TIL mass fatality causing "humam stampedes" and "hysterical masses" are myths which shift responsibility from organisers for fatal crowd incidents which "invariably" result from poor organisation
Stampede events that involve humans are extremely rare and are unlikely to be fatal.[5] According to Keith Still, professor of crowd science at Manchester Metropolitan University, "If you look at the analysis, I've not seen any instances of the cause of mass fatalities being a stampede. People don't die because they panic. They panic because they are dying".[5]
Paul Torrens, a professor at the Center for Geospatial Information Science at the University of Maryland, remarks that "the idea of the hysterical mass is a myth".[5] Incidents involving crowds are often reported by media as the results of panic.[16][17] However, the scientific literature has explained how panic is a myth which is used to mislead the attention of the public from the real causes of crowd incidents, such as a crowd crush.[18][19][20] […] [M]ost major crowd disasters can be prevented by simple crowd management strategies.[22] Crushes can be prevented by organization and traffic control, such as barriers. […] Such incidents are invariably the product of organisational failures.[4]
Perhaps I should have included this quote from tne article too?
most major crowd disasters can be prevented by simple crowd management strategies.[22] Crushes can be prevented by organization and traffic control, such as barriers.
No, that isn't the issue. It's the construction "myths invoked by organisers in order to shift responsibility" which is the editorialization. You wrote it like you discovered this great gotcha or something, but the article uses much more clinical language. Basically rewriting to rage-bait.
Could you suggest a better wording that fits into the word limit? I had great trouble fiting the gist of the point within the character limit (I’ve only got two characters left). And had to remove a “might” and “usually” to be able to fit it all in.
I’m not trying to convince anyone of anything really. Just trying to share something I learnt on wikipedia and help lemmy feel more full. But I’m aware I can never make everyone happy.
TIL: Most "human stampedes" are better categorized as "crowd crushes". Root cause analysis of these events typically points to organizational failure rather than panic.
Ah okay this is more an error on my quoting the article as opposed to the title. I tried to write my title in relation to the entire wikipedia article but I see I overquoted from the stampede section which makes it seem like it’s only talking about stampedes and not crowd events in general.
One quote from the article that lets me paraphrase in more certain terms than what you provided is in the leading paragraphs “Such incidents are invariably the product of organizational failures, and most major crowd disasters could have been prevented by simple crowd management strategies.[4]”