Where to post locations of incidents personal saftey along the camino??

[Jack42Melb]

Hi, I am a new member of this camino and have some information to share about 3 locations a long the Camino Francis where l have heard from other pilgrims of incidents that happened to them or fellow pilgrims. As well as one incident of a near dog attack on me along the Le Pue way.

After browsing through the forum, l noticed that sometimes it is hard to find information quickly due to the responses/comments by fellow members. So l was wondering if it was possible to start a tread where only the location, the incident & a description of the offender information is listed.

Like a compilation of locations rather than a discussion thread.

Eventually, we can create a map of all locations along the Caminos where incidents have occurred so new pilgrims can be aware.

The information can be formatted by each Camino, which will have its own sub thread of the different categories of incidents. Pilgrims can then post within these sub categories and see where they occurred.

for example :

Camino Francis

• Harassment

Location 1: description of the :Location/section of the camino, the incident and the offender
* Comments
Location 2: description of the :Location/section of the camino, the incident and the offender
* Comments

• Sexual Assault

Location 1: description of the :Location/section of the camino, the incident and the offender
* Comments
Location 2: description of the :Location/section of the camino, the incident and the offender
* Comments

• Robbery
• Dog attacks etc etc etc

Camino Ley Puy

• Harassment
• Sexual Assault
• Robbery
• Dog attacks etc etc etc

Members can see where an incident occurred and then reply within that incident if they had a similar experience.

Eventually a map can be made of all the locations. This will not only help future pilgrims prepare for their own safety along the camino but also any future police investigations since a record of such incidents can be kept.

 

[dougfitz]

I am puzzling over how this approach would be a good way to help other forum members in the first instance, and the authorities in the second. Noting that forum members are a relatively small proportion of the number of pilgrims and that voluntary reporting mechanisms are generally unreliable ways of gathering information, it is hardly likely that we are going to generate reliable and consistent information.

Unreliable, inconsistent and out-dated information is no help to anyone. It has the potential to give forum members a false sense of security about those areas where incidents have not been reported, and may well unjustifiably heighten fears about other areas. Neither of these is a particularly useful outcome.

There is also the issue of what to report. @Jack42Melb, you suggest you want to report something that you were told by someone else had happened to another pilgrim. That is a pretty unconvincing chain, with too many links to be reliable. I would take the view that unless it happened to me, or I saw it happen, I would not be reporting it to the forum. Anything else is just a story or rumour, but not something that could be reliably reported as a fact.

In any case, if something did happen, the best place to report it is still directly to the police. There is also plenty of good advice available from national governments and the like to assist people to travel safely. While it might not have the specifics you seem to want, the best advice seems to be to travel alert, but not alarmed.

There is also the section on the forum now available to report individual incidents. This might include incidents that fall short of being needed to be reported to police, but for me, this has the same issues about the reliability of the information that I have already described here.

 

[William Marques]

I agree with much of what doug says especially the reporting of hearsay.

The "personal safety" section of this forum is a place where forum members can report incidents which happened to them which they think others should know about but it is just that and can never be comprehensive.

 

[mountaingoat999]

Hi Jack

A near dog attack happened to you......Factual.
The rest is hearsay..I was reminded of this from a friend who called me from the camnio to say something happened .....so I posted it and it was removed..she needed to come on the forum to say what took place not me.

otherwise it all hearsay

because I never saw it..not to say it did not take place, it's never black and white.
as William points out there is already a handy "personal safety"section.

 

[peregrina2000]

I don't think the rules of evidence apply here -- we do have a lot of reports of things that are not first hand experiences. People frequently report what other pilgrims say happened to them, what hospitaleros say, etc. But we try to keep it reasonable, and at some point, reasonably reliable turns into wildly speculative. It's just another one of those difficult lines.

My objection to having a thread is similar to Doug's -- it would be a list over time that would include a lot of isolated incidents and would create a totally distorted view of safety on the Camino. Knowing that something happened four years ago is of no relevance to today's safety, unless there are repeated incidents. When patterns emerge, that's different (that's why reporting to the authorities is so very important).

I think a list like this would be kind of like the bedbug lists, most of which are unhelpful since so many places have had them over the years. What is helpful is knowing who are the repeat offenders and which places don't seem to take any precautions.

So for me, bottom line is like William's, that by scrolling through this section of the forum, you can easily find all of the reports and judge for yourself whether it's a valuable piece of information.

 

[C clearly]

This somewhat like what was recently suggested on another thread - basically an incident reporting system and database, which this forum is not equipped to maintain and analyse properly. However, I like the idea of discouraging wide-ranging discussion on those threads where incidents are reported.

 

[Tia Valeria]

At present there are several threads all with similar aims. Perhaps we could have one thread per Camino route, in the Safety section, and confined to facts/helpful hints. This would alert folk, give them helpful info (emergency numbers etc) and also help to keep the threads concentrated on the issue and in proportion to how life is on the Camino.

 

[William Marques]

Or an alternative Ivar could start sub-forums within "Personal Safety" for the major Caminos and the moderators could move the threads into the correct ones. Merging a number of threads into one sometimes produces a meaningless mess as posts from individual threads are combined chronologically and they may cut across one another.

 

[Deleted member 3000]

Current reporting has been working fine for me. Perhaps the problem is more a user's ability to navigate the Forum than it is where information can be found.

 

[Anniesantiago]

I agree with Doug and Falcon.

 

[Tia Valeria]

Or an alternative Ivar could start sub-forums within "Personal Safety" for the major Caminos and the moderators could move the threads into the correct ones. Merging a number of threads into one sometimes produces a meaningless mess as posts from individual threads are combined chronologically and they may cut across one another.

That is what I meant, but maybe didn't put it very well.

 

[Lucy Longpath]

Hi Jack

I would be interested in knowing where your near dog attack took place. We are thinking about walking the Puy Way maybe next year. I was reading a thread about it the other day where someone said they had actually been attacked by a dog. I am wondering if it is the same place or a completely different place. I can't recall where it took place. I would need to find the thread again. Thanks!

 

[Jacobus]

What is a near dog attack? I apologize if that is a less than valid question but I honestly can't imagine what that is.

 

[VNwalking]

The various threads here are basically a virtual mirror of the 'camino wireless' that we all tune into when we're om the road.
And the information we receive from that wireless is sometimes good, sometimes accurate, sometimes inaccurate, and sometimes plain old bad.
We need to be informed and to have our wits about us when we take our packs and go out into the world--and at the same time we also need to avoid cultivating unnecessary fear.
My opinion only, but I think (given the nature of human communication) a dedicated thread would more likely to cause the latter than serve the former. What others have said already sums it up well--scroll through what's here already, find the 'official information,' and then judge for yourself.