One of the local gyms has autobelays.
I noticed that carabiners used for clipping in are on the small size - this makes clipping in through both loops not that easy, extra attention is needed to make sure that the gate is closed and there is no material in between the gate and metal. Having material between the gate and carabiner might lead to failure.

After a couple of similar (non-fatal) accidents here, the gyms now use a kind of simple gate on the autobelays. I.e. the cable is clipped to a metal barrier at the start of the route, which drops down when the cable is unclipped from the barrier and clipped to the harness. So it's not possible to by accident start climbing an autobelay route while not clipped to the cable (obviously you could climb over the barrier, but that's not a slip of the mind in forgetting to clip in).

Since then, no such accidents have occured as far as I know.

One of the local gyms has autobelays.
I noticed that carabiners used for clipping in are on the small size - this makes clipping in through both loops not that easy, extra attention is needed to make sure that the gate is closed and there is no material in between the gate and metal. Having material between the gate and carabiner might lead to failure.

She had to clip the biner somewhere though, right ? Otherwise the autobelay would quickly be at the top and probably hit you on the hand along the way.

The autobelay is clipped to the wall when the climber approaches it. The climber unclips it from the wall, then clips it into his/her belay loop.

I have climbed at Summit. If you do not clip the biner to correctly your harness and it somehow gets loose it shoots straight up to the top of the wall making a hell of a racket. You would be very aware of it. (I have seen these autobelayer biners go up the wall when someone has unclipped at the bottom and not clipped it back into the secure place at the base of the wall. The noise is loud enough to be heard at the other side of the gym.) The only thing that could have happened is that she DIDN'T CLIP IN, and so unfortunately, the accident was totally her own fault.

John, you explained it well. Not sure who you think didn't understand what you said. I kind of didn't get Stefano's first reply to me, and also find it silly to call this an auto-belay accident if she didn't even touch the thing. Hope that clears things up.

This definitely an auto-belay accident. Denying this is like saying Lynn Hill's accident wasn't a rappelling accident, as she never actually did get on rappell...

I think this was an auto belay accident. It's not 100% clear and never will be but I think her intent was to use the auto belay, since she let go at the end. The flaw is that it's possible to forget to clip in.

The gym I go to has 6 auto belays and never heard of any issues. Almost all the routes that are toprope-able can be done on AB, which means that your proposed gate would have to be lowered by non-AB parties, so a second place is needed to clip the AB's twist lock biner into. The AB can be pulled on a rail to position it by the finishing hold of the route you're jumping onto, so not sure how it could work in a case when you have 30 feet of wall where one can start a route.

If someone is going to drive to work, but forget to get in the car and walk out into the street and get hit by a bicycle, would you also characterize that as a car accident? Their intent was to drive teh car....


ps, Curt is right about Lynn Hills accident. She wasn't rapping, she was incorrectly tied in, just like what occurred to John Long except he was in a gym. If that's not a wake up call to the rest of us gumbys: then I got nothing else to say.

Regards to all

You're right, the gate solution wouldn't work with that setup. But to me it sounds like the gym takes a safety risk in order to save some money. To me the obvious answer is for the gym to stop being cheap and instead fix the autobelays in place, and maybe buy a couple more if they want to cover the whole wall.

Is it possible to put a colored sheath on the first few feet of the cable [ biner side ] so that the climber would always see that color. Once they don't a neuron may fire and maybe trigger a thought.

That's too complicated IMO. You're asking to have a dedicated area for autobelays, and for each piece of hardware only to cover a couple of routes instead of a dozen. Those AB-s aren't cheap.

I think it is clear beyond all reasonable doubt that

a) the lady's intent was to climb with an autobelay, which she didn't clip in to
b) these accidents happen too often

In a way these accidents have much in common with rappelling/lowering accidents, which also happen regularly and continuously, even though everybody is well aware of the risks. There is a big difference, though. One accident happens to people climbing outside, on their own accord. The other accident happens in a commercially run gym, where a high safety standard is required.

You don't see routes with big ledges half-way up, no runout bolting, and no trad in climbing gyms, so it would make perfect sense to eliminate the clear risk with autobelays as well.

I have failed to clip in twice during training sessions while running laps, but the problem was the lack of self-check that I always do outdoors. Changing the way I think about indoor climbing has resulted in no failures to clip in since then.

I am not sure I understand why you think applying the same criteria for responsibility for indoors and outdoors is inappropriate, but I may be mis-reading your post.

Auto-belay gate.

Two lower slings attach to the wall, upper attaches to the auto-belay biner. Hard to start without recognizing that the gate is still in the way. Once detached it lays on the floor.

And who clips the thing back, after the climb is done? The climber? Then you are running into the same problem as before. A climber did not hang this banner back, maybe the gym was busy and there was someone ready to climb right away, and couple steps down, the next climber, used to the visual clue, forgot to clip into autobelay...

I don't understand. If the climber did not clip the carabiner back into the top of that gate, wouldn't the autobelay retract and pull it up to the ceiling? It looked to me that the bottom two legs of the "gate" were attached to the floor (or lower wall) and the apex of the "gate" is what was used to hold down the autobelay carabiner.

I climbed in our gym without clipping the auto biner to my harness at least a few time not realizing I was climbing without it so the issue is not the biner shooting to roof and leaving you behind. its rather climbing with a sense of security thinking the biner is clipped in where actually it is not. This is where pilot thinks he has the landing gear down and lands on dirt without double checking the check list. To prevent climbing accidents, its best to double check and actually and physically look and touch and confirm things are in the right place.

Read the I&A and you see tons of fatality reports from climbers not physically double checking their list.I can think of anchor failure and falling from end of the line during rappel as the most common ones you could read regularly.

I have not talked to the BRC folks re: these fabric barriers; they appear to be made by/for Trublue. The BRC would have issues because the walls are not segregated for different uses, i.e. you may boulder, lead, and top-rope on the same terrain the autobelays occupy, so the fabric would interfere with every other use. Several walls also overhang slightly, so attaching to the floor would be more problematic.
It is a tricky issue trying to find a solution that isn't easily bypassed or avoided by someone, or that interferes with other users.

The number of instances of autobelay accidents is frequent enough that these fabric barriers should used in every instance.

If they interfere with other uses then tough. Auto belay routes should be exclusively for auto belays.