It is important to keep these accidents in proportion. Accidents occur in every walk of life. People die or suffer serious injury in motor accidents every week. Pedestrians are killed or suffer serious injury crossing the road on their way to work. And people hurt themselves falling off ladders and roofs in their own homes.
Rather than focussing on the results of serious accidents and condemning the sport or activity as dangerous, or trying to lay blame on individuals, there are two vital ingredients to recovering from such an incident, that everyone involved in sport should be focussing on. The first is utilising the appropriate people and services that are available to assist in recovery from a traumatic event. The second and equally important is learning lessons from accidents and making adjustments to the rules, equipment, risk assessment process and safety practices, in order to attempt to prevent such an accident occurring again.