... the idea of comparing a car to a belay machine is kind of silly...

It's misrepresented because the belay machine requires fairly routine maintenance done by a human being.

You can read the manual on their webpage if you like. The routine maintenance is vacuuming the nozzle that the webbing comes out of on a weekly basis. Otherwise, the routine maintenance is an annual checkup. If you're only changing your oil once a year, you can probably expect a much higher failure rate.

I was trained up on the maintenance of these things; I don't think a simple maintenance issue was the source of the problem because the in-house maintenance is almost completely irrelevant to the safe operation of it.

I wrote a letter to the company that makes the Trublue autobelay a couple days after the accident. Despite assurance on their website that they respond to all inquiries within a business day, I still hadn't heard back several weeks later. So I sent it again last week. Still no response. Any chance I ever had of getting back on an autobelay is gone. If the company completely ignores the concerns of their end user, it says a lot about their culture. Here's the letter I wrote if anyone is interested.



I am writing in regard to the April 21st incident in which a climber at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill was severely injured after falling 30 feet as a result of the failure of your Trublue Auto Belay device. It has been rumored that the device had not been properly maintained and was overdue for its annual recertification. This letter assumes that this is indeed the case. While I expect that this clears your company of liability, the failure of such a device, one that people unquestioningly put their lives in the hands of every day, warrants some very serious questions.

Will your company be involved in the investigation into the failure of the device? If so, will you make the results of the investigation available to the public? My fellow climbers and I would be very interested to know what caused the failure and whether or not it could have been prevented had the device been maintained properly.

How can I, as a climber, know if a gym has been following the proper maintenance guidelines? Of all the gyms I have climbed in, I would have ranked the gym at UNC as the most trustworthy. It was a wall run without concern for profit, and it had the backing a major institution. If a gym with so much concern for policy and safety checks can have a device fail, how can I and my fellow climbers trust a smaller business that is concerned with profit above all else? How can we blindly trust a gym that might not be able to afford the $200 per device annual recertification fee so easily? Could there be some way of requiring gyms to post the auto belay’s certification in a place that is easily visible? (i.e. not on the back of the device 45 feet up so that one must use the device to see it.)

What can you, as a company, do to make climbers aware that their gym has missed its annual maintenance check? It seems that this would encourage gyms to properly maintain their equipment. I understand that you are under no legal obligation to implement such a policy, but if the annual recertification is really necessary to ensure the product’s safety, then you do have an ethical responsibility to inform those who risk their lives on your device that it is no longer safe for use.

What is the failure rate for your product? Have there been other cases of failure in actual use? Have these cases all been the result of improper maintenance or use? Are there any inherent flaws in the product that may cause failure even when proper safety is practiced?

I appreciate that your company seems to show great concern for the safety of the end user. I look forward to being able to use your devices again once my concerns have been answered and my fears of a similar incident alleviated. I sincerely appreciate the time you will take in reading and responding to my questions.

There are 2 assumptions in your letter:

1) the autobelay failed and the fall was not a result of the climber incorrectly clipping into the device.

2) the device was not properly maintained and that led to the failure

As far as I know, neither has been established, at least publicly. Regardless, it is a shame that we have not heard from either UNC or from TruBlue.

The autobelay did fail. She was still clipped in when they found her. Granted, I only know this from word of mouth, but as a climber at UNC who still climbs with many of her friends and fellow wall employees, I think that information is pretty reliable. And I say quite clearly in the letter that the device not being properly maintained is only a rumor.

Neither has been established publicly, which is sort of the point. I feel like we have a right to know. The company shouldn't ignore our concerns, and the school should do more to inform us about what's going on. The only "official" communication after it happened was a series of contradicting emails on the listserv from the guy who ran the gym, the same one who is being blamed for the accident. The first email said that one gym (the one we would later learn was the site of the accident) was closed for the day, but that the other would be open. A couple hours later, he sent an email that both gyms would be closed for the weekend. A few days later, the first "official" communication that there had been an accident came from the same guy, saying simply that there had been an accident and that both gyms would be closed for an unknown time period. There has been no communication since. All other information comes from word of mouth from former gym employees. The fact that the school is leaving us to depend on rumors to get the facts here is very disappointing. If a gymnast had gotten hurt on some piece of equipment, I think the reaction would have been very different. I seriously doubt that they would have canceled the entire gymnastics program with hardly a word, even if it was the result of equipment failure. And I think the school would have communicated better with those who used the facilities. I guess the point of this long-winded, winding rant is that neither the school nor TruBlue are handling the situation as they should be.

Actually, I heard differently. I heard that when she was found she wasn't clipped in at all. Of course, all of these posts seem to include quite a bit of speculation and rumors, isn't it generally ill-advised to climb alone?

I'm friends with quite a few people who have worked at the wall over the years, and I'm also pretty sure that one of the rules for wall employees is not climbing during their shifts,.

