Standards
There are two major standards for climbing equipment safety and reliability worldwide:
- UIAA (International Mountaineering and Climbing Federation)
- CEN (European Committee for Standardisation)
In recent years, the CEN has become an important standards organization, mainly in Europe since any products sold in Europe must by law be third-party certified to the relevant standards. There is no such requirement in most other countries, although most manufacturers voluntarily follow UIAA or CEN standards (much like electrical equipment in the US is almost always privately certified by Underwriters Laboratories).
Read more about this topic: Climbing Protection
Famous quotes containing the word standards:
“Measured by any standard known to science—by horse-power, calories, volts, mass in any shape,—the tension and vibration and volume and so-called progression of society were full a thousand times greater in 1900 than in 1800;Mthe force had doubled ten times over, and the speed, when measured by electrical standards as in telegraphy, approached infinity, and had annihilated both space and time. No law of material movement applied to it.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)
“Barbarism is the absence of standards to which appeal can be made.”
—José Ortega Y Gasset (1883–1955)
“With his brows knit, his mind made up, his will resolved and resistless, he advances, crashing his way through the host of weak, half-formed, dilettante opinions, honest and dishonest ways of thinking, with their standards raised, sentimentalities and conjectures, and tramples them all into dust. See how he prevails; you don’t even hear the groans of the wounded and dying.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)