Belay Devices: Are Tube-Style Belay Devices on the Way Out?

In the United States, a growing number of climbing gyms now require assisted-braking belay devices, betting that this will sharply reduce the risk of accidents. In France, the question remains more complicated—caught somewhere between individual choice and federation guidance. That gray area, thrown into sharp relief by a recent controversy in the city of Pau, is exactly what pushed us to dig deeper into how gyms set their belay-device policies, from the U.S. to Singapore and across Europe.

© Naomi Fernandez-Martin pour Vertige Media

Because a belay device is never just a piece of hardware. Every technical choice carries a safety philosophy with it: should safety rest primarily on the human side—serious training and real mastery of the tool—or should it lean on technology that’s designed to catch our very human lapses?

That debate isn’t theoretical. It flared up again in Pau, where a university climbing wall abruptly moved to ban “classic” non-assisted devices—tube-style devices like the Petzl Reverso, Tubik, or the Black Diamond ATC—and instead require assisted-braking devices only. That includes both active assisted devices with moving parts (like the iconic Petzl GriGri) and passive assisted devices where the shape of the device helps pinch the rope (like the Mammut Smart, the ATC Pilot, or the Edelrid Jul 2). The decision was made without prior consultation with the local French federation committee (FFME), and it immediately reignited a deeper argument about what gym safety policies should be built on. It also invites a wider look—American, European, Asian—at how different places try (or fail) to balance personal responsibility with faith in “safer” tech.

Assisted-Braking Devices in the U.S.: A Safety Revolution?

In the U.S., there’s no national rule that settles the belay-device question in gyms. Each facility writes its own policy. In that fragmented landscape, two philosophies tend to face off: gyms that have moved to ban traditional tube-style devices (like an ATC or Reverso) in favor of assisted-braking devices only—often referred to as ABDs (assisted-braking devices)—and gyms that still allow a full range of devices, sometimes paired with specific trainings.

Between those poles, many gyms land on a technical compromise: tubes may still be allowed for top-rope belaying (top-roping, i.e., climbing with the rope already anchored from above), but an assisted-braking device is required for leading (lead climbing, where you clip the rope into protection as you climb). That patchwork approach suggests that, in the U.S., this isn’t always about ideology. It’s often about cautious pragmatism—each gym weighing safety and responsibility in its own way.

Since 2018–2019, though, the trend line has leaned noticeably toward ABDs. A wave of adoptions rolled through multiple major gyms and gym groups, often after close calls or out of a desire to align with what managers called industry “best practices.” In 2019, for example, The Front Climbing Club in Utah, Ascent Studio in Colorado, and Spire Climbing in Montana announced—around the same time—that they were moving toward broad ABD requirements. On the West Coast, the long-running gym Vertical World in Seattle joined the shift in February 2019, saying plainly that “the industry itself is moving in this direction,” and pointing to the value of redundancy—an extra layer of protection when a belayer makes a mistake.

More recently, in 2023, the operator of Source Climbing Center in Washington State noted that ABDs had become the “implicit norm” across many gyms in Washington and Oregon. In keeping with that, the gym adopted a clear policy in September 2023: assisted braking required, both for top-rope and lead.

Why this steady march toward assisted braking? Gym managers typically come back to one word: safety. In a fall, an ABD—whether it relies on a mechanical cam (like a GriGri) or a geometry-based pinch (like an Edelrid Jul 2 or Mammut Smart)—adds braking power. It’s a quiet backstop that can keep a climber from decking (decking, i.e., hitting the ground) after a belayer slip, bad hand position, or momentary distraction.

The manager of Ascent Studio put it in blunt anecdotal terms: after three ground falls in his gym that, fortunately, didn’t cause major injury, he argued that all three would have been prevented by an assisted-braking device. From that perspective, requiring ABDs becomes the obvious baseline—especially since many experienced climbers had already made that switch on their own years earlier. Spire Climbing framed it as a broader, collective shift—a nationwide push meant to make sure everyone walks out of the gym in one piece after a session.

