The Safety Issue

[Tim Shriver]

"while chasing presents no real danger in terms of bodily harm"

All I can say is wow!

I agree with Conner. It's just a matter of time before someone gets killed or badly hurt.

Be careful out there and be sure not to be lulled into a false sense of security.

I must commend most of the chasers and spotters for keeping a good record in place.
But I do remember seeing chasers on TV getting hurt, hit with flying objects, like glass
while inside their car.

It only takes one bad move, one idiot, one person who thinks there is no danger
to tarnish this record.

If we have learned anything while we have been on this globe, never say never
and to respect Mother Nature as she can and often does kick our as*!

Tim

 

[J Tyler]

In 2007, faulty TOASTERS killed 791 people.

Using Google, I found a news story about a woman killed by a falling piano (just like in the cartoons). Death by falling coconuts. A lady in Hong Kong died when she was brushing her teeth and fell, jamming the toothbrush down her throat.

Yes. Eventually, SOMEONE will die while chasing a tornado. But how many people die while riding dirt bikes each year? How many people die parachuting? River Rafting??? Eating dinner?! Storm chasing is the same thing, a risk that some people chose to take. Some people like to float down a calm river, and others CHOOSE to go down white water rivers (which is MUCH more dangerous). When someone dies climbing Mount Everest, everyone doesn't freak out. "Oh LORD, I *KNEW* this was going to happen! Now they are going to pass legislation to outlaw climbing anything larger than a hill! Oh LORD!".

Now, to the OP....Tell them you are trying to decide between moving to Mexico City, or going storm chasing. They will not see storm chasing as quite so dangerous.

 

[Dan Robinson]

Again, I'm not saying that danger isn't there at all. I am contending that the degree of danger is no different than say, riding a bicycle or preparing food with a sharp knife. That is, beyond using common sense, storm dangers are not worthy of concern to a chaser. I would challenge anyone to show actual data that storm chasing's dangers from storms are as elevated as they have always been traditionally hyped. I want actual incidents - as in deaths, serious injuries or hospitalizations as a direct result of a storm-related phenomenon. I'm aware of a couple of spotter deaths from tornadoes, but as far as I am aware they were involving spotters with little experience and without sufficient data. Even so, put those two rare examples up against all of the collective hours of all spotters throughout history, and what is the actual level of risk in terms of percentage? Is it any more dangerous than climbing a ladder to clean gutters, playing a game of softball or flying in a single-engine Cessna?

The 'storm chasing is dangerous' myth has potential implications anywhere from relationships, to insurance rates, to work opportunities, and so on. We've seen examples of this in this very thread. Being categorized as an extreme risk-taker with little thought toward the value of one's own life (or the lives of passengers) is something that I don't appreciate, and so I've come to loathe this myth almost with fervency. It's one of my biggest pet peeves. If chasing really was as dangerous as it is made out to be, I wouldn't be a chaser. Thrill and awe of seeing a storm =/ putting my life in danger.

 

[Jason Foster]

"That's right, Ice.....man, I'm dangerous"

Meh....keep them thinking your dangerous...it's good for business. ;-)

 

[Paul Knightley]

Even that can be debatable - even at those extremes, what has happened to them? A couple of scratches from broken glass is all I've seen. I'm not saying that storms are not capable of harming people and that we can be care-free around them (IE, someday a chaser WILL drive into a voilent tornado on purpose and die), but the level of risk of a storm directly inflicting harm to any given chaser is so low as to not be worthy of mentioning, much less the extreme hype it gets. Especially when things like driving while watching a laptop, speeding on wet roads and driving while fatigued are almost unheard of as risks, yet more likely to actually be a source of death and injury to a chaser.

They may not have been especially harmed, but it's the perception that it's dangerous, by virtue of the fact that many TV shows about chasers fail to give a balanced view of the subject. This is more than likely because 90% of the time they would be showing footage of chasers sitting around or driving around, rather than screaming at a tornado!
Thus, loved ones' ideas about storm chasing are, perhaps, borne from this depiction, rather than the truth. As was mentioned above in the post about toasters, one can find almost any pursuit in life which has caused injury or death, but in which danger and death are not the norm.