Safety First
Today’s Wall Street Journal reports on ski and snowboard safety. The “movement to improve safety for skiers and snowboarders” includes educational efforts about behavior on the slopes as well as safety equipment. The “Lids on Kids” campaign is cited, as is the National Ski Patrol and various mountain-safety gear such as helmets.
The most hazardous situations (and best snow) are in the back country terrain, where safety is a do-it-yourself affairs. Worldwide, about 150 people die each year in avalanches, though the article doesn’t say how many of those people were on skis or snowboards rather than, say, snowmobiles.
What about in-bounds terrain?
Within the boundaries of U.S. snow resorts, meanwhile, there were 562 deaths to snowboarders and skiers during 761 million resort visits between 1992 and 2005, according to researchers at the University of Vermont and the Rochester Institute of Technology. The majority of the fatalities were skiers; experienced males between the ages of 18 to 43 accounted for most of the deaths, most commonly from severe head injuries resulting from high-speed impact with a tree. An estimated 100,000 to 140,000 injuries require treatment in an emergency room each year.
What may be the most striking in the article is that for all the hoopla of snowboarding being the sport of yahoos and daredevils, most of the focus of the article is on … skiing. In particular, there’s been a lot of efforts to make ski bindings safer to deal with knee injuries.
Chalk one up for snowboarding; friends. On skis, you can put injury-inducing stress on one knee when a ski goes loose or the legs splay in two different directions. That’s a situation that won’t likely happen on a snowboard, though of course other injuries are possible, such as wrist sprains and fractures and head injuries from aerial tricks.
The Journal mentions one of my favorite experts on snow safety:
World-wide, more efforts are being made to collect and analyze snow-sports injuries and make facilities such as snowboard jumps safer, according to Mike Langran, an Aviemore, Scotland, physician and U.K. national secretary for the International Society for Skiing Safety, a nonprofit group that includes physicians and industry members. Dr. Langran’s Web site (www.ski-injury.com) includes advice on safety equipment such as helmets and wristguards for snowboarders and detailed information about the dangers of injuries.
Finally, as columnist Laura Landro points out, for some people the risk it the thrill. Fair enough. The key is to keep the risks within reach. Push yourself if you’d like, but within limits. If you’re interested in riding moguls in the steeps, for example, first try moguls, or steeps, before putting the two together.