 Do you dare to go head-first? Can you find just the right path on the steepest
part of the hill to hit record-breaking speed, while deftly avoiding any trees,
rocks or fences that might make the trip both riskier and, of course, more fun?
Shutterstock image
Shutterstock image
WINTER FUN BANNED: Towns are banning sledding and tobogganing because of fears
about lawsuits. There’s plenty of blame to go around for this one.
In an increasing number of towns, there is now an additional obstacle added to
this kind of traditional winter fun: government nannies.
From Iowa to New Jersey, from Nebraska to Oklahoma, more towns are passing rules
than ban sledding, tobogganing, tubing and other kinds of
winter-sliding-down-the-hillside fun.
As Free Range Kids reported earlier this month, the problem is that people do
sometimes get hurt while sledding. And sometimes, those people — or their
parents — filelawsuits and try to get taxpayers to pay outlandish settlements
over those mishaps.
It’s a great example of how the nanny state doesn’t just happen spontaneously,
at least not all the time. In many cases, nanny laws are the consequences,
intended or no, – of a worldview that says government can either keep us safe
from all threats or be held responsible for every minor thing that goes wrong.
“While the no-sledding towns sound like killjoys. perhaps the issue is really
us, unable to hold these two ideas in our brain at once: Sledding is fun and,
once in a long while, deadly. Sled at your own risk,” writes Lenore Skenazy,
editor of Free Range Kids.
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So if we’re going to assign blame for why the next
generation of children will never know the simple joys of spending a
snowy school day whizzing down the neighborhood hill, let’s start
with the parents and their lawyers.
Falling off a sled should not be considered grounds
for a lawsuit, any more so than falling off a bike or scrapping your
knee while playing baseball should be. These things happen when
children play.
But do they happen often enough to justify outright bans?
According to one study that surveyed emergency rooms at American
hospitals, there are about 20,000 sledding injuries each year. As
you might expect, kids are the most likely victims, and broken bones
the most common ailment.
That pales in comparison to the national figures of more than
200,000 kids injured each year in bike accidents and more than
80,000 each year injured in skateboarding crashes 80,000 each year —
activities that are still legal just about everywhere.
And the bans don’t even protect taxpayers from being on the hook for
huge settlements.
The city of Hamilton, Ontario, in Canada, had to pay more than
$900,000 in a settlement to a man who was seriously injured while
sledding last year, despite the fact that the town had already
banned the activity.
[This
article courtesy of
Watchdog.]
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