Shock Absorber Lanyard Experience?

[Haironyourchest]

Anyone here ever take a fall on a shock absorber lanyard, like you ware on building sites at hight? I bought the harness and lanyard system for chimney sweeping jobs, as I have to stand above my anchor point. It's a basic concertina rip-out webbing thing, elongates to four feet and reduced the shock force on the body to 450 kn or so. I know about suspension trauma etc, but would like to know just what 450kn actually feels like. Loads of YouTube vids of weight drop tests, but not one with a live human...given the amount of jackasses on You Tube I am puzzled by this. I just want to know what to expect but don't want to waste my lanyard or blow a disk for the sake of curiosity. Anyone experienced this, or know someone who has? Replies appreciated.

[Bolt]

Here is one...

 

 

Never tried it myself or seen it done.

 

Must be a good 75% chance of a supremely crushed bollock.

 

Additional thoughts would be...

What do you anchor to?

How do you get rescued from it?

What stops you twating into the chimney like a conker?

Is there enough room for the thing to fully deploy beforeally you hit the roof / a ledge?

 

That Dibnah fella knew a fair bit about chimneys.... think he preferred ladders.

 

[Haironyourchest]

53 minutes ago, Bolt said:

Here is one...

 

 

Never tried it myself or seen it done.

 

Must be a good 75% chance of a supremely crushed bollock.

 

Additional thoughts would be...

What do you anchor to?

How do you get rescued from it?

What stops you twating into the chimney like a conker?

Is there enough room for the thing to fully deploy beforeally you hit the roof / a ledge?

 

That Dibnah fella knew a fair bit about chimneys.... think he preferred ladders.

 

Thanks for that! Nice one, just what I was looking for. So your man seemed alright after his fall, only deployed half his shock absorber after a 5 foot drop.

     The chimneys I do are two to four feet tall from the ridge, with a short pot. I wrap a lifting sling around the stack then lanyard onto that, with an adjustable lanyard in series to take up the slack. So fall would be about 4 - 5 feet to a 45 degree roof, then slide down. Depending on the roof the lanyard should stop me going off the edge. I'm working on a bail-out kit for getting down from dangling as well...

[Bolt]

Climb safe, or to quote the sarcastic worker in the video background "don't get parra-p-plegic-ized there".  Yeah great, buddy - thanks for the concern.

 

[Haironyourchest]

 

Found another one, Russian. But it looks like his lanyard didn't deploy? I watched in slow mo and couldn't see it.

[Bolt]

It deployed ok.

 

If you look closely at the before footage, there is no red webbing above or below the absorber,   after, there is a few inches of red above and below.

 

It doesn't seem overly generous though, so at the moment I think I would prefer to use the Canadian  option!