements: it is more correct to row calmly, with the current, to a shallow place and under no circumstances abandon the boat. Unfortunately, under the influence of panic, not everyone does this. The same condition repeatedly pushed groups that had lost their orientation along the route to randomly rush in different directions, which only completely led them astray. There have been cases when the threat of apparent danger caused such strong temporary defects in people’s thinking that they threw their backpacks, clothes, and sleeping bags in a panicked flight, thereby exposing themselves to a real risk of serious frostbite in winter conditions.

The third manifestation of dangerous confusion is “silent panic,” or a feeling of extreme helplessness, hopelessness, and doom. Man stops resisting and surrenders in advance to the mercy of the winner - nature.

Such deep, pronounced depression sometimes resembles suicide. Outwardly, “quiet panic” does not manifest itself as clearly as complete numbness or rapid flight - a person continues to automatically carry out the task once started, but internally he “gets cold.” Sometimes this happens in the literal sense of the word, as, for example, with some inexperienced tourists caught without equipment on the route by a blizzard, darkness, strong wind, or low temperature. Demoralization from such influence can be so strong that a person seems to be deprived of all his protective powers. Whether he will remain unharmed or suffer frostbite or other injury - time and chance decide. Sometimes even the efforts of friends do not help.

In 1962, while skiing in the Carpathians, a tourist froze to death after several hours in a snowstorm. He died lying in a sleeping bag, in a shelter. To his left and right were his comrades who assisted him. But the victim (for the first time in his life he found himself in conditions of strong wind and low temperatures) mentally gave up and did not resist the external environment.

This is typical not only for winter or particularly harsh conditions. Recently, more and more researchers have come to the conclusion that it is not the inability to swim, not coldness or injuries that cause a very large number of tragedies on the water.

Of the 200 thousand people who die annually as a result of maritime disasters, about 50 thousand do not go down at the same time as the ship. They disembark into lifeboats and... soon die a painful death. Although it would take them several times longer to die of hunger or thirst.

What's the matter? Let us remember the words of the famous travel doctor Alain Bombard, author of the book “Overboard at Will.”

“When a ship is sinking, it seems to a person that the whole world is going down with his ship; when two floorboards disappear from under his feet, at the same time all his courage and all his reason go with them. And even if he finds a lifeboat at that moment, he is not yet saved. Because he freezes in it without moving, struck by the misfortune that has befallen him. Because he no longer lives. Shrouded in the darkness of the night, drawn by the current and the wind, trembling before the abyss, afraid of both noise and silence, in just three days he finally turns into a dead man.

Victims of legendary shipwrecks... it wasn't the sea that killed you, it wasn't hunger that killed you, it wasn't thirst that killed you! Rocking on the waves to the plaintive cries of seagulls, you died of fear."

The panic state can be expressed in other forms. Sometimes they successively replace each other: having encountered danger, a person was dumbfounded by surprise, then instinctively rushed to run, and not seeing a way out of the situation, fell into severe depression. All this can last a matter of seconds or last for long hours, depending on the individual characteristics of the tourist.

It is important that at this time the traveler, due to a sudden disturbance in thinking and extreme emotional tension, is seriously exposed to the danger of an accident. And not necessarily the one he was so afraid of.

It is also important that panic is “contagious”: it is easily transmitted from one group member to another and can cover the entire team. Then the foundations of the existence of a tourist group - collectivism, camaraderie, mutual assistance - are jeopardized.

There is no special cure for panic.

Since panic is a kind of “transmission mechanism” through which the individual qualities of tourists are manifested, increasing their exposure to danger, sufficient experience, general physical and special training, emotional balance, and discipline are important to prevent a panic state. The same manifestation of the elemental forces of nature will cause mobilization of forces in an experienced traveler, and confusion and fear in a beginner. For the same reason, the likelihood of panic is significantly increased by an unstable or weak type of nervous system, illness, and fatigue.

It is very important whether travelers have a certain “baggage” of knowledge and skills. If a person is confident that in an emergency or in the event of an injury he will be able to successfully fight for life and health, he has already half won the battle against unfavorable circumstances.

Anyone who is trained to use a bundle of brushwood, a backpack or a sleeping bag wrapped in polyethylene as improvised watercraft during a forced crossing will probably not lose self-control on the water. Those who know how to quickly light signal fires with smoke of different colors, call for help with a signal mirror or other means will not so easily fall into the depression of loneliness. Anyone who imagines that many berries, mushrooms, roots, and the meat of almost all animals can be eaten, for example, frogs, lizards, snakes (including poisonous ones), rich in fat and consumed as a delicacy by the population of some countries, caterpillars, insect larvae, will not die from fear of hunger.

Therefore, as mentioned above, during the training process one must not forget to put tourists in the position of those in distress (lost, lost food and equipment, having a wounded comrade) and force them to look for the optimal way out of such a situation. In this case, sufficient attention should be paid not only to calling for help and the peculiarities of the movement of distressed groups, but also to the ability to live in nature: to build emergency bivouacs, eat “pasture”, and, if necessary, use snares, nooses, dies, slingshots for hunting small animals.

The leader of the tourist team plays a major role in preventing and eliminating panic. Sometimes everything depends on his will, authority, and determination. There are many cases where the leader’s inability to cope with the dangerous depression of 1-2 group members led to general confusion, and then to a serious incident on relatively simple sections of the route. At the same time, other groups (including newcomers) emerged from more difficult situations without any losses, since they were firmly “held in the hands” of an experienced and strong-willed leader who did not allow panic.

In 1965, a planned group of tourists left the Becho Northern Shelter for the Central Caucasus pass of the same name in order to overcome it and descend to the Black Sea coast. The weather was hot and steamy. On the trail, the group caught up with local residents driving cattle to Svaneti. Tired travelers gladly accepted the offer to “throw” their backpacks on the southern slope and, lightly dressed (most in swimsuits), went ahead of the caravan. On the approach to the steepest place on the snow-ice slope, “Chicken Breast,” the caravan stopped due to a problem, and the tourists went over the pass.

The weather has turned bad. A cold wind blew, snow began to fall, and then hail fell on the almost naked people. The instructor, who had previously made a grave mistake by allowing movement through the snow and ice area without appropriate clothing and leaving things far behind, realized the seriousness of the situation. Having distributed everything from his backpack that could be worn or covered with, he led the tourists further. For three hours people walked in snow, hail and rain.

The instructor supported the weak, did not let them stop, did not allow the strong to increase the pace, and did not allow the slightest break in the group. Seeing his calmness and confidence, people believed him and, although in a state of extreme exhaustion, they reached warm housing without a single injury. None of the tourists even got a serious cold.

Depending on the circumstances of the trip and the nature of the misfortune, sometimes it is more advisable to remain in place and not attempt to take irreversible and not fully thought out actions under the influence of panic that could put the group in worse conditions. In any case, in the process of training tourists, it is necessary to inculcate in their minds the conviction that if only they have water protection from the cold, then the time factor is not of fundamental importance for preserving the lives of victims of disaster. After all, a person can go without food for weeks. However, if there is even slight dehydration of the body (loss of 2 - 3 liters of water), then even in temperate climates there will be a sharp decrease in performance, volitional qualities will dull, and general apathy will appear.

It is equally important to reduce injuries in connection with the occurrence of a panic state cultivation of high volitional qualities in all travel participants. A tourist must not only know how and why to act in a particular hiking situation, but also have perseverance, self-control, determination, purposefulness, and perseverance.

Travel conditions require repeated and often prolonged manifestation of such qualities. For example, on winter hikes in high latitudes, when a person’s stay in constant severe frosts and severe winds, in an environment of treelessness and “white silence” is possible only with a long preliminary hardening of his will. Therefore, the volitional training of tourists should ideally be such as to successfully develop in them useful qualities as permanent character traits.

