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Making Playgrounds a Little More Dangerous

nytimes.com

271–275 of 275 posts

Re: Making Playgrounds a Little More Dangerous

#271
post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

My apologies. I shouldn't have done this.

Re: Making Playgrounds a Little More Dangerous

#272
post #47
post #3

The only anecdote I can share about this comes from the time my family was touring a local day camp. On the tour, they showed us everything: archery, fishing, swimming, ropes, and everything else you could think of. At one point, we came to a massive, 10 foot high pile of dirt. The kids immediately ran for the dirt pile and the parents' reactions were a 50/50 mix of "Awesome" or "What are you building here?" I knew t…

Me and a mate used to go out into the local woods, find little streams, and dam them.

I am often more excited than my children when we find a good stream to dam.

Re: Making Playgrounds a Little More Dangerous

#274
post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 cha…

Your idea works until you look at something like the autobahn. Having driven on it I can say what I feel the main factor to safety is driver behavior. I see more turn signals used and when someone is going faster the other folks tend to move out of their way. Its more of a social mindset that creates safe roads than anything IMO.

>Your idea works until you look at something like the autobahn

Just because there are other methods to achieve safety doesn't mean the ones I mentioned don't work.

The Autobahn still has rumble strips and German cars still have airbags.

Re: Making Playgrounds a Little More Dangerous

#275

There is good evidence that the rubber "safety" matting that's common on new playgrounds causes significantly more long-bone injuries (broken arms and legs) than previous surfaces like wood chips. Kids test the limits and play up to the point of pain, so they'll leap off structures onto rubber matting in a way that they wouldn't do onto wood chips or pea gravel. In the name of "safety", we're using surfaces that prev…

I'd like to see that evidence.
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