Video: Safety & Risk Management with Remy Metailler

Dec 17, 2019 at 10:37
by Rémy Métailler  
Video by a Alexandre Chapellier @alchapi

Mountain biking can be very dangerous. In this video, I wanted to talk about risk awareness and explain how I manage risk as a professional rider.

To help me go through some basic safety advice, Mike Conway joins me to share his knowledge as a member of the Search and Rescue team of Whistler. He is physio at Back in Action Physiotherapy and a volunteer to help all of us when we need.

Thanks for watching! And thank you to SORCA (sorca.ca) for the trail network in beautiful Squamish.

For more info about playing safely in the outdoors check out: adventuresmart.ca

Do not forget to subscribe if you have not yet.

And to follow Instagram for more content: @remymetailler

See you on the trails or on YouTube!

Today we talk safety and risk awareness. Check the video on Youtube.

We talk about safety and risk management Full video on Youtube.

We talk about safety and risk management Full video on Youtube.

We talk about safety and risk management Full video on Youtube.


Author Info:
remymetailler avatar

Member since Feb 25, 2009
185 articles

82 Comments
  • 72 1
 "Safety meetings" are an integral part of all my rides.
  • 12 0
 Integral part of doing my job also
  • 11 0
 Nobody moves, nobody gets hurt.
  • 7 0
 @pargolf8: Same here. We call it TEM. Threat Error Management.
  • 10 0
 Along with "Attitude Adjustment Meetings" they are vital to any ride..
  • 3 0
 @reddo:
This may be a different sort of meeting. But maybe not?
  • 24 0
 usually my safety meetings are at 4:20pm
  • 3 0
 Safety first, then teamwork.
  • 4 0
 @DarrenBlois123 Dude, we had those quotation mark meetings daily when I worked/skied at Lake Louise! And for the trolls, my job had nothing to do with the public.
  • 1 0
 @pinkrobe: LoL from that comment I didn't even need to look at your profile to know you were probably in Alberta.
  • 2 0
 Only type of safety meeting that counts @maxnomas:
  • 3 0
 @GatoGordo: Actually I think it goes “Nobody works, nobody gets hurt” haha
  • 3 4
 @maxnomas: I remember when i was 15 and thought 420 was cool
  • 2 0
 All this talk about meetings is making me want to schedule a meeting. Don't care what it's about. God dammit.
  • 1 0
 @sixers2009: Hard work fine and hard work good, but first take care of head.
  • 13 0
 Good message and good messenger. Remy's videos are always the ones that feel really risky to me. Like, he's riding stuff I might try to ride then doing it at incredible speeds that boggle my mind. So they always seem more risky than a Rampage or DH rider, because the trails he's on are ridden by "regular" folks.
  • 10 0
 Additional advice for mortals: "Don't do what Yoann did in his last video!"

On a more serious note, there is a very good video by Alexis Righetti about managing risk in the alpine. Well worth watching, despite the language barrier: www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPAjZuWKpUc
  • 10 1
 Great video, lots to learn from and applicable to many life/work situations. A summary for the tl:dr'ers out there:
- Prepare for the unforeseen (as far as is reasonably practicable)
- Know and understand the hazard
- Know and understand the environment (rain, wind)
- Be aware of your abilities and limitations, don't work outwith them (a challenge if also learning new skills..?)
- Know your tools/equipment (bike) and their limitations (suspension set up, tyre pressures, etc)
- Do a cost/benefit analysis prior to activity (insta likes vs hospital bills?).
- Carry out post activity review and learn from it