One of the ways to develop strong-willed qualities is to exercise with various weights. The biggest burden for tourists, of course, is their backpack. By controlling and changing the weight of the backpack, you need to approach it not only as a sad but inevitable necessity of travel, but also as a kind of sports equipment, a means of strong-willed training. In other sports, in the pre-competition period and during training, special load belts, weighted shoes and clothing, and heavier, non-standard throwing projectiles are used!

The development of will is also facilitated by the organization of one-day hikes with a greater volume of work than is necessary for ordinary travel, the development of technical techniques in conditions of fatigue that has already accumulated during the training period, and the implementation of long training marathons such as “50 in 12”, “100 in 24”. It is clear that walking 50 or 100 km in a limited number of hours should not turn into a competition and can only be carried out with the necessary medical supervision.

Training hikes in any weather, including unfavorable weather, have a very good effect on the formation of the necessary volitional qualities.

The above-mentioned dangerous “automatism” of human movements during mental confusion especially often manifests itself in cold, wind, fog, haze, darkness, and lack of oxygen. Under such conditions, a person without the proper volitional qualities easily loses clarity of judgment, loses self-criticism, loses intuition, thinks processes slow down, and coordination of movements is disrupted.

It has been noticed that in severe frost it is easier for a tourist skier to continue sharpening a ski track, climbing a pass or cutting wood at a bivouac than to change his actions. As the famous polar explorer Robert Scott argued: “There is no doubt that a man in a blizzard must not only maintain the circulation of blood in his limbs, but also fight against numbness of the brain and dullness of the mind.” Inhibition of thinking leads to the fact that, out of inertia, in a state of panic, once memorized movements are performed, although in order to ensure safety in the specific circumstances of the trip, they clearly should have been stopped or replaced with others.

Speaking about the role of volitional qualities as the key to reducing injuries among travelers, one cannot ignore the influence of the self-preservation instinct and its contradiction with volitional efforts.

“Will,” wrote I.M. Sechenov, “is the active side of reason and moral feeling, governing movement in the name of one thing or another and often contrary to the sense of self-preservation.” But is it always necessary to go against the sense of self-preservation?

Soldiers going into battle cannot help but have an instinct for self-preservation. But it is suppressed by a stronger consciousness of civic duty. The same thing happens in the minds of any other person when he, at the risk of his own life, helps someone in distress.

The motives for suppressing the instinct of self-preservation may be different. For example, to achieve victory at any cost or to demonstrate a person’s capabilities and sporting goals. Thus, William Willis, who more than once made risky ocean voyages on single yachts and rafts around the globe, saw in his travels a creative act in which he most fully feels himself as an individual and affirms the “greatness and freedom of the human spirit.”

In 1969, Soviet mountaineer Konstantin Kletsko skied from the top of Lenin Peak. When asked about the danger of the descent, the athlete replied that “the main, without exaggeration, mortal danger is falling... Here, without an ice axe, climbing crampons and a safety rope... it is practically impossible to hold on... I kept repeating to myself: “Just hold on if you want to live.” Later, Japanese skiers managed to make a successful downhill descent from the highest peak in the world, Chomolungma.

Both, despite all the desire to secure the path and the safety measures taken, were nevertheless carried out according to the principle “hold on if you want to live!” That is, it was an experiment, a record, a sports feat based on high personal physical and moral-volitional qualities, excellent long-term training, and impeccable mastery of the technique of this sport. Are there many such athletes, like those who crossed the Pacific or Atlantic Ocean on a raft or kayak, rafted along the upper reaches of the Katun, Bartang, or skied long routes through the North Pole, the ridges of the Polar Urals or Chukotka? Hundreds. At most - thousands. However, examples of their fearlessness and courage, the ability to suppress instincts and live “without looking back” at dangers attract the attention of millions of newcomers to tourism, causing imitation and copying.

Sometimes we hear how the instinct of self-preservation, in contrast to the good power of the human mind and will, is called base. There are no words, when choosing between rational behavior and instinctive behavior, one must, of course, prefer the first. But it is very important that the motives and motivations that form the moral and intellectual basis of the will to win are worthy of the sacrifices made.

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Elimination of the consequences of a tourist “shipwreck” on the Kazyr River. In an emergency situation, it is very important not to panic, not to lose faith in yourself and your comrades, and not to aggravate the objective danger with your own fear. Photo.

This is possible when a person is firm in his convictions, the clarity of his goal and the means to achieve it, and has some experience. And if the traveler is not experienced, confused in his desires, not aware of the extent of the impending danger, is it then necessary to unconditionally exclude the innate need for self-defense from the arsenal of means aimed at reducing accidents? Probably not.

We must not forget about the breadth of action of the instinct of self-preservation. After all, it works not only when a person, having been burned, withdraws his hand from the fire or puts it forward during a sudden fall.

The journey itself, i.e. changing the usual environment and moving to an unfamiliar place, already causes a negative reaction in some - oppressive anxiety, melancholy, restlessness. Moreover, any person, if alone (alone we listen more attentively to the “inner voice”), let him be transferred to an amazingly beautiful, but unknown place, initially, he will experience an unaccountable feeling of his vulnerability, helplessness. This is a completely understandable manifestation of one of the sides of the mentioned instinct: after all, for our ancestor, in the harsh struggle for existence, it was once important to establish, first of all, the harmlessness of a new phenomenon, the safety of an unfamiliar place. Only after getting used to the new environment, making sure that it is neutral and that anxiety is groundless, do we begin to experience the joy of communicating with something new, interesting, and beautiful.

In practice, tourists rarely travel alone, and in a group the instincts of individuals are largely suppressed by collective opinion. This is undoubtedly positive, since we are talking about a tourist group as a voluntary community of people united by one goal and having common views on the methods and means of achieving it.

But sometimes too easy a rejection of one’s self, an uncritical attitude towards group actions, and a blind hope for the support of comrades lead to undesirable results. Group members place full responsibility for their safety on the leader and turn off internal mechanisms of resistance to danger unless specifically instructed to do so.

The rapid growth of mankind's technical weapons and the belief in the omnipotence of civilization also leave their mark on the nature of the manifestation of the instinct of self-preservation among modern travelers. They are sometimes ready to completely entrust their lives to technical means, just as, for example, a bus or airplane passenger entrusts it. Having lulled the innate need for self-defense with blind faith in technology, such a person, having a gun behind him (but never having fired from it), serenely goes to the taiga or, not knowing how to swim, gets ready for a multi-day water trip, counting only on the reliability of a life jacket.

The main means of exacerbating the sense of self-preservation among those setting off on a route are the educational activities described above, which increase the experience of people by introducing them to possible dangers on the journey. At the same time, one cannot completely discount such a “means” for ensuring the safety of beginners as fear.

Fear is certainly a negative emotion, a humiliating and unworthy state of a person. Fear takes away from him such advantages as reason, determination, common sense, causes confusion, fetters the will and pushes him to irreparable actions.

...A group of beginners climbs a snowy slope. They are pleased that the deep, loose snow has finally given way to hard crust. Now imagine that tourists suddenly became aware that under their feet there was a “snow board” ready to burst under extreme stress - one of the most formidable and insidious varieties of “white death”. The reaction of people gripped by sudden fear can lead to fuss, instinctive flight, actual overloading and cutting of the slope and cause an avalanche. So fear is as dangerous as danger itself? No.

Fear is not knowledge of danger. First you need to receive information about the threat, so that then, as a consequence of the current situation, a feeling of fear arises. But if the mentioned tourists had the necessary information about the features of the mountainous terrain and snow cover, about the connection between strong crust on steep slopes and avalanche-forming factors, they simply would not have gone down the wrong path. There would be no dangerous section on the route, no negative emotions, no possibility of an accident.

