Outdoor education fatalities in Australia 1960–2002. Part 1: Summary of incidents and introduction to fatality analysis

This paper presents a summary of outdoor education fatalities in Australia between 1960 and 2002. It discusses the importance of incident analysis in fatality prevention. Major sources of systematic bias in reviewing cases are discussed, and a distinction made between risk management, safety management, and fatality prevention. The paper is the first in a series presenting the findings of a research project that sought to examine all available information from public records, mainly newspaper reports and coronial documents, on outdoor education fatalities since 1960, with a view to (a) ensuring cases for study were more consistently available to teachers and teacher educators and (b) examining past incidents for common elements or patterns.