Saturday, December 22, 2007
 
Legislation Cannot Resolve Anecdotal Accidents
The slide into a nanny state can actually be a slippery slope when they want to legislate sled safety:
    "The challenge that we face is that it's not the norm - nor is it likely to ever be the norm - for kids to wear helmets while sledding," said Bridget Clementi, injury and prevention manager at Children's Hospital and Health System.
Ah, but the government and child safety advocates how to make a norm, don't they.

This story has everything that goes into policy decisions in contemporary America:
  • An anecdote.

      It was close to midnight at Lowell Park, which has one of the best sledding hills in the county, and Ziebell, who had just turned 20, jumped on a snow tube with a friend. The friend fell off while they were zooming down the hill, but Ziebell continued and slammed into a tree trunk, splitting open her skull and crushing her left arm.


  • A spurious statistic that falls apart given any thought.

      Area trauma centers are reporting the usual snowboarding wrist fractures, sledding concussions and ankle injuries, but Children's Hospital of Wisconsin already has admitted three children since Nov. 1 for sledding injuries. That's more in-patient sledding accident victims than in the five-month season last year.


    Keep in mind, it's been a very snowy two month period and don't consider that swimming pool drownings are down a touch in the same period.
And, of course, the impulse to legislate away any possibility of accident, regardless of cost or impact.

Sure, the article doesn't advocate legislation directly, but these things always start this way, don't they?


- posted by Brian J. @ 2:17 PM
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