I've also climbed at both of unc's walls and their equipment and facilities have ALWAYS been incredibly well maintained and, for the most part, the staff seem attentive and well trained.

ALSO
In regards to the possibility of the delay of immediate annual service (within a few months of the recommended service window) - if indeed it did fail, then I do not think that the device was properly designed or tested. Safety equipment shouldn't fail that easily.

I guess we may not ever know exactly what happened. Is the girl doing better now?

So it looks like we'll all be climbing at the community center, VE, TRC or elsewhere this summer.

Are the autobelays the primary or only source of belay at the gym? Can climbers belay each other?

If so, why is the gym closed at all? Just take the autobelays out of service (or not, if they weren't involved in the first place) and reopen the gym.

This all seems very strange.

I finally got a response from Trublue, and it kind of changes everything in my opinion. If what they say is true, then the rumors (which I had thought to be pretty reliable since I heard first hand from her good friend and coworker) are completely wrong. Here's the reply:

Thanks for your questions – it’s always a good idea to be cautious with gear and systems in our sport.

We are awaiting word of what happened at UNC-Chapel Hill. They have given us no indication that a TruBlue was involved in the accident. UNC has referred us to this article in response to our question about whether a TruBlue was involved:

http://www.dailytarheel.com/index.php/article/2012/04/student_injured_after_fall_from_climbing_wall_saturday_rock_wall_closed_indefinitely

If the accident happened on a TruBlue, we would need to see the unit to find out what happened. We have had no device failures – the unit is designed to be failsafe. I’ll go a little deeper into how the unit works, especially considering the misinformation present in the maintenance on that same thread.

The TruBlue operates on eddy current braking – when you pass a magnet across a non-ferrous metallic substance like aluminum, a current is generated in that material. This current carries a magnetic charge with it that repels the magnetic field generated by the magnet. Think of taking two magnets and trying to push north pole to north pole. This is the mechanism that provides the braking force in a TruBlue. Aluminum rotors spin into a magnetic field provided by rare earth magnets. The heavier the person falling, the more centrifugal force the rotors see, and the farther they spin into the magnetic field. This regulates the speed of descent. The unit is designed in such a way that any failure causes the rotors to spin completely into the magnetic field, so if there is a device failure, a climber will simply be lowered at a very slow rate. That said, we’ve never had a device fail.

The braking force is applied in the space between the rotors and the magnets, so there are no wear parts to grind down and limit the effectiveness of the unit.

The best way to keep yourself safe as a TruBlue user is to perform a weekly inspection before use. The webbing line is the main wear component of the unit, but is fortunately, easy to inspect. You’ll simply pull the webbing line out, check that there is a smooth, strong retraction, and visually inspect the webbing line for fraying, discoloration, hard or shiny spots – anything out of the ordinary. It’s similar to checking a rope, and we recommend that all climbers do inspect the webbing line themselves, just as they should do an inspection of a gym-provided lead rope, a friend’s rope, etc. A closer inspection should be done by the gym on a weekly basis, and that process is detailed in the attached manual. Check pages 20 and on for some good information about what to do as a user, and what to expect your gym to do.

Ask your gym if the units are being kept up to date regarding recertifications and inspections. They may have logs of these. If the units are properly inspected, and kept within the yearly recertification requirement, we have full confidence in our devices. They are extremely reliable, but there is a responsibility for gyms and users to provide due diligence in making sure the units are properly maintained, just as with any climbing device.

Thank you,
Tyler

This is an excellent response and I'm happy with it. My only complaint is that they actually mention this thread. Would they have ever responded if I hadn't badmouthed them here?

Way to go TruBLue. Those guys are the bomb. I've used their devices at many different gyms and will continue to use them w/out any hesitation or reservation.
I recently heard from a pretty reliable source that the girl injured in the accident may not have told the truth about what had actually happened. I heard when the wall closed Friday night that the auto belay biner was at the top of the wall and that when the girl was found after the accident she was not attached to the biner. Sounds a little suspect to me. Sounds like she made the story up to cover her butt. It's still pretty horrible that she got hurt, but come on. I've heard that there are only 2 possible ways the Trublue could fail - one is pilot error and the climber screws up connecting to the device and the other is the webbing fails. So even if the device was not sent back in time to be cleaned/serviced as some of you have speculated, from what I know about the ones at UNC they were only a year old and change.
I also heard from another friend that UNC has not even contacted TRUBLUE. What's up w/that? I can't imagine that all these unsubstantiated rumors about the device supposedly failing has been very good for the company. It sounds like the device wasn't even used. I think UNC needs clear this up and reveal what exactly happened. Rumors suck and it seems like a number of them started on this site. TruBlue seems to have manufactured a pretty incredible device and I'm sure we'll continue to see them at local gyms for years to come. Thanks TruBlue