There are a few counterexamples. In 2021, one small American gym reportedly tried the opposite move: requiring a standard ATC for everyone to simplify visual checks, while only staff were allowed to use a GriGri-style device. Elsewhere, an incident involving a belayer fumbling a GriGri led an insurance company to demand a temporary ban on those devices to maintain coverage.

But those cases are outliers. The dominant U.S. reality today is that most climbing gyms have chosen to place real trust in mechanical or geometry-based assistance—reflecting a safety culture where technology isn’t just a helpful tool anymore, but increasingly seen as close to a requirement for indoor climbing.

In France, Belaying Is Still a Question of Philosophy

In France, gym policies are shaped by a more flexible approach. As of 2025, the Fédération française de la montagne et de l’escalade (FFME) has refused to impose a nationwide ban. Instead, it recommends either “an assisted-blocking belay device (with braking assistance) or a tube/bucket/plate-style belay device.” The key conditions are straightforward: the device must be certified, used according to the manufacturer’s instructions, and the belayer must master the device they’re using.

Sandrine Van Landeghem, the FFME’s director of activities, sums up the federation’s position clearly: they’re not ready to impose a single system on clubs. Any device can be safe if it’s used correctly. The priority is training—not an arbitrary ban on a category of device.

That federation-level flexibility doesn’t stop local actors from considering stricter limits. That’s exactly what happened in Pau, where the university wall triggered a heated backlash by abruptly deciding to ban non-assisted systems (tube-style devices like a Reverso or classic ATC). The decision was made without prior coordination with the FFME’s local territorial committee in Pyrénées-Atlantiques, prompting a sharply critical response from its president, Gregory Poles.

Speaking to Vertige Media, Poles said the decision made him “jump”—not only because the territorial committee hadn’t been invited into the technical discussion, but because requiring an assisted-braking device doesn’t automatically guarantee better safety. The real issue, he argued, remains training—not the gear. In his view, you may simply trade one kind of accident for another.

Following that pushback, the university wall ultimately paused its original decision and agreed to return to the table, bringing the FFME committee into its technical review. That return to dialogue was welcomed by Alain Carrière, president of the FFME, who said the federation is actively working on the issue. He added that the data they’re collecting suggests that—contrary to some assumptions—differences in accident rates between manual devices and assisted devices remain small. What matters most is technical competence and real control of the device.

Van Landeghem points to numbers that support that view: out of 445 claims recorded in 2023–2024 in FFME-affiliated clubs, only 39 involved belay errors, with no meaningful difference between assisted and non-assisted systems. The current data, she says, doesn’t allow the federation to conclude that one system is consistently better than another. There are no “bad” devices—only bad use.

That stance clashes with rumors circulating among climbers about an impending ban on tube devices. On forums like Camptocamp, some users report seeing the Reverso slowly disappear in certain gyms, replaced by informal recommendations to use assisted devices. Others point out that, historically, it was often the GriGri that got discouraged in some clubs, due to the risk of mishandling.

That local variety reflects how heterogeneous French gyms are—often privately run, and free to set their own internal rules. So while there’s no federation-wide ban on the horizon, gyms can still choose, case by case, to require or discourage certain devices based on their own experience and safety philosophy. Van Landeghem argues for stronger education rather than stricter regulation: the current goal is to encourage climbers to understand their devices better, train properly, read the manuals, and move through a safe progression when switching from one system to another.

For now, France is holding a pragmatic balance: individual responsibility, technical freedom, and federation recommendations. The Pau controversy, though, put the underlying question back in the spotlight—should climbing safety lean more on human education, or on technical constraints? The FFME says it wants to approach that debate calmly, grounded in facts and numbers, and with a renewed focus on training.