So fear is useless? Not either.

Fear, anxiety, and confusion are useless and unnecessary when the traveler has complete knowledge of everything that can await him along the route. Knowing about the upcoming difficulties, about possible dangers and valuing his life, he will make the right decision under specific conditions and without much worry. What if the information is insufficient or not available? It is then that fear can turn out to be an important assistant for finding a path to action, a kind of emergency mechanism that temporarily compensates for the lack of necessary information.

Fear plays the role of a certain deterrent, a protective brake for people who do not have the necessary information about the travel area, about the technical methods of movement used there, and the tactical features of the route.

Of course, completeness of information is a relative concept. Each person more or less subjectively assesses the amount of knowledge and skills he needs to organize a safe trip. The power of experiences and feelings is also subjective. Therefore, it is possible that some tourists experience anxiety and fear where there is no reason for them, while others, on the contrary, are complacent about events that should instill serious fears in them. This, however, is particular. In general, the feeling of fear of the unknown helps travelers who do not know the route well to be more attentive, cautious, and circumspect.

Although it is somehow inconvenient to say a word of praise to fear (the concepts of “sport” and “fearlessness” are much better combined), it must be emphasized that it was fear that prevented many accidents with newcomers to tourism. Fear of the unknown stopped the young researcher who was ready to try an unknown berry or mushroom. The same emotion held back lovers of water travel from the as yet insufficiently explored plan for the upper reaches of the Vakhsh or Pyanj.

There is no need to be afraid of fear. It passes when a person acquires the necessary information about the object of interest to him or when the need for self-preservation is replaced by another, stronger need. However, if the first guarantees a person’s safety, then the second only guarantees the disappearance of fear. For tourism, the first thing is important.

THE DETERMINING ROLE OF DISCIPLINE AND CONSCIOUSNESS

No matter how significant the role of the factors listed above in the occurrence of accidents is, the first among the causes of injuries at present is not the weak technical, tactical or general physical training of tourists, but low social consciousness and insufficient discipline of a certain part of them. Moreover, we can say that low discipline of trekking participants is the most formidable danger in tourism.

Analyzing cases of injuries on routes, only in rare cases can one not find one of such elements of indiscipline as ignoring the rules of socialist society or generally accepted norms of behavior, neglect of established rules for organizing travel, reckless attitude towards dangers on the route, adventurism, irresponsibility, neglect of insurance. And in 65% of severe injuries, low conscientiousness and poor discipline are one of the main causes of unhappiness.

Lack of discipline often begins already during preparation for a trip: choosing a deliberately difficult route that does not correspond to the experience of tourists, including people in the group who do not have the right to participate in this trip, negligence in preparing the group, selecting its equipment, developing a route - all this sets people up to carry out the trip “at random”. Practiced in some places, hikes without issuing travel documents, without checking the readiness of groups by route qualification commissions and tourist control and rescue services, adding non-existent experience and attempts to circumvent travel rules (just to get on the route!) deprive tourists of effective control and assistance from more experienced comrades.

Deceiving or ignoring tourist organizations most often results in self-deception for undisciplined travelers. Having refused the voluntary services of route qualification commissions, they, as a rule, do not receive the information they need about the travel area, cannot competently check the correctness of the planned traffic schedules, do not know about the possible stay of other tourist groups near the route and cannot establish interaction with them. In addition, “wild” groups that are, as it were, “outside the law” while traveling are forced, in order to avoid organizational troubles, sometimes even to avoid people, which additionally puts themselves in a difficult and dangerous position.

Having no right to count on outside help and taking personal responsibility for the lives of group members, the leader of the “savages” commits a serious violation of public order.

We must not forget about the moral side of the issue - members of an unformed group are drawn into collective deception, they are instilled with perverted concepts of duty and responsibility. Once you get away with breaking the rules, some people feel that such things are impunity and permissible. From here it is one step to a deliberate violation of security measures, to actions that put a group on a trip to the brink of an “emergency situation.”

An analysis of severe injuries clearly confirms this: the share of violators of tourist rules, i.e., participants in “wild” groups and groups that had invalid route books and sheets, accounted for 5 times more accidents over 2 years than participants in properly registered amateur trips.

Another common form of indiscipline and low awareness is unauthorized change of the approved route (almost 20% of all accidents). We are not talking about loss of orientation, but about a forced departure from the planned route due to bad weather, a natural disaster or illness of a group member, namely a deliberate change in the path, often making it more difficult. The subjective opinion of the perpetrators of such an offense is usually different. Changing the route is usually motivated by a reluctance to go along a “boring” section of the route and the desire to choose a more interesting and, at first glance, simpler and safer route. As a result, travelers find themselves on trails, passes, rivers for which they were not prepared, and on areas of terrain for which they do not have the necessary information, diagrams and maps. People who have changed their mode of movement and find themselves in conditions that do not correspond to their specific tourist experience are especially close to a dangerous situation. So, on the verge of an “emergency” there is a group on foot who, without equipment, has risked shortening the path by overcoming an unplanned snow-ice pass or, having no experience of water trips, decided to raft down an unknown taiga river.

In 1968, three tourists from Petropavlovsk went hiking in the Altai Mountains. Since the group did not formalize its trip and did not turn to anyone for advice, it imagined the route and conditions of the hike very vaguely. In the very first days, due to the abundance of wet snow in the mountains, tourists left the safe route of the planned route (which they initially followed) and went along the left bank of Malaya Sumulta. Tired of walking along difficult paths, they decided to change the way of movement and sail on a raft from the confluence of the Small and Large Sumulta. Neither the leader nor the group members knew the nature of the river and had no water experience. Therefore, limiting themselves to viewing a small, calm area of ​​the future rafting, they tied a small raft from alluvial material (there was no ax) with a rope and, armed with a pole, frivolously trusted the flow. The result of such adventurism was the accident of a practically uncontrollable raft on the rapids of Sumulta and the death of two people.

Unintended replacement of a labor-intensive type of movement with an easier one, for example, walking by car, also causes injuries. Such replacement is sometimes practiced by undisciplined groups on planned routes, especially if the latter coincide at some point with a road. The lack of regular passenger flights, the complex profile of the route, and its temporary production nature (the road to logging, to a remote construction site, to a mountain quarry) aggravate the risk of tourists. For certain geographical regions of the country, for example, the foothill zone of the Western Caucasus, car accidents with travelers who unauthorizedly used transport in the middle of the route that is not suitable for transporting people (dump trucks, timber trucks, trailers) account for almost half of all serious accidents.

In 1969, in the area of ​​the Terziyan tourist shelter, one of the groups of travelers arbitrarily sat down on a passing tractor-trailer with a carriage on which a bulldozer was loaded. On a steep mountain climb, when the driver was unable to change gears and the car went backwards under the weight of the load, people began to jump onto the road. One of the tourists hit his head on a tree while jumping and died without regaining consciousness.

A year earlier, an accident with fatalities occurred on the route between the tourist shelters “Naushi” and “Brzef”. According to the approved travel plan, this section of the route had to be covered on foot. However, the group instructor and its participants agreed with the driver of a random passing car and set off on a ZIL-157 completely unequipped to carry passengers. Crossing the Ashe River in the wrong place near the Bzhef shelter, the car fell into a hole, was overturned by the pressure of water and turned over three times.

A negative attitude towards single walking was established in Soviet tourism back in the late 20s. It was established because at that time among single tourists there were many declassed elements, people isolated from the collective, aimless tramplers (the so-called “globodrosters”). Their ultra-long trips, called round-the-world crossings and intercontinental runs, often had the character of self-promotion and tickled the nerves of the average person.

