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Making Playgrounds a Little More Dangerous

nytimes.com

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Re: Making Playgrounds a Little More Dangerous

#51

Post by ken »

maxxxxx wrote: post #16
daenz wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You hit the nail on the head. From the article: >“Many agencies fear being sued if a child gets hurt,” said Teri Hendy, the president of an Ohio-based playground consultancy, Site Masters. Ms. Hendy blamed outdated federal rules on playground design developed decades ago by the Consumer Product Safety Commission. She favors more flexible guidelines, arguing that playgrounds don’t have to be boring to be safe. We got…

It’s a really tricky balance. On the one hand we should have rules that don’t allow building unnecessarily dangerous stuff (eg covering toys with lead coating) but on the other hand we shouldn’t expect 100% safety because the only really safe thing is something that doesn’t exist. It’s really difficult.

I would say there's a significant difference between the chemical/biological danger from touching a material which appears basically identical to other safe materials and causes toxic exposure over time, and the physical danger from falling or being cut.

I want kids to learn that concrete is hard, and the harder you hit it, the more it will hurt. It's an easy lesson to learn, by trial-and-error, and transferable to many other situations. I don't want to make kids try to learn about lead poisoning by trial-and-error. They're not going to succeed at that. Even adults took 50 years of research to stop putting it in gasoline.

Re: Making Playgrounds a Little More Dangerous

#52

Post by tomatotomato37 »

sp332 wrote: post #23
badcede wrote: post #4

"Grown-ups have taken all the fun out of being a kid just to save a few thousand lives." https://scrapsfromtheloft.com/2017/04/06/george-carlin-you-a...

This feels like a really unconvincing argument. A few thousand is a lot of lives. A few lives would feel like a few too many.

This may sound callous, but in a US population of 300 million, a few thousand of any lives is on the order of 0.001%. One of the realities of living in a world of billions of people is that risks of incredibly low precentage still end up happening due to just the sheer magnitude of people

To put it another way, lightning strikes are one of the rarest forms of death in the country, and yet still kill more people in the US than the size of my family's big holiday dinner

Re: Making Playgrounds a Little More Dangerous

#53

Post by takk309 »

bitwize wrote: post #36

When I was a kid, my elementary school had an elaborate playground. The standard swings, slides, and monkey bars -- with sand underneath for a soft landing -- were supplemented with numerous structures built out of old tires, including tire geodesic domes to serve as spaceships or houses and a tower built out of giant tractor tires packed with sand and a wooden spire in the middle to serve as a watchtower, ship's mas…

That reminds me of my elementary play ground. We had lots of wood structures and wood chips to "soften" a fall. Those wood chips were brutal when they would freeze together in the winter!

Re: Making Playgrounds a Little More Dangerous

#54

Post by dragontamer »

redff0000 wrote: post #43
ChuckMcM wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reality is different though. There is nothing in this world quite so soul crushingly painful as having your child die while doing something that the parent and perhaps people in general, consider to be 'safe.' For me, it took some time to fall madly and deeply in love with my spouse, and to my surprise I developed that attachment instantly to my children. That same sort of passion that you would do anything to ke…

Your child could have slipped when getting off a train and permanently injured themselves, or in any other number of ways. Low probability high severity events trigger a cognitive bias that makes people attempt to make things '100% safe'. There are two problems with that. 1: nothing can ever be made 100% safe so those low probability high impact events still happen from time to time. 2: making things safe hits a stee…

> Your child could have slipped when getting off a train and permanently injured themselves, or in any other number of ways.

But thanks to our laws, we don't have to worry about playground sets.

Low probability / high impact events are a fact of life and are a valid cause for regulations. Worker safety laws in the early 1900s were such that people more regularly lost fingers or even limbs in heavy machinery. It still happens today, but safety programs and safety regulations have made such events far less likely.

Re: Making Playgrounds a Little More Dangerous

#56

Post by dragonwriter »

petschge wrote: post #50

How many extra lives are lost to obesity because children never learn how fun it is to move outdoors? Everything is so safe and non-fun. Of course the deaths 3 decades down the line are not attributed to overly safe playgrounds and overprotective parents and nobody gets sued. So there is no need to fix this...

> How many extra lives are lost to obesity because children never learn how fun it is to move outdoors? Everything is so safe an non-fun.

I've yet to find a kid that doesn't find a flat field of grass outdoors to be fun, so if there's a problem here, it's parents keeping kids indoors, not playground safety being too good.

Re: Making Playgrounds a Little More Dangerous

#58

Post by TimTheTinker »

umvi wrote: post #21

You're right - anything that provokes fear or outrage gets instant attention. Everything else doesn't. North Korea imprisoning a single idiot American who crossed the border = national dialogue because it's outrageous School shooting where 3 people die = national dialogue on gun control because it's outrageous. DUI accident that kills a family of 5 = small blurb in local news because it's not outrageous (even if it s…

Millions of children dying in the womb = crickets.

(or hot debate, depending on your country)

I know that's a controversial issue. No offense intended toward any individuals - but this is my viewpoint.

Re: Making Playgrounds a Little More Dangerous

#59

Post by seanmcdirmid »

umvi wrote: post #21

You're right - anything that provokes fear or outrage gets instant attention. Everything else doesn't. North Korea imprisoning a single idiot American who crossed the border = national dialogue because it's outrageous School shooting where 3 people die = national dialogue on gun control because it's outrageous. DUI accident that kills a family of 5 = small blurb in local news because it's not outrageous (even if it s…

> School shooting where 3 people die = national dialogue on gun control because it's outrageous.

I'm sorry, what country is this? The one I live in its just "thoughts and prayers" when that happens.

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