In this article I review lessons to be learned from five commercial rafting participant fatalities in Northern Queensland between 2007 and 2009, and examine some implications of the coroner's recommendations from an outdoor education perspective. I aim both to help prevent future fatalities and to contribute to discussion about how best to achieve that. In particular, I examine the merits and potential limitations of the development of risk management plans for each rapid, which the coroner recommended as part of an industry code of practice. I consider both the importance of knowing and responding to specific hazards and drawbacks to existing attempts to frame safety around risk management documentation approaches developed for other industries. I argue there is potential for insufficiently thought through approaches to embedding knowledge of specific hazards in practice to be adopted not only in Queensland commercial rafting but across the board in the outdoor education field. As a contribution to needed discussion about how to approach safety management, I explain how alternative aims and purposes for educational rafting journeys can help to reframe how safety management is understood.