I've often wondered about how professional riders approach ESH management; this has been insightful.
  • 2 0
 thank you
  • 9 3
 I love that PB posts stuff like this. That being said, younger, less experienced riders are the ones who most need to watch these, and unfortunately they won’t watch 22 minutes of a video. Maybe we can chop these up into shorter clips so they will digest it.
  • 24 0
 Then maybe fail friday videos will be shorter hahah
  • 3 0
 @mtbmaniatv: you sir are correct
  • 20 0
 Oh don't worry everyone watches the longer videos while recovering from injury.
  • 1 0
 @JDFF: So we will still have friday fail videos, they go to the hospital, watch this video, and then the accidents taper off you're saying? A few months til we see the effects then hahah
  • 9 0
 Hucking that Gouranga rock is beyond my believe let alone beyond my comfort zone. Out standing bike skills !
  • 2 0
 Bat shit crazy! Unreal.
  • 9 0
 This is an important topic that isn’t talked about nearly enough .
  • 5 0
 This is a great video, and I wonder if we can cut this into a shorter clip. This is a super important topic that new riders, and experienced vets alike dont discuss much, particularly when you get a group of young men who ride at a relatively elevated level together. Dudes have a horrible culture of machismo that can supplant risk management skills. I really appreciate seeing this careful calculation, it honestly makes the riding cooler to watch. Its solid, confident, and smooth. Great insight from a great rider.
  • 7 0
 before i drop into something like that i also check my bite point and put a marker out and then turn around and say never in a million f*@#in years.
  • 8 1
 Safety meeting tip : Always have safety meetings on a trail at the bottom of a blind drop
  • 8 0
 Don't worry we had someone on top to make sure no one was coming. Also not many people line up to ride these lines.
  • 1 0
 Most of us would be challenged enough to ride the main line lol. That drop is mega.
  • 5 1
 Speed is the big killer, you cannot avoid the serendipitous freak accident. As you get better as a rider you crash less, but the consequence of a crash is higher as you ride faster and/or more exposed trails.

Trailbuilding v2.0 is all about speed controll, keeping obstacles that keeps the speed at a safe level, being creative about line and keeping petite climbing cruxes without interrupting the flow of the ride. I try to keep my trails cheeky with a certain degree if gnarflow. In the end, flow is an attribute of the rider not the teail.
  • 1 0
 Cannot upvote enough. I feel like there is a lot of misconception among good riders who tend to believe that skills on the bike make their riding safer. But crashing rarely at high speeds can be even more dangerous than crashing often at low speeds.
  • 4 0
 Risk management in the outdoors often looks at “hard” risks; things like the weather, our equipment, technical difficulty, and things like that. One of the biggest ways we can mitigate risks is to look closer at “soft” risks, or the human factors.

How do we make good decisions? Accidents can just happen no matter how well prepared we are, but the severity of an accident is often reduced by considering the soft risks, things like riding alone, riding in slippery conditions, riding above your skill level, or having a beer at that awesome lookout. Those are decisions we make and they can have severe impacts on safety.

On the other side of the soft risk coin, there are a lot f things we can do to reduce risk or prepare ourselves for an accident. Take a wilderness first aid course, bring a first aid kit and tools to fix your bike, know how to access emergency/SAR if needed, etc.

I guess you could sum it all up by saying “make good choices.”
  • 4 0
 human factors, nailed it. "hey bud, the gopro is rolling, send it!" Wink social pressure, halo affect, group think, etc. all basics in avy 1 courses
  • 2 0
 Rate of accidents and serious injury sky rocket when there are pretty girls watching haha
  • 2 0
 Some dangers come down to our inability or refusal to objectively evaluate the conditions. Not knowing when to quit ("i came all the way here for this feature, now i need to ride it"). Deceiving oneself ("i climbed this mountain before (in peak condition), i can do it again (hung over, hungry, with a cold)". Machismo ("HTFU!"). The list is long...
  • 2 0
 Good content, lots of overlap with traveling in avalanche terrain and the decision making, risk acceptance/tolerance, and preparedness that goes into it. Reminds me of The Slide podcast series from a few seasons back, good listen if you're a backcountry skier/boarder/sledder soundcloud.com/user-660921194/s2e2-tolerable-exposure (skip to about 13:45 for the meat of the risk exposure discussion)
  • 2 0
 my best bro and riding buddy broke his neck on the trail a month ago. Another friend had a space blanket and this was huge as it was cold and wet and took an hour for first responders to get to us on the trails. ibuprofin is another good one
  • 5 0
 In order to manage risk, we must first understand risk
  • 4 0
 risk = probability of occurrence X severity of consequences. That’s what they taught me at work anyway.
  • 2 0
 How do you spot risk? How do you avoid risk and what makes it so risky?
  • 3 0
 @simonusedtoskate: bash out your 5x5 matrix mate
  • 2 0
 a famous rich person once used the analogy that.. driving has 'risk', but taking your hands off the wheel and flooring the gas is 'risky'.
  • 2 0
 @lubes17319: Risk is the likelihood of coming to harm as a result of exposure to a hazard.

