20 Sep The Buddy Check
The Buddy Check
Is your crew good about doing buddy checks? I have personally seen 3 cases in the past two months myself where a climber proceeded to start to climb off of the ground without completing the necessary buddy check and it could have potentially been the cause of an accident.
We teach hundreds of students a year in our Tower Safety & Rescue Certification courses. A common mistake I see is where a climber will reach blindly behind their head and believe they have connected their shock absorbing lanyards to the Dorsal D-ring on the back of their harness. The hook will usually make the same “clicking” whether it snaps the ring or just pops inside the center of it.
There is no doubt that this could be a fatal mistake.
Some manufacturers such as Buckingham Manufacturing have produced a “monkey tail” extension lanyard off the back of the harness to mitigate this is scenarios where the user must connect his or her own fall arrest device (such as an SRL in a bucket truck).
Climb Careful!
Todd Horning
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