Around the World: Different Walls, Different Rules

Beyond the U.S. and France, other countries—and sometimes individual gyms—have taken strong positions on belay devices, often in response to accidents.

Singapore is one of the most-cited examples. After a string of incidents—reportedly up to one ground fall per week across the country’s gyms around 2016–2017—several gyms moved in 2017 to ban tube-style belay devices entirely. Members had to re-certify on an assisted-braking device (GriGri, Smart, and similar), with a transition period of a few months.

That hard shift was driven by the observation that many ground falls involved tube devices being used incorrectly. It also leaned on a 2012 study by the German Alpine Club (DAV) suggesting that belayers using assisted devices made significantly fewer handling errors. That conclusion was later tempered by the DAV’s 2025 report, which points to a much smaller difference in error rates between assisted and non-assisted devices than earlier findings suggested.

Even so, Singaporean gyms reported positive results in the years that followed: the number of serious incidents (falls resulting in injuries requiring medical care) dropped sharply. One of the biggest gyms, for example, went from roughly five serious accidents per year to just one after moving away from tubes—and in that isolated case, the person injured was a bystander on the ground, not the climber. It’s also important context: Singapore didn’t only ban Reversos and ATCs. Gyms also tightened training and certification tests. The lesson there isn’t simply “ABDs fix everything,” but that pairing better training with more error-tolerant equipment can measurably improve gym safety. Singaporean gym managers also emphasized that they weren’t trying to lecture other countries—rather, they shared their results with the international climbing community.

In the Philippines, Climb Central in Manila announced in 2020 that it wanted to restrict lead belaying to assisted devices only, following trends seen in Singapore and elsewhere in Asia. A few years later, that policy was softened: the gym again allows tube devices (ATC, Reverso), but only if users first pass a mandatory certification test.

Across Europe, approaches also vary. In Switzerland, a gym in St. Gallen drew attention after an accident in January 2018, when a 33-year-old climber fell about 10 meters and suffered severe bruising but did not die. Believing the causes were primarily human error, the gym decided that starting in January 2019, only “error-tolerant” belay devices would be allowed—meaning tubes were banned in favor of assisted or auto-blocking devices. The gym’s statement explained that these devices can lock the rope or support braking during a fall even if the belayer lets go of the brake strand—assuming correct use. Contacted by Vertige Media, the St. Gallen gym’s director, Diego Lampugnani, confirmed that the 2019 policy remains in place and said it has been very effective: the gym tracks accident statistics, and since the policy took effect, ground falls have been divided by six.

In the United Kingdom, by contrast, there’s no blanket ban on any category of belay device in climbing walls. The culture tends to emphasize belayer training and technique—often with competency tests at the door—rather than mandating a specific tool. A discussion on UK forums in 2020 suggested little appetite for banning tube devices; one commenter even called the idea “absurd,” saying they were confident British climbers would never buy into it. Some argued that mandatory ABDs are a kind of “shortcut” that clashes with the educational side of climbing—that gyms should teach beginners the fundamentals, not turn the wall into a fully padded theme park. In Germany, the DAV has contributed major studies to the discussion, but there still isn’t a universal rule requiring a certain device type in gyms.

What This Debate Is Really About

Globally, indoor belay practices are shifting under a mix of technological innovation and a desire to improve safety for an ever-broader audience. Assisted-braking devices are gaining ground in many gyms because, in theory, they add a margin of safety against the leading cause of accidents: human error. But they’re not a magic fix. Every expert, across systems, comes back to the same baseline: the belayer still has to stay focused and keep a hand on the brake strand.

Accident prevention rests as much on training—partner checks (knot, device, harness), correct belay technique, appropriate habits—as it does on choosing equipment that’s more forgiving. As one FFME official put it: there are no bad belay devices, only bad use. Each climbing gym, shaped by its audience and its experience, ends up choosing rules that feel like the best tradeoff between pedagogy (autonomy and skill-building) and immediate safety.