“...On March 10,” wrote one of the newspapers in 1925, “continuing his round-the-world journey, Akim, the son of Ivanov, crossed Baikal on ice on foot. The traveler was wearing a raincoat and short leather pants. Behind him was a sleigh with witnesses, sheepskin coats and a quarter of moonshine...”

Accidents and accidents often happened to loners, they went missing.

Relapses of single difficult trips, although rare, still occur today. The easiest people to succumb to them are green youth, driven by a romantic impulse and for some reason not finding an application for their strength in organized tourism. Sometimes sincere patriotic motives lead a young man to think about an ultra-long record-breaking sports campaign:

“I ask you to send me on a solo expedition around Cape Horn,” writes one of the tourists, “having read the note that sixty-five-year-old Francis Chichester set off across the ocean on a solo yacht, I inform you that I, too, have been preparing for this for a long time... I graduated from 8 classes, I know geography, astronomy... I want to argue and prove that our people are superior to others in travel... and to determine how long a person can move without sleep and rest.”

It is usually easier to prove the inappropriateness of such a pseudo-competition than to convince a person to abandon a relatively modest 1-2-day sports hike alone, a small individual excursion to the mountains, or simply a radial walk for several hours from a general day’s stop along the route.

Ignoring the rules for organizing travel, which provide for the number of participants in a group of at least 4, and in complex trips - at least 6 people, violators do not understand that these norms are determined by life, the experience of hundreds of tourist groups that successfully emerged from difficult trials, and those senseless sacrifices that society paid for the dubious glory of single explorers. And although the number of singles is insignificant, they still account for a significant share of sad incidents. In any case, the number of severe injuries, one of the main causes of which was walking alone, exceeded 10% in 1968-1969.

Close to walking alone in its share of accidents (about 15%) is such a violation of discipline as unintended division of groups into separate parts that do not fully ensure their safety.

Unauthorized division of groups usually occurs when the composition of tourists is incorrectly selected, when they differ in interests, physical fitness, usual pace of movement, and the instructor or trek leader was unable to equalize their strengths with different loads of tasks and the weight of backpacks. Stretching along the route, the subgroups lose contact with each other and, if the weather worsens, they lose orientation, or are forced to stop, they find themselves without the necessary equipment and food.

Sometimes a group is split up for a better inspection of a microdistrict, for reconnaissance of approaches to passes, and for radial excursions of some tourists away from the main thread of the route. It is not always possible to staff subgroups with a sufficient number of people and provide them with the necessary equipment (for example, if there is only one large tent and a group sleeping bag). Dividing a team is especially dangerous in mountainous and winter conditions, when sharply changing meteorological conditions can prevent the unification of subgroups and force them to settle into an emergency bivouac without warm clothes, which for inexperienced tourists is tantamount to disaster.

In 1969, a group of undergraduate and graduate students from several capital universities set out on a ski trip route of category III difficulty to the Kola Peninsula. Expecting to pass the Corneskorch mountain pass on the second day of the journey, the tourists, however, left the village. We stopped for the night only at 10 o'clock and by 15 o'clock we reached the border of the forest. Despite the approaching evening, the skiers continued to climb, and due to extremely poor organization, they were divided into three small groups of 6, 3 and 2 people. The composition of people in the subgroups turned out to be random; neither senior nor trailing people were appointed; the gap between people reached an hour of skiing. Members of the subgroups, except for the leader who was in the leading six, did not have a map of the area and had little knowledge of the further route, the order of movement and the meeting place. The onset of a blizzard, quite common on the Kola Peninsula, deprived the subgroups of the opportunity to interact, and in the future each of them, as well as the leader who broke away from the front six and found himself alone, acted at their own peril and risk for two days. Since only the advanced subgroup had a tent, the rest had to organize overnight stays in the snow, which they had no experience of. As a result, two participants froze and others suffered frostbite.

A very serious factor of indiscipline, directly related to the likelihood of injury (especially in severe forms), is lack of safety measures in potentially dangerous areas or where it is necessary. In at least 1/4 of injury cases, lack of insurance is one of the main reasons for the accident.

There are many prerequisites for the fact that under certain circumstances there was no insurance on the route, and not all of them will depend only on weak discipline, neglect of safety precautions or a fundamental refusal to take them. Some of them are due to ignorance of possible means of protection and the inability to use them. But the main causes of accidents due to lack of insurance still lie in the lack of awareness and low discipline of some travel participants.

It is known that the moment when insurance begins depends on the skill level of tourists. But we must not forget that this group level must be adjusted according to the degree of preparedness and well-being of the weakest member of the team. If at least one travel participant shows signs of timidity and uncertainty, it is his duty to immediately ask for the support and insurance of his comrades, as well as their duty (primarily the group leader) to prevent such a request and, without morally injuring the weakest, immediately introduce compulsory insurance for everyone.

There can be no justification for refusing to arrange insurance. Especially if the health and life of not only the one who made the decision to refuse, but also his comrades depends on it, or if his breakdown, fall, injury can lead (which often happens) to an emergency situation for the group as a whole.

No less dangerous is fictitious (sometimes called “psychological”) insurance. If the belayer is not confident that he will hold his comrade, he must warn the latter about this, and not engage in deception, relying on a random successful outcome.

“We can assume,” writes one of the experts in sports tourism, “that to some extent everyone manages their lives at their own peril and risk, but dragging other people into an adventure is a crime.”* Let’s add: neglecting their insurance in dangerous places, too.

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* A. Berman. Ski travel. FiS, 1968.

Of course, consuming alcohol on the route is dangerous. No one doubts the connection between intoxication and the accident. In everyday life, at work, and in transport, people who drink alcohol immoderately are always closest to accidents and injury. Thus, according to statistics, in our cities about half of the injuries received on the street are a consequence of the intoxication of the victims. In 1969, 36% of all traffic accidents involving drivers were caused by alcohol.

In tourism, the influence of alcohol to one degree or another can be observed in every fifth accident. The lion's share of such violations comes from weekend hikes and planned tourism on simple routes. The first is negatively affected by the proximity of picnic areas, the sometimes allowed lack of control of routes and the possibility of shortening them, as well as the very fact of a weekend. At some camp sites there are sometimes “tourists” who begin preparing for the trip with a “friendship evening” (with alcoholic drinks), by collecting money for “camping” wine, and along the way they look for ways to exchange food for alcohol.

Being in a state of severe intoxication, a person, as a rule, is either physically unable to move, even without load and along a simple route, or refuses. But, unfortunately, he still has ample opportunities to create a threat to his health and the health of others at a rest stop, bivouac, or on an excursion.

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Experience is one of the most reliable weapons that can be used to counteract the dangers in tourism. But it is not acquired immediately and only after careful training of beginners in the “basics” of their chosen type of travel. Photo.

As a result, sometimes injuries occur that are incomprehensible to the mind of a sober person and are the consequence of a drunken fight at an overnight stay, an unsuccessful attempt to climb a high-voltage transmission pole on a dare, or a drunken fall from the landing of the second floor of a camp site.

The risk of injury increases with the amount of alcohol consumed much more intensively than an arithmetic progression. Although no special observations have been made for tourism, it is interesting to quote a message from the 3rd International Congress on Traffic Safety: it was found that when a drunk driver’s blood contains more than 1.5 ppm of alcohol (i.e., if the driver drinks about a glass of vodka), the probability of an accident increases 128 times compared to his sober colleague.

There is a misconception that only occasional severe intoxication or chronic alcoholism are dangerous, and drinking wine for mood or appetite is harmless. Science says otherwise: an increase in blood alcohol levels of more than 0.05 percent dramatically increases the risk of injury, although drinking alcohol in such small quantities does not seem to cause noticeable changes in a person’s behavior. Moreover, it is believed that the culprits of the main accidents due to alcohol in transport are people who have consumed a little alcohol. This is also evidenced by the accidents that happened to tourists while on vacation at sea.

