As Black Friday gets closer, a Texas Tech Professor urges shoppers to stay safe from crowd crashes in stores.
TTU School of Law Associate Professor Tracy Hresko Pearl studies large crowd crashes across the world, but has been published for her study focused on her United States research.
Pearl described the study as, “A phenomenon where people are injured or killed by the forces of the crowd of people around them.”
Her findings show most crowd crashes occur during concerts or sporting events. However, they also happen during Black Friday.
“Currently, not any jurisdiction in the United States has a crowd control law in the books that would require an event planner to take into account crowd control issues,” Pearl said.
As Black Friday sales get bigger, she claims the likelihood of a crowd crash injury does as well.
“I was stunned to discover that every year in the united states, somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 people are injured by crowd crush incidents,” Pearl said. “So they’re trampled upon, they are jostled, they’re suffocated by large groups of people. As a result, the United States is responsible for 37% of all concert injuries that happen world-wide each year.”
Pearl also suggest to put the responsibility of safety on the retailer or event planner, rather than individuals in the crowd.
“Crowd science shows us when crowd reach certain densities, no member of the crowd can control what’s happening around them,” Pearl said. “So it’s not the bad behavior on the part of the crowd, it’s the crowd itself has gotten too large and too dense and too unruly.”
Therefore, a proposed solution is giving more access points to customers.
“Simply opening as many doors as possible can go a long way to reduce the risk of bottle-necks forming because bottlenecks can be deadly in large crowd situations,” Pearl said.
