effects of lawsuits
Today I learned that to avoid lawsuits, schools are removing all the fun playground equipment. In Broward County, FL, there's a ban on running. The Sun-Sentinel took down their article about the running ban, but there are some quotes from it on this reasonable-sounding but slightly off-putting site.
The quotes indicate that in the last seven years, Broward County has spent something like $500,000 on playground injuries. In the overall scheme of things, that doesn't sound like that big a number, but what the heck do I know about school finances or Broward County? Something I do know about, as a physicist, is taking things to extremes &ndash because that's how we test everything &ndash so we're going to talk about playground deaths. In the first article I linked to, it says there are 17 deaths per year in the US. I admit that instead of thinking 17 deaths out of 2.2 million school related injuries is 0.0008%, which is really, really small, when I read that, I thought, wow, that's 17 kids who died, and all they were doing was playing.
Which is why I felt compelled to do a little research and point out that car accidents kill about 500 kids per year, and gun accidents account for about another 56. Given the frequency with which you hear about guns and cars in the news, I was surprised that the numbers were that low, and it weakened what was to be my argument that we should ban cars.
Except I found this great article about banning cars, and never mind it's not based on safety, so let's go for it!
P.S. My car exhaust sensitivity has gotten enough better than I can ride on the road early on Sunday mornings, which means I have to hit the road by about 5:15 if I want to get any serious mileage in. It gets hot enough that you want to do that anyway, but if we work really hard, maybe we can ban cars by winter.
The quotes indicate that in the last seven years, Broward County has spent something like $500,000 on playground injuries. In the overall scheme of things, that doesn't sound like that big a number, but what the heck do I know about school finances or Broward County? Something I do know about, as a physicist, is taking things to extremes &ndash because that's how we test everything &ndash so we're going to talk about playground deaths. In the first article I linked to, it says there are 17 deaths per year in the US. I admit that instead of thinking 17 deaths out of 2.2 million school related injuries is 0.0008%, which is really, really small, when I read that, I thought, wow, that's 17 kids who died, and all they were doing was playing.
Which is why I felt compelled to do a little research and point out that car accidents kill about 500 kids per year, and gun accidents account for about another 56. Given the frequency with which you hear about guns and cars in the news, I was surprised that the numbers were that low, and it weakened what was to be my argument that we should ban cars.
Except I found this great article about banning cars, and never mind it's not based on safety, so let's go for it!
P.S. My car exhaust sensitivity has gotten enough better than I can ride on the road early on Sunday mornings, which means I have to hit the road by about 5:15 if I want to get any serious mileage in. It gets hot enough that you want to do that anyway, but if we work really hard, maybe we can ban cars by winter.
posted by missmolly at 4:28 PM
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