Making Playgrounds a Little More Dangerous • Hacker News Board

Re: Making Playgrounds a Little More Dangerous

#151

Post by int_19h » Thu, May 16, 2019, 1:29 AM UTC

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #59

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.

That would be USA. Nothing much is happening on the federal level, because of the deadlock there. But there's plenty of new legislation on state level.

Re: Making Playgrounds a Little More Dangerous

#152

Post by seanmcdirmid » Thu, May 16, 2019, 1:32 AM UTC

coding123 wrote: post #141

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our gun industry produces more than 11 million guns a year. Sure, many of those wind up in Mexico and Central America via the drug trade, but that's still a lot of supply being sustained through the system. Guns wear out, simply cutting production would do a lot to reduce the number of guns in the system (outlaw or not).

It will take a long time for guns to wear out such that simple and possibly deadly armed robberies, bank robberies and church and school shootings would be possible well into a few hundred years. Beyond that in this political climate, even if you pulled that off, you would literally have tens or hundreds of thousands of citizens making their own (not from 3d printing, but actual metal working). Then assuming they can…

China is the perfect example of where people are making their own guns, they aren’t that great and lack economy of scale. Besides, China has a death penalty in place for illegal gun production.

Guns will wear out eventually, heck, they can also run out of ammunition. Industrialization is an incredible enabler for gun use (one the founding fathers obviously didn’t have to worry about), and taking that away causes the system of mass gun violence to fall over quickly.

Simply taking 11 million units of production offline will make guns much more expensive worldwide, let alone in the USA. That crazy person who has an idea to go shoot up a school will have to find some money to pay up if they don’t have one already. Let’s also not ignore what happened in other countries that banned or severely cut back on gun use: none of what the pro gun crowd would predict what would happen.

> We'd save more lives by forcing car manufacturers to install ML based drunk detection systems in the driver seat.

Why do that when Uber/Lyft have already mostly solved the problem and self driving cars will do so even more? If gun advocates actually believed in gun control at all, we could talk about technological solutions in that space. But their position is that any gun control at all is useless, and ironically enough implies that only a ban would be worth considering. (And yes, I’m all for taking away your manually driven car when self driving car technology is ready, it just makes so much sense from a safety and traffic perspective).

Re: Making Playgrounds a Little More Dangerous

#153

Post by HankB99 » Thu, May 16, 2019, 1:34 AM UTC

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.

Delicate balance is the word I would have used. As a scoutmaster (BSA in the US) It seemed to me that many of our youth have no comprehension of their own mortality. I used to try to impress upon them the necessity to stay more than one mistake away from disaster. I recall two incidents that demonstrated this.

At a winter camp out the scouts were explicitly warned not to sled on the side of the hill that had trees. One scout didn't heed and hit a tree. He left the campout in an ambulance.

Another scout - luckily at the bottom of sandstone bluffs - decided to see how close he could get to the pot formed by a waterfall. He lost his footing and went into the pot which still held water. He was not injured but had to walk the rest of the hike in wet clothes. It was about 45°F so he was pretty uncomfortable. (At this park several people die each year because they make the same mistake at the top of the bluffs.)

These are just the actions that resulted in a problem or serious injury. There were many times when the youth got too close to the edge - often literally - and were lucky enough to escape unscathed.

On a visceral level I agree with not being overprotective, but being underprotective may not always have the desired effect of instilling a desire to be aware of hazards. Moreover, are we willing to accept the occasional death or maiming of a young person so their cohorts can learn about danger?

Re: Making Playgrounds a Little More Dangerous

#154

Post by hexane360 » Thu, May 16, 2019, 1:35 AM UTC

magicalhippo wrote: post #95

devchix wrote: post #9

A recent episode of 99% Invisible: Play Mountain looked at how the playground got to be safe and boring. "A two-year-old boy named Frank Nelson was climbing a 12-foot-tall slide in a Chicago park when he slipped through a railing and hit his head so hard that it caused permanent brain damage. The park system of Chicago was sued and had to pay out millions of dollars to Nelson’s family. At that time, in the late 70s,…

A friend of mine designs playgrounds for kids, and is very good at it (his designs win 90+% of the competitive bids he enters). He's also worked hard to put in place a playground safety inspector certification system over here. One of his core ideas is that there are two types of safety: subjective safety and objective safety. For example, kids quickly learn that falling from a height is painful, and experiences such…

This seems really similar to techniques I've heard about in road design. A lot of safety improvements are pretty well compensated by changes in people's behavior. For example, if you make shoulders and lanes wider, people will feel like they're going slower and speed up to compensate. Even with things you wouldn't expect, like the dedicated/third brake light made mandatory for cars in 1986, there were significant changes in behavior (decreased following time) to compensate. However, there are many safety improvements that are more or less invisible to the end user. The best example is rumble strips -- they're never noticed until they do their job.