Forensic autopsies of drowned people revealed, for example, traces of alcohol in their blood, albeit in small quantities. Interviewing witnesses made it possible to clarify that some of the victims drank alcohol several hours before swimming. This suggests that alcohol has a negative effect not only in large quantities and not only until the moment of intoxication is felt. Increased exposure to danger is much more stable than the feeling of intoxication, and is maintained for a long time by weakness, depression, and a person’s indifference to the environment. When you have to manage complex movements, coordination turns out to be somewhat impaired, reaction is slow, and attention is unstable. Vision becomes “tunnel-like” (that is, the view in latitude is narrowed by two or three times), and most importantly, critical thinking and assessment of one’s capabilities are impaired.

It has been noticed that even small doses of alcohol can cause a slowdown in a person’s simple motor reaction for 4–5 days, and the reactions themselves become paradoxical: weak stimuli cause a strong response, and strong stimuli cause a weak reaction.

This has a direct bearing on difficult travel conditions. The fact is that on sports routes, where almost every day is filled with an exciting and sometimes risky struggle with nature, there is usually no need for alcohol. In addition, the sports traditions themselves, the composition of participants, and the need to take into account every gram of weight in backpacks exclude the use of alcohol. As a rule, the reserve medical alcohol available in the group is brought (in the absence of diseases) untouched until the end of the hike - the first geologists’ stop, a settlement, a railway station. It’s worse if there are several such intermediate points along the route. Then, in the unconscious group, desires to “notice” and “relax” may arise. No matter how small the dose of alcohol taken, the next day tourists will go out on the route with residual post-alcohol effects, i.e. with an increased exposure to danger.

Accidents, especially on simple hikes, are often not directly related to moving along the route, overcoming natural obstacles, or organizing camp life. About 1/6 of all serious injuries occur during rest on the route (for example, while swimming, playing, etc.).

This usually happens due to the discrepancy between the individual behavior of people during “non-working” hours and the established safety requirements. A traveler's free time is generally much more difficult to manage than movement along a route. By translating into the dry language of the rules recommendations for the safe passage of a marshy swamp or a canopy crossing, we can expect that most people will perceive them as really necessary for action. They are perceived this way because they have a positive character and answer questions about where, what and how to do.

But one cannot seriously think about universal compliance with the rules governing the “clean” holiday of tourists if these rules are in the nature of a simple prohibition, like “don’t throw axes at trees.” While they are certainly fair in themselves, such recommendations do not yet suggest the types of acceptable games in free time. Moreover, all educational and explanatory work to ensure safety often does not have the desired effect if the argumentation it uses has a negative connotation.

Compliance with established standards of behavior is, of course, very important. But it would be naive to expect that this is all. Firstly, it is impossible for every step of a tourist, including the wrong one, to be stipulated by some legal provision, and secondly, morality is always broader than law.

While insistently demanding discipline from tourists, everything cannot be reduced to the simple need to follow rules, instructions and regulations. Blind discipline and discipline “from under the stick” easily misfire.

Only persistent explanatory and educational work can achieve the ideal when all travelers develop a highly conscious attitude towards their type of tourism. Only in this way can we create an organic unity of measures aimed at the safety of hikes with measures to increase mass participation and sportsmanship and overcome the contradictions that sometimes arise between these areas in tourism.

Therefore, it is more correct to talk about the self-discipline of travel participants, that is, about such behavior when a person behaves correctly not because he is afraid of the consequences of indiscipline or is subject to coercion. No, he realizes the need to follow the rules because they turn into his inner need. With skillful educational work with tourists, a sense of duty and responsibility for safety is perceived by them not only as abstract concepts, but also as an emotional experience. In other words, any deviation from safety requirements on the route is felt as a gross violation of moral principles and causes almost physical pain, which is brought by strong negative emotions.

And, on the contrary, when educational work is poorly done, when individual members of the group have low consciousness and weak development of some important social feelings and ideas, all external composure and discipline crumbles like a house of cards when seriously tested. Unrestrained by internal discipline, duty, and respect for others, such people, under the influence of danger, turn into moral monsters.

It was described above how in 1969, while climbing the Hokel Pass, the leader of a group of Kyiv tourists fell into the bergschrund. What happened next?

None of the three group members who stopped on the slope below the pass tried to help their comrade. As the tourists later said at the commission that examined the circumstances of the accident, they unanimously decided that the leader had died, and they were going to finally find out about his fate by going through the circular route: Hokel Pass - Klukhorsky Pass - "Northern refuge - Hokel Glacier, that is, after about 2 days. Three young, healthy people who had the necessary set of mountain equipment, safely passed the pass and spent the night at nightfall in a convenient place.

After spending part of the night in an unconscious state in the Bergschrund, the leader in the morning, without removing the crampons from his boots, climbed into his sleeping bag (he had a backpack with him) and tried to warm up. Realizing then that only movement could save him, the victim barely climbed out of the crack and crawled along the glacier. Thanks to a happy coincidence, on the same day he noticed people far below on the glacier and began to call for help. Hearing a scream and seeing a moving point in the icefall area, tourists from a neighboring group hurried upstairs and organized transportation of the victim. Since he did not know what had happened to his comrades and assumed the worst, a wide search for the missing was undertaken, involving many tourist groups.

Having recognized the main culprit of the accident as the leader who allowed tourists to go out onto the smooth rocks in crampons and used a cord instead of the main rope for insurance, the commission proposed that for refusing to help the person in distress, the group members should be prohibited from engaging in mountain tourism, deprived of their sports ranks, and the incident brought to the attention of public organizations at their place of work.

Instilling self-discipline and a sense of responsibility among tourists should begin with the simplest hike. From the first steps, you should ensure that the newcomer unconditionally adheres to route discipline, takes insurance seriously, is highly demanding of himself and is fair to his comrades.

Order and security must be guaranteed by strict unity of command, supported by the united will of the collective, and voluntary submission to the authority of the leader elected by the group. Violation of discipline should be considered not only as a failure to maintain order, but also as a violation of the basic safety measure on a hike.

COMPLEX OF REASONS AND PUBLIC OPINION

The previous sections talked about the various aspects and specific reasons for tourists' exposure to danger while traveling. In real life, things are more complicated, and the rare accident is caused by only one or two specific reasons. As a rule, misfortune is the result of a combination of several factors, and some of them can be considered the main, decisive ones. Using the example of one case, let’s try to analyze the combination of causes and factors that led to a tourist injury.

In November 1969, six students of the Ural Polytechnic Institute, under the leadership of the group leader, without informing the tourist section, unauthorizedly set out on a route in the Denezhkin Kamen area. After breakfast in a hut on the Bolshoi Shegultan River (9 km from the village of Solva), the group gathered at 13:00 for the ascent. I took with me only one-time food: some bread, crackers, a can of canned meat, a kilogram of sausage and... a bottle of vodka. The skis and ax were left in the hut.

At the border of the forest we met tourists returning after an unsuccessful (due to bad weather) climb to Denezhkin Kamen. However, bad weather conditions and the example of another group did not stop the students: considering that wind and limited visibility were common in the mountains, they continued the climb, which took a lot of strength. Having finally reached the top, we decided to go around the spur of the Stone so that “the wind would not blow in our faces.” However, since there was almost no visibility, and the group had neither a compass nor a map of the area, the people lost their way and, thinking that they were descending into the valley of the Maly Shegultan River, began to descend in the opposite direction, to the Talnichnaya River. The situation was complicated by the fact that while still at the top, one of the students began to complain of feeling unwell. During the descent he had to be supported by his arms. But the group did not dare to stop and rest, as the weakened comrade asked, fearing frostbite, and continued on their way to the forest.

