Spare a thought for the over 700 Muslims who died in that

[jberryhill]

7. Well, that and Who concerts

But that was only 4 people, IIRC.

My understanding was that the Saudis had been working toward better crowd control and flow.

There are apparently two columns of rock that pilgrims are supposed to throw rocks at. In the past, having a whole lot of people throwing rocks at a target in the middle of a circle had predictable consequences. They eventually built something like a multilevel parking garage around it, established one-way traffic on each floor and supplied smaller throwing pebbles.

It's tough to manage in any event when you have a requirement that everyone manage to go to one particular spot and preferably during one particular season at least once in their life, if possible. Some Indian festivals come close.

But observances that are geographically distributed have problems as well. We manage around 400 deaths on Memorial Day weekend this year, apparently. http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/nearly-400-fatalities-from-crashes-this-memorial-day-weekend-estimates-national-safety-council-300084247.html
But, that's with a whole lot more people, and spread out.

The upside, though, is that I believe that dying during a Hajj is a free pass to paradise, so that could factor into the extent to which additional safety measures are desired.