Recording conversations at visitor centres

Not a silly idea, after all most government departments, credit agencies, etc, record phone conversations to avoid "he said, she said" scenarios and provide useful internal service feedback. Being self employed I've been caught out more than once with verbal quotes/estimates when the client claims gst or some piece of equipment was not mentioned! 95% of my quotes are written down with various disclaimers i.e if the job escalates due to hidden issues, or the impact of other tradesmen etc, but there are always conversations outside whats written that aren't noted and that can lead to misunderstandings (sometimes I wished I had recorded these discussions) Nobody wants to impute bad motives to another but things go wrong, so it's prudent to protect both parties from messy arguments. DOC should protect their staff and the public. It's an unfortunate fact of life.

I'm just struggling to see the point. If there's a He Said She Said scenario, so what? It's not going to bring someone back from the dead. I think what this really comes down to is whether people are ultimately considered responsible for their own decisions about what's in front of them, or if DOC's expected to be looking after them somehow from a distance.

Very silly idea. Then the idiots are even LESS likely to go to the DoC office. Personally I find the increasing levels of this kind of intrusion into our lives entirely deplorable. Yes everytime something like this is proposed there are always eminently 'sensible' reasons for doing it. (And I don't mean disrespect to 1strider above in saying this. I do understand why.) But my problem is that there never seems to be a countervailing force. It's always in the direction of MORE surveillance and there never seems to be a stopping point where people say 'that's enough'.

It's also another step in the direction of discouraging DOC staff from actually giving useful or interesting advice, or even necessarily wanting to talk about stuff that might be interpreted incorrectly by a bystander... just in case.

It's messy no matter what. Thankfully we don't live in a brutally litigious society like the USA, but people here are becoming more rabid about their 'rights' when, as you rightly point out @Izogi, it's about personal responsibility! Take the sad case of that girl in Milford who was swept to her death. One of her companions claimed that they were not told, or warned about conditions etc and he made a song and dance about it in the media (masking a guilty conscience for his own stupidity methinks) A simple preformed and signed disclaimer would have shut him up before he opened his mouth. Ok, audio recording and video surveillance is icky but reverse analyzing 'who said what' after these types of accidents could be mitigated by DOC providing some means of direct disclaimer when their staff give advice. A kind of 'read em there rights' spiel (I've already experienced a version of this when we went to go up Avalanche Peak and I asked about the Scott's Track diversion at the AP Visitor Center) DOC are responsible for the maintenance of tracks and huts (apparently:) ) not what people do on/in them.

Why should DOC or any other organization be held responsible for keeping people safe from natural forces, acts of god or their own stupidity and ignorance? In the early days I recall making my own assessment of the safety or otherwise of Forest Service 3-wire bridges, tracks crossing slips, and the like. It was quite unreasonable and impractical for anyone to maintain a constant watch on remote hazards and structures subject to flood damage and unpredictable erosion. If we want DOC to keep us safe we must surrender our right to enter our forests and mountains, as and when we wish. On many occasions this will mean individuals less knowledgeable and skilled than us, or ignorant of our abilities, prohibiting us from entering controlled lands least they be blamed for our misadventures. This is the direction we are heading. It is time to show much less sympathy for those who try to shift blame for their own self-inflicted misfortunes onto others.

@Westland "If we want DOC to keep us safe we must surrender our right to enter our forests and mountains, as and when we wish. " Exactly. That's the path Australia have headed down, and a VERY experienced colleague over here (who's photo album makes mine look like a total noob's) is scathing of this trend. I've argued before that we need to be much more proactive in looking after our visitors. But this must be in the direction of encouraging their awareness, self-reliance and understanding. Wrapping them in cotton-wool is completely counter-productive ... because as you say ... the unexpected will always bite you in the arse if you can't recognise a hazard when it's under your nose. Sorry about the mangled anatomical metaphor there :-)

Hi @1strider. Yes he (the Milford chap) did make a song and dance about it. I'll happily accept that given it was clearly a horrid situation and not a good time to be interviewed or asked about that kind of stuff. Immediately afterwards, though, DOC received a huge amount of support from the public about how it couldn't possibly be held responsible in such a way. I'm really not sure how much recording of conversations in visitor centres might do to mitigate the after-effects, anyway. At best, if someone walked into a visitor center, it'd verify that certain things were said to them. It'd possibly verify that certain things weren't said, unless it could be claimed that it didn't reach the recording. It won't disprove that other alleged things were said to them elsewhere. For example, that Milford group had interactions with more DOC staff than just those in the visitor centres. There was at least one guy on the track who spoke to them. There were allegations that Liat Okin (the Israeli woman who wandered off the Routeburn Track) must have been informed of the emergency track by a DOC warden at MacKenzie Hut (because how else could she have found it?), suggesting that it was somehow his fault more than hers. http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/2373868/Israeli-tourist-died-off-track

The thing about this thread is that it feeds into all the other factors and concerns around exploring the backcountry, namely Health & Safety, ACC & SAR /Police, Hut Fees and so on. If anybody gets hurt or lost then it immediately becomes about resources and funding. Ultimately it means someone has to pay, namely Johnny Taxpayer. But I think we all agree DOC can’t be responsible for stupid people, or even those well prepared folk who are simply unfortunate. But, because of our complex health & safety legislation they need to cover their arse and should be protected the same as farmers are when people cross their property. With respect to DOC funding, a more efficient model for extracting fees from hut users needs to be a serious priority and, as has been pointed out, that can only come from publicity and education. My Back-Country Pass is the best $91 I’ve ever spent but I would happily pay twice that! So cheap for what you get! Hut fees could be blatantly advertised and ticket quotas listed on signs at the start of every track perhaps? Overseas visitors MUST be made aware of this user pays element of our hut system (along with KEEP LEFT) and locals shouldn’t regard it as a right to stay for free. DOC needs to be about all care and little responsibility. Paying hut fees is not the same as paying for a motel room. I’m simply paying for the right (privilege really) to stay in a hut. They just have to provide a relatively safe & secure shelter, nothing more. It’s an unfortunate fact of human nature that we don’t always respond to the carrot and the stick gets better results. Go to Singapore and try and spit out your chewing gum and see what happens when you’re caught :)