We managed to reach the first open forest around midnight. Here, in the wind, the students tried to make a fire, but the small fire they had lit, using only a single box of matches, was blown out by another gust of drifting snow. Then, after having a snack and drinking vodka, the group began to descend further.

In the forest the snow was deeper and more difficult to overcome. Therefore, the headman recklessly suggested breaking up into subgroups: he and another physically strong student went ahead to break the path, and the rest, supporting the sick man, slowly followed them.

Having walked about 4 km, the leading two, tired, spent the night without a fire under the roots of a tree torn up by the storm. In the morning, the students discovered that they could not put on their frozen boots. The headman had felt boots in stock, and his partner tied earflaps to his feet (which saved him from frostbite).

Soon these students heard the hunters' shots, began to scream and follow the sound. At noon, their comrade from the lagging group, who had already been rushing to the headman for four hours, came out to the cry to report that the patient had lost consciousness.

The three of the students again went out to Talnichnaya and moved upstream back to Denezhkin Kamen. Soon they came across a hunting hut. There they stayed for several hours until they ate, rested, and asked local hunters for directions to the nearest village. As dusk approached, two lagging students accidentally descended into the hut and reported that their comrade, despite artificial respiration and rubbing his arms and legs, had died.

Since the group was not registered anywhere, it did not count on anyone's help. However, the tourists who met the students while climbing to the top, feeling morally responsible for them, waited under the Stone for two days and then raised the alarm. Tourist rescue teams arrived at the scene. More than 100 people were involved in search and rescue operations, including police, local residents, hunters, and travelers who were in the area of ​​Denezhkin Kamen.

Thanks to quick intervention, other students in the group suffered only frostbite on their feet.

What caused this case of group trauma? Given the multiplicity of reasons that led to the misfortune, the main ones, obviously, can be considered: firstly, the low discipline of the victims who deceived the tourist section of the Institute and went on an unregistered route in violation of the “Rules for organizing amateur tourist travel on the territory of the USSR”, and secondly, the weak moral and physical preparation of the group, insufficient tourist experience, ignorance of basic safety rules.

Specific factors contributing to injury include the following disorders:

1) the group did not receive qualified advice, did not have route documents, maps and descriptions of the route, or a compass (which is why they easily lost their way);

2) tourists gathered at the top when, due to light conditions, it was necessary to descend from it, and did not stop climbing, despite the bad weather;

3) you did not take with you warm clothes, an ax, the necessary supply of food, or matches;

4) the troupe grossly violated the daily routine and norms of behavior, finishing the movement only at midnight and drinking alcohol on the route (especially in anticipation of the further journey);

5) the students did not have the skills to organize field overnight camps, were unable to build a barrier, keep a fire, or organize a warm bivouac;

6) the leader unreasonably divided the group into parts incapable of independent action and providing the necessary assistance to the victim;

7) the group did not have the medical means and knowledge to help the sick person, and did not take all available measures to bring him out of a state of moral depression and prevent him from freezing.

Side factors of injury include harsh weather conditions, darkness, lack of equipment, inept handling, and alcohol consumption.

Such an extensive complex of objective and subjective factors, causes, direct and indirect, probably excludes the search for any single and all-determining ways to effectively prevent injuries in tourism. A complex of dangers can only be countered by a complex of protective measures of an organizational, technical, educational and training nature.

Many specific measures aimed at preventing travel accidents have already been discussed in the relevant sections. But just as private factors that increase the susceptibility of certain people to the danger of injury develop into certain combinations that even allow us to talk about the most common accident pattern, so the means of prevention are combined in certain directions. One of the most important of them is the formation of public opinion about the inadmissibility of violating safety measures and the need to combat injuries on hiking trails.

Let's consider the issues of forming such an opinion in the tourist group itself (or the tourist section of the physical education team), the route-qualification commission and the tourist club, as well as - regardless of the scale of the tourist group - the media of mass propaganda and agitation.

It is known that safety in a group is achieved not only by following the appropriate rules of conduct that are mandatory for each individual tourist. The behavior of each tourist inevitably depends on his comrades and the atmosphere of relationships, views, and ideals characteristic of a given group. In other words, a person’s attitude towards danger while traveling is formed in the process of mutual influence of the public opinion of the group and the individual characteristics of its members, and the collective is of decisive importance.

Hence, the correct formation of the collective’s views on danger and awareness of the need for group protection against it seem very important. Moreover, we can assume that the formation of a tourist team is not complete, that it has not yet matured, if all members have not developed a common attitude towards danger and methods that help eliminate it.

You can expect the right group opinion, of course, from the right group. Therefore, when organizing a rather complex (and even more so unsafe) trip, pay a lot of attention and time to the similarity and teamwork of its participants during training, clarify the commonality of their views, and develop the traveling compatibility of all members of the group. It is possible that some participants may exhibit undesirable qualities, for example, arrogance, irresponsibility, negligence, frivolity, irritability. The leader must weigh in advance whether the team will be able to successfully combat these shortcomings, and whether selfish character traits and individualistic attitudes will lead to accidents. If in doubt, it is better to refuse to travel in this composition.

Other opportunities open up when forming hiking groups at educational tourist events - training camps, seminars, courses. To foster mutual assistance and collectivism, for better organization of the educational process, it is sometimes advisable to make some deviations in the selection of people into groups and bring together the “weak” and “strong” (probably to the detriment of the physical and technical preparedness of the latter). The main thing to strive for when recruiting groups is to create a strong, friendly team that will help develop the best traits in each participant and correct undesirable ones, and help form the right views on safety.

Although hiking groups are not always stable and for the next trip some participants, depending on their capabilities and interests, join new groups, the core is usually preserved. Those collective views, traditions, and features are also preserved in the organization and conduct of travel, which allow us to talk about a unique “school” or “style” of the tourist group. In some cases, this concept is applicable to large associations of tourists on a district or city scale. And the concept of “school” always includes a certain attitude, developed by the team, towards danger and risk on the route.

The inculcation of self-demandingness and responsibility towards comrades is accompanied by the inculcation of intolerance towards violators of safety rules. An insufficiently disciplined newcomer learns from the very first days that the collective control existing in the group, the traditions of public analysis and condemnation of violations, will not leave any of his offenses against safety unpunished.

The main thing in developing a group’s public opinion is to form a belief about the absolute advantage of safe travel over risky travel; At the same time, the reasons for this view among different tourists are by no means indifferent. Particular attention should be paid to those for whom such a common position is something forced. For such people, the firmness of a collective belief should become the controller of all motives of their behavior: both basic ones, which determine a person’s actions for a long period of travel, and situational ones, related to the specific situation on the route.

We must not forget that the influence of a group, if not properly directed, does not always have only a positive impact in matters of security.

Since a group is a combination of individuals and each of them has a feedback effect on the group, it is possible that an undisciplined person in a group can negatively affect the collective perceptions of acceptable risk.

Sometimes a tourist group latently develops an erroneous and harmful view that strict adherence to injury prevention regulations is a sign of weakness and even unsportsmanship. On their own, many members of the group would not even think of neglecting the necessary safety rope when moving on a closed glacier or a life jacket on a water route, but the desire to keep up with their comrades and not lose (or gain) respect pushes them to ignore the danger.

An unfavorable situation, when carelessness and carelessness become a collective phenomenon, usually develops under the influence of violations of safety rules, first by only one or a few tourists, and there are no people in the group who can neutralize their negative impact on others.

The degree of influence of tourist-violators depends on the authority of these people in the team. The leader must promptly notice the possibility of such influence, identify the motives that caused incorrect views and actions (whether it is simply inexperience or the desire to “distinguish”) and neutralize them. This is not always easy to do, but allowing the position of the team to be formed, and even more so determined (if such a person threatens to become the “hero” of the group) by people who openly ignore safety requirements, is even worse. If persuasion, persuasion, and explanations do not help, all that remains is to go into direct conflict, up to and including expelling the offender from the team.

