Dance music festivals are some of the most exciting and dynamic music events on the international scene. Some of biggest festivals in the world, such as TomorrowLand, draw in hundreds of thousands of music lovers. Yet such large crowds create potential dangers such as revelers being crushed by people surging to the front of the crowd.
We will look at a past incident of crowd crushing and why people take the risk of getting involved in a mosh pit in the first place.
Music fans love a big crowd. The sense of enjoying your favorite music with like-minded people is part of the thrill and excitement of going to festivals. Many festivalgoers have also experienced a crowd surge and crush. These can be very dangerous if they become uncontrollable.
In 2014, the BBC reported how 21 people were killed and over 500 people were injured at a festival in Germany. The venue was too small to contain the hundreds of thousands of festivalgoers and the crush was caused when the crowds tried to squeeze through a narrow tunnel that was the only access to the grounds. 10 people were charged over the deaths and the failure to organize crowd safety.
Mosh pits are well established in music concerts. Up Venue created a survival guide with several escape strategies. They are quoted as saying that mosh pits are very dangerous and are likely to cause injury. One way to survive a mosh pit if it is getting too much is to head for the center where the crowd is denser and you are less likely to get hurt. Deaths in mosh pits are uncommon but do happen. The most infamous type of mosh pit is the wall of death where a large group of people split into two sides then charge at each other. Part of the risk of getting injured is why people enjoy them.
People love to take risks. The thrill of adrenaline pumping through the veins, the knowledge that what we are doing is not in our best interests. Letâs take a look a some other examples of risk taking to try and comprehend why we do things like this:
One example of this is base-jumping. The New York Times went with the headline: itâs more like suicide than sport. The sport is considered so dangerous that National Parks in the USA have banned it. Yet despite the risks it remains very popular among adrenaline junkies.
Good Therapy states how risk taking causes changes in the brain with the release of adrenaline and dopamine. The chemicals cause a powerful high in most people. At festivals when in a large crowd listening to loud music, the same feeling of adrenaline can be felt as well as when youâre about to base-jump or play games with definitive outcomes.
There have been a ton of studies on gaming which can also be applied to scenarios such as mosh pits and base-jumping, too where people look for huge highs and are generally not bothered about any long-term ramifications. Steve Donoughue, a leading management consultant who specializes in the gaming industry, states that people generally approach these situations for quick wins. So, the industry itself had to put the right procedures in place to make sure players were gambling responsibly and had their wits about them at all times. Thus, leading digital operator Gala Casino implemented its Responsible Gambling ethos with many other gaming companies later following suit in the UK. This made sure that operators werenât taking advantage of vulnerable players, underage participation and criminal behavior.
In short, examples like the aforementioned represent a need for reform in even the most crazy situations, such as base-jumping and running head first into a mosh pit.
Being safe at a festival is paramount. You are there to enjoy the music not end up in hospital or worse. As shown above all it takes is some bad planning and the worst-case scenario can happen. So, if you do decide to go into a mosh pit, make sure you know what you are getting yourself into, and the best ways to get out. Know your exit spots and be aware of the crowd situation when attending a festival, rave or nightclub.