the hazard is the trail feature
probability (likelihood) of experiencing harm as a result of hitting the feature is down to factors identified in the video
another factor to consider when defining control measures, or in this case, is it worth it, is frequency- how often are you going to hit that feature, or perhaps in this context, a variety of hazardous features on a trail (how many are there)
severity is self explanatory
so as simon said, likelihood x frequency x severity = risk score. lower score = lower level of risk.

sometimes/often it's impossible to avoid risk, in which case the hierarchy of control needs to be followed after elimination (reduce/isolate/control/PPE/discipline)
  • 4 0
 I really enjoy listening to Remy, he has a very calm logical way of talking.
  • 1 0
 Good vid! I need to remember to not push too much, work on technique more...

Last year I invested in a Garmin Outreach Mini. It is tiny and has a satellite-based emergency/SOS beacon built in. I pay about $10/month or so for the service, which includes a few satellite text messages... The app lets you send texts via satellite with your phone, also has nav. I think it's a good idea.
  • 4 1
 On the second picture, is it the same feature that Yoann Berelli cleared on a full rigid city bike ?
  • 2 1
 Just noticed I made a stupid typo... Barelli
  • 3 0
 Just wear pit vipers, you won't crash
  • 3 0
 Santa Cruz Megatower? O.o
  • 1 1
 Remy rides for cube bikes.
  • 2 0
 @jjalessi: look at his Safari tabs Wink
  • 8 0
 That's the filmmaker Alex who took the screen grabs from his computer... At least he did not have some adult websites opened...
  • 2 0
 @remymetailler: haha! ...double checking my own screen right now
  • 1 2
 @jjalessi: no shit sherlock...
  • 1 1
 @ciechan: gotcha thanks. Lol
  • 2 1
 @Freerider-09: thanks for the kind words. Good to see there are still pricks in the pinkbike comment section. I’m just glad that I’ve got skin thick enough that a trash talking dentist can’t penetrate;-)
  • 1 0
 hey I've seen Safety & Risk Management on that trail just the other day, it was mostly about woop-woop-woop Smile
  • 2 1
 BS... safety starts with a FF helmet ! jordie died for less than this .............
  • 1 0
 Low key, I've been wondering about Jordie's helmet situation, not least because I use the same brand he was sponsored by. Of course no helmet can prevent everything, but still, curious. RIP Jordie Lunn
  • 1 0
 was Jordie wearing an open face helmet or no helmet at all?
  • 14 2
 I first did that drop with a full face. Now I'm so comfortable doing it that I no longer feel the same amount of risks doing it. Also that drop to me is not bad at all. You can see I kind of know what I'm doing.
  • 3 0
 @remymetailler: you are good at the mountain bicycling. Have you considered making a career out of it?
  • 3 0
 bones mend, press send.
  • 2 0
 ha ha... I like (+1)

but, after breaking (pun intended) the two dozen barrier I can attest hitting that button gets more difficult
  • 2 0
 That rock drop was insane. So sketchy. The guy rips.
  • 2 0
 Cool vid, thanks Remy
  • 1 0
 LE BOT D'ASMR THEN BOOOOOOOM GIGANTIC PSYCHO DROP I LOVE IT
  • 3 2
 Remy, why no full face?
  • 8 0
 Cause I was riding in my comfort zone. I wear a full face when I feel like I need it. I understand why you are surprised I don't though.
  • 1 0
 @remymetailler: okay, now I kinda interested to see what's out of your comfort zone... :o
Smile
  • 16 0
 @MDana87: uphills..
  • 1 1
 First rule, safety third
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