This cannot be avoided, since the collective position in relation to danger, as indicated above, is decisive for the actions of individual group members, and an incorrect group position is a direct path to accidents. So, if an inexperienced group recklessly decides to pass an unknown difficult rapid without reconnaissance or is going to ford a stormy river without insurance, it is quite possible that the reasonable opinion of individual tourists will not be taken into account and classified as cowardice or weakness (and therefore, most likely, will not be expressed out loud).

It takes great courage, independent views and conviction that one is right to go against the hypnosis of general opinion. One of the main arguments of the leader here should be that the created erroneous position cannot be recognized as collective, since it contradicts generally accepted concepts and the spirit of collectivism and is at odds with the opinion of larger and more experienced tourist groups and organizations of the district, city or region. Of course, it is very important that in organizations involved in the development of tourism, the issues of ensuring travel safety are in one of the first places and have an unconditionally correct, collectively supported solution.

Almost all matters related to the prevention and reduction of injuries on amateur routes are usually dealt with by public bodies - route qualification commissions, tourist rescue teams and posts, sections on types of tourism at sports and tourist clubs, voluntary sports societies, tourism and excursion councils. This balance of power makes it possible to successfully involve the most qualified active member of the active travel athletes in the important and time-consuming work of checking the readiness of groups for trips. And their opinion, embodied in the recommendation of the main working body - the route qualification commission, is often decisive when choosing a specific route and selecting trek participants, when determining safety measures.

The right to be unilaterally categorical when considering the issue of admitting a particular group to travel (the commission is not the issuing organization, its duty and right is to give an opinion on the possibility, safety and feasibility of the trip) is acquired by members of the commissions thanks to their extensive tourist experience and authority. Only superiority in technical, tactical and other skills makes members of route qualification commissions, despite the severity of their conclusions, desirable advisors and inspectors in tourist groups. Tourists know that they have comrades who share their interests and views, whose experience and integrity will help them have an interesting and trouble-free trip.

The benefit of route work is evidenced by the fact cited above that over two years the number of severe injuries in the groups examined by the commissions and who received route documents turned out to be 5 times less than in the “unregistered” groups.

At the same time, it is dangerous when one or another route and qualification commission, when considering application materials for travel, allows carelessness, laxity, liberalism, or when individual incorrect views of some of its members replace the collective opinion of the commission.

In 1969, in a group of Minsk tourists, while passing the Dzembran rapids on the Black Cheremosh River (Carpathians), a kayak capsized and one of the participants, who was injured and found herself in the water without a life jacket, drowned.

An analysis of the events that preceded the disaster revealed serious violations in the actions of not only the group leader, but also the city tourist club and its route-qualification commission, which considered the hike plan.

It turned out that the commission allowed four groups to go on a campaign as one detachment and designated all the seniors in the groups as leaders, knowing in advance that one person would actually lead. The commission allowed two groups to travel on rafts, although due to the lack of experience in rafting among the participants and group leaders, they could not be allowed not only to raft the third category of difficulty on a mountain river, but even to take a simple trip of the second category of complexity. A girl who later died was allowed to take part in the III category water trip in a kayak. She had never been on a kayak before and had only experience of a category I trip on a flat river in a rowing boat.

Difficult sections and methods for overcoming them were not specified in the groups’ application books and in the commission protocols.

The commission did not prohibit the trip, although it knew that before the trip the necessary training was not carried out with the participants and that after its positive conclusion, the leader of the detachment, abusing his public position as the chairman of the city tourist club, arbitrarily entered new names into the protocols and redistributed the participants (as a result of which some tourists were registered twice in different groups).

The main one, explaining other violations, was a violation of the principle that commission members are not allowed to consider application materials of groups that they themselves lead or are members of. In this case, one of the subgroups was led by the chairman of the route qualification commission himself, another by a member of the commission, and the third by their closest relative, who was actually the leader of the trip and its “issuer,” since he signed all the route books.

Thus, the collective opinion turned out to be replaced by the wrong decision of a narrow group of interested parties.

In some cases, erroneous views on the possibility of not complying with certain security measures become almost the opinion of the entire commission. Having lost authority and turned into a simple registrar of hikes in their city or region, the commission ceases to use such methods as specified in the rules, such as assigning control exits to tourists to check their equipment and technical skills, to check the readiness of groups and prevent injuries. Does not place increased demands on the tourist experience of leaders and participants if there are natural obstacles on the route, typical of more difficult hikes.

The lack of integrity of the collective opinion of some route qualification commissions is also evidenced by the fact that of the application materials received from them in recent years, about 15% were returned to the site due to the discrepancy between the experience of the participants and the complexity of the intended routes, and therefore the unacceptably increased danger of travel for these people.

The shortcomings of some commissions in forming the correct views on travel safety indicate trouble in the activities of tourist clubs. It is especially bad when clubs reduce educational work to prevent injuries, reduce requirements for the content of travel, and do not take public measures against violators of sports discipline, which actually stimulates the growth of sentiments of adventurism and impunity.

High responsibility to society, discipline, self-awareness and other moral qualities necessary for a tourist cannot be cultivated in the few weeks it takes to study at an on-the-job tourism seminar. Especially when it comes to group leaders, who often acquire the necessary organizational skills on their own. Therefore, along with the grassroots sections of tourism in an enterprise, educational institution or institution, there is also a need for such public organizations as clubs with various forms of educational work, the absence of which sometimes results in dramas on the routes.

The basis of educational work in the direction of reducing injuries in the club should be a strong general opinion that admission to a somewhat complex, although very interesting, route for an unprepared group cannot be compensated by any other useful “return” from the trip - neither by increasing the skills of tourists, nor by training dischargers, nor by developing a new route.

We must not forget that cases of momentary frivolity and “bypassing” the rules by tourists under the liberalism of those entrusted with monitoring their observance develop into a certain norm, a system. Then some tourists and public organizations representing them have a dangerous opinion that in certain situations (“After all, the hike was dedicated to such and such a date...” or “We have a plan for masters on fire...”, or “The guys have been preparing for the trip for a whole year, got vacations...”) it is permissible not to comply with the experience requirements for those planning to go on the route.

Above we talked about a misfortune during a winter hike along the Kola Peninsula. Analysis of the circumstances of the incident showed that its main reason lies in the gross mistakes of the leader and participants of the trip, in their frivolity in preparing the trip, confusion and passivity in an emergency situation, in technical and tactical illiteracy.

At the same time, the most serious claims can be brought against the tourist club of one of the higher educational institutions, which poorly educated and illegally released unprepared people on a route that was too difficult for them. As it was established, the leader of this rather complex trip did not have the necessary experience of participating in a ski trip of the III category of difficulty and experience in leading a ski trip of the II category; half of the tourists had no experience of ski travel, and as such their “kind-hearted” club comrades counted a hiking trip in November in the Kalinin region. Conducted in the absence of snow, it, of course, could not provide the necessary experience. At the same time, this wrong decision contributed to tourists overestimating their strengths and capabilities and led to an accident.

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Discipline is the key to safety in tourism, and it starts small. Look at the order in the camp of the XI meeting of tourists from the Soviet Baltic republics. One can hope that order and discipline will accompany these tourists on their future travels. Photo.

What decisively influences the formation of correct views on acceptable risk and safety measures on tourist routes in a tourist group, section, commission, club, and in society in general? Most likely - the means of mass propaganda and agitation, the level of mass explanatory work.

The effectiveness of agitation and propaganda work depends on many reasons: on the reasonable motivation of advice on what, where and how not to do on a hike; from adapting individual forms of persuasion to the specific conditions of activity of a tourist section, club, group; from taking into account the educational level and even the individual characteristics of the “enlightened” person.

