It has been frighteningly frequent the news of serious accidents and adventure sports deaths. This mountain season in Brazil, which began in April and theoretically ends later this month with the probable start of the rain months, dozens of rescues on trails and pirabbeiras arrived in the media – and this to talk only about those that resulted in deaths, serious injuries and firefighters’ actions. Statistics do not reveal the real amount of occurrences, because many fractures and misplaced are omitted from records, which in Brazil have no centralization. But what comes to the public’s knowledge reveals a scenario that mixes misinformation, recklessness and obsession with the instagramble image at any cost.
And this does not only occur in Brazil. According to this month, the Italian newspaper Corriere della will be the National Relief and Speleological Body of Italy, more than 100 people have lost their lives in the Alps since June 1 – the European summer, each warmer year, has made more attractive mountain altitudes. Last year, there were 466. The problem is that, with global warming, the fresh of the heights is not even that fresh and has forced melting in areas that were just eternal snows. The lack of this coverage leads to a predominance of loose and slippery stones, a fatal combination for unsuspecting.
According to the Italian agency, many of these accidents occurred not only by the factors described above, but by a new component of total insanity: the use of information provided by artificial intelligence that, unfortunately, are not always accurate about the whims of nature. How will the GPT chat know that on that trail has sprouted a large bee hive or that a huge stone interrupted the expected layout without warning the data center?
Added to this, the videos and reports that invaded social networks and who convince the citizen more affected to the couch than to the sleeping bag that a cell phone and good intention to go around without physical and mental preparation or suitable equipment is enough, result in the perfect recipe for the advertised disaster.
In Brazil, specialized groups argue endlessly how to minimize these risks that the unwary assume without imagining. And Abeta itself (Brazilian Association of Ecotourism and Adventure Tourism Companies), which on Wednesday (3) opened its annual meeting with emphasis on the dissemination of safety standards for the activity, has been insistent on the key to lead to the main attraction poles of this type of tourism the maximum information and training of guides and risk minimization.
“The safety of adventure tourism operations is in the DNA of Abeta and is the perennial concern of the association, which always insists on the importance of technical qualification and the formalization of companies that promote these activities,” says Luiz del Vigna, executive director of Abeta.
He highlights the efforts of the Adventure Segura program, which has already taken security in 13 states in all Brazilian regions. And initiatives such as the SEBRAE SP EcoAventura Program in partnership with the State of São Paulo, which aims to bring ISO 21101 technical standard and the security management system to over 200 municipalities of São Paulo.
But if there is no shortage of initiatives for adventure tourism security, there is no norm to avoid the irresponsibility of those who get what they don’t know. And then, as they often cite the most cynical, the theory of evolution of the unfailing Charles Darwin includes the most capable only. Or, perhaps, the most sensible.
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