Re: Making Playgrounds a Little More Dangerous

#155

Post by int_19h » Thu, May 16, 2019, 1:37 AM UTC

eridius wrote: post #35

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...

Tell that to the kids who died playing in unsafe conditions. One can certainly argue that we've gone too far in the direction of removing all risk of injury. But saving lives? Absolutely the right thing to do! One preventable death is one death too many. The goal here should be "controlled risk". Not no risk at all, but controlled risk in well-understood conditions to ensure that kids can still experiment and have fu…

> One preventable death is one death too many.

When are we banning cars?

Re: Making Playgrounds a Little More Dangerous

#156

Post by s3krit » Thu, May 16, 2019, 1:37 AM UTC

achenatx wrote: post #142

My kids (11,6, 3) are so lame they are scared to play outside by themselves. I bought 100 acres with a creek so we would have a place to hike, camp, explore, build forts, shoot guns etc. My kids have been so coddled, they cant even play in the yard for long before they want to come in. Over the last year they are getting better, but when they have friends over, many of them wont even go into the forest and will only…

if you don't mind me asking, when you say your kids 'have been so coddled', well... by whom?

Re: Making Playgrounds a Little More Dangerous

#157

Post by int_19h » Thu, May 16, 2019, 1:40 AM UTC

ausbah wrote: post #98

I am frankly appalled how some people in this thread appear so nonchalant about willing to accept the deaths of children in the name of letting a majority of kids "have the right kind of fun".

When you were a kid, did you grow up with a "safe" playground, or not? I would imagine that people who grew up with the kinds of playgrounds described in the article are much less likely to be appalled about this notion.

Re: Making Playgrounds a Little More Dangerous

#158

Post by nkzednan » Thu, May 16, 2019, 1:41 AM UTC

In a similar vein, a big park/playground recently opened in Tulsa, Oklahoma. They had some inspiration from playgrounds outside the US.

https://stateimpact.npr.org/oklahoma/2018/12/06/the-surprisi... - mentions how some parts were designed to make it easy for kids to go to certain places but hard for parents to follow.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/10/arts/design/tulsa-park-ga...

Re: Making Playgrounds a Little More Dangerous

#159

Post by alexhutcheson » Thu, May 16, 2019, 1:45 AM UTC

throw7 wrote: post #82

I lived near and went to Action Park in New Jersey a couple of times. I was too young to ride the water speedboats and motor go-karts though... bah! Those were the days. The issue is one of scaling risk as the knowledge and responsibility of the child increases. It's not surprising we have sued things down to the lowest/safest common denominator.

For those who aren't familiar with Action Park, the story is incredible.

This 14-minute video has some of the highlights: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKDx_piZvsg

This oral history is pretty fascinating too: http://mentalfloss.com/article/536412/action-park-water-park...

Re: Making Playgrounds a Little More Dangerous

#160

Post by fzeroracer » Thu, May 16, 2019, 1:48 AM UTC

int_19h wrote: post #155

eridius wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tell that to the kids who died playing in unsafe conditions. One can certainly argue that we've gone too far in the direction of removing all risk of injury. But saving lives? Absolutely the right thing to do! One preventable death is one death too many. The goal here should be "controlled risk". Not no risk at all, but controlled risk in well-understood conditions to ensure that kids can still experiment and have fu…

> One preventable death is one death too many. When are we banning cars?

It's more along the lines of 'When are we banning seatbelts'.

Kids might have more fun in the car not wearing seatbelts, for example. I know as a kid I was especially resistant to putting on a seatbelt because why should it restrict my movement? But I would hope we can all understand that seatbelts are a necessity for safety.

We accept that cars in the US are necessary for our daily lives, and take action to prevent as much death or injury as we can. This is why we have regulations on speed, stop signs, lights and more. We've created an entire regulatory system for the sake of making driving safer.

In this case, is it really any different from regulatory agencies ensuring that playgrounds don't have things that could cause clearly preventable injuries?