Unfortunately, the knowledge presented does not always correspond to the level of preparedness of listeners or readers. Thus, it is useless to talk about the dangers associated with the incorrect solution of tactical problems on the route to those who have not yet mastered the basics of movement technology; There is no point in explaining the intricacies of first aid using injections to someone who does not know how to handle a bandage or cannot remove a speck from an eye.

At the same time, overly simplified or general recommendations, which sometimes “leak” even into tourist guides, are of little effect. Moreover, the meaning of such advice is sometimes killed by the unexpected humor of the presentation. Well, is it possible, for example, to take seriously advice like: “Never do anything alone”; "...cross narrow paths with extreme caution. If you turn sharply, you can fall off a cliff"; “When bitten by insects and snakes, remove the sting, squeeze out the poison from the wound, lubricate with iodine or make a lotion from ammonia” *.

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* Pocket guide for tourists. M., 1963.

Finally, recommendations presented in lectures for beginners or in publications for young tourists about technically very difficult or risky techniques for overcoming mountain rivers, avalanche-prone areas, and rocky routes can be simply harmful. Having inaccurately understood the meaning of a technical technique with an unprepared mind, not imagining the real power of the elements and not taking into account that every business has its own subtleties, some novice travelers, due to an erroneous propaganda technique, find themselves in emergency situations.

In 1968, a group of high school students, led by a minor leader who did not have the necessary tourist experience, during a nine-day hike in the foothills of the Western Tien Shan, risked fording the Ugam River in the evening. The crossing was not necessary, since there was a bridge well known to tourists within a 30-minute walk. However, the desire to shorten the path at least a little was so great that the instructor, at the request of the group, formed a chain of tourists and led them into the water, as a result of which many were knocked off their feet by the pressure of the water and, finding themselves in a mountain stream, died.

As it turned out, the group members and the leader were familiar in general terms with the techniques for overcoming water obstacles before the trip, but did not imagine that the danger of crossing was so great, and without strict compliance with certain conditions it was generally impossible. In particular, it is impossible to ford in the evening across a river more than 1 m deep when the flow speed is over 2 m per second and when the group is formed in single file. And this is exactly how the leader built the group (misunderstanding the meaning of overcoming water barriers with a “wall”), which only led to the damming of the river, a sharp increase in its pressure on tourists and their drifting downstream.

Other deviations in propaganda work on safety measures are no less dangerous. For example, the lack of information from tourism assets about accidents with an analysis of their causes and instructions on the necessary preventive measures.

We must finally understand that such concealment of shortcomings cannot bring any benefit. And why should we remain silent? Don’t police officers give instructive talks about street injuries and mention victims of accidents in schools, clubs, and in the foyers of cinemas? Don't fire officials use radio stations in department stores, train stations, and other public places to give brief messages about firefighting, with specific examples of disasters caused by fire?

The absence of the necessary information about tourist injuries in special publications is especially annoying when in newspapers or magazines designed for the general reader periodically there appear publications glorifying solo swims in Lake Baikal, in violation of all the rules, or calling for unorganized travel in the Pamirs. The positive intentions of the authors of books or film scripts dedicated to tourism and mountaineering sometimes conflict with the actual effect of their works, since the latter objectively push beginners to take unjustified risks on routes, implementing the concept of “live at risk” with unsuitable means and for the sake of goals that are not always worthy of sacrificing human life and health.

Instead of appealing to home-grown “supermen”, it is perhaps more useful to remember more often the concluding words of Alain Bombard’s courageous book: “... no one can and should risk their life except for the public good... everyone who thinks that you can become famous if you just take a free ride on a raft to America or somewhere else, I implore you, think better... Deceived by a mirage, carried away by a tempting idea, imagining such a voyage as a pleasure walk, you will understand the seriousness of the struggle for life only when it is too late to gather all your courage. Your confusion will be all the greater because you have put your life in danger without any benefit, but there are so many beautiful and noble goals for which you can risk your life! *

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*Bombard A. Overboard of his own free will. M., 1958.

CONCLUSION

Let us summarize some of the results of considering the dangers of tourism using the formula “route - equipment - traveler - society”.

As has been shown, there are more and less dangerous types of tourism, seasons, days and even hours of travel; The safety of people depends to a greater or lesser extent on certain types of equipment. But if we take the question seriously, it is clear that it is not the route or equipment that determines the bulk of accidents. Although the external environment serves as a traumatic factor during the hike. Obviously, the flames of a fire, trees on a ski slope, stones in a riverbed on a water route, or pillars along the road along which a motorist is driving cause damage, so to speak, only in “self-defense.”

Despite the unconditional objectivity and materiality of the dangers associated with a risky route and poor equipment, they still pose a imaginary danger for mass travel. Imaginary largely because most groups on active tourist routes make not so difficult trips where these factors could play a decisive role. Approximately the same imaginary danger for the central parts of some of the largest cities in Western Europe is the increased speed of vehicles: according to foreign statistics, in these areas only 10% of simultaneously moving cars follow their destination, the rest are just looking for a parking place.

The real danger when traveling is the person himself, and injuries on tourist routes do not reflect the will of chance or the action of some forces beyond a person’s control, but are a consequence of his own mistakes and delusions.

Of particular importance is the increased exposure of individual travelers to the danger of an accident, which is influenced by the unsatisfactory state of their health, increased reaction to changes in the situation, level of fatigue, and the course of emotional processes.

The main danger lies in the lack of experience, in the weak technical-tactical and moral-volitional preparation of the people going on the trip, in the low discipline and consciousness of some of them. The first is manifested in the fact that a person does not know what to do in a given situation, or knows, but does not know how to do it. The second is that he knows and can, but does not want and does not do what security requires, or simply does not want to know what needs to be done for this.

Despite all the responsibility of the traveler himself for wrong actions that are dangerous to health and life, responsibility cannot be removed from those who prepared, checked and released him on the route. And also from those who raised him and instilled certain views on the need for safe passage of the route - that is, from society. Therefore, society - be it a tourist group, a physical education group or any other association of people - if incorrect collective views on injuries dominate in it, it also becomes one of the real dangers in tourism.

Preventative measures against these dangers are much more difficult than for most diseases. The simplest preventive measures are organizational and technical, related to the introduction of protective devices, improvement of equipment, improvement of routes, but their implementation also requires solving a whole range of problems. The tasks are not simple, they cannot be solved in one or two years, since they cover a wide range of issues from purely industrial to legal.

At the same time, we have to admit that any technical measures cannot completely eliminate sources of danger in tourism. In addition, their effectiveness will depend on how they are received by tourists. If it turns out that technical improvements in life-saving equipment impose additional burdens on travelers and cause inconvenience, this will cause opposition to measures aimed at reducing injuries.

It is impossible to achieve a noticeable reduction in accidents in tourism with any one educational campaign. Only the constant and systematic use of many educational means, not so much for correcting already “ready-made” offenders, but for preventive work with the younger generations of travelers and with new personnel joining tourism, can ensure a certain success.

No less important is the systematic expansion of the training system for tourist travel leaders, tourist organizers, instructors, the introduction of truly year-round training for athletes in tourist sections, strengthening their general physical and special training, and improving technical and tactical skills.

Implementing these and many other measures is not easy. And the goal of the book will be achieved if it helps to draw close public attention to safety issues and the fight against injuries. Such a struggle that would not limit the cognitive, educational and sporting opportunities of travel, but would contribute to the development of active tourism, which embodies the desire of man to oppose the forces of nature with his skill and perseverance, to overcome obstacles and difficulties with the help of collectivism, courage and discipline, to achieve victory over the blind rage of the elements and the temporary weakness of his own self.