KNOCKOUT GAMES OF DESTINY DANCY PARTY DEATH

Car designers talk about two types of safety: primary safety and secondary safety.

It’s all about the music. Not

Car designers talk about two types of safety: primary safety and secondary safety.

Primary safety is about avoiding accidents. Good visibility, sure-footed handling, powerful brakes and sufficient acceleration to drive out of difficult situations are all important primary safety factors.

Secondary safety involves protecting vehicle occupants once an accident is already underway. Seat belts, shatterproof glass, collapsible steering columns and airbags are all examples of secondary safety technology.

If primary safety measures are up to a high standard, however, those secondary features will never come into play. As well, avoiding an accident is always better than surviving an accident.

Now think about primary and secondary safety as they might apply to music festivals.

In the wake of Saturday’s Knockout Games of Destiny Dancy Party at Sydney Olympic Park, which left teenage rave fan Callum Brosnan dead and saw 16 people rushed to hospital, three of them subsequently placed in induced comas, we will hear a great deal about secondary safety.

That is, what should have been done once the “accident” – young people taking drugs – was already underway.

The Greens and others will likely repeat their earlier support for pill testing at such events. This is a largely unworkable solution to a problem more effectively addressed at a primary level.

Far more sensible are the likes of NSW Police Assistant Commissioner Peter Thurtell, who yesterday urged partygoers to stop “gambling with their lives”.

“These drugs are not safe,” Assistant Commissioner Thurtell said. “There is no safe limit.

“Please stay away from drugs all together because if you keep on doing them eventually it might be you.”

There is also an obvious primary safety issue for the organisers of these events, which in far too many cases are not music festivals at all. They are drug festivals with an almost-incidental musical component.

One of the five people arrested over drugs charges at the Knockout Games of Destiny Dancy Party had bags of drugs spilling from his pants, it was alleged yesterday in Parramatta Local Court.

An 18-year-old girl was allegedly found with 390 MDMA capsules.

Those alleged amounts of illicit drugs do not indicate a party culture that is chiefly focused on music.

You might even say that music at these events is secondary.

(This morning’s Daily Telegraph editorial.)