Skater - Must See

What I object to about this kind of skateboarding is when the skaters lack respect for either the pedestrians or the architecture. And too frequently, this is the rule -- not the exception.
--
http://www.pbase.com/victorengel/

Who compiles those figures? Do they follow the "street" skaters around and document everything?

I can think of some possible reasons why the data might be flawed or at least not relevant to what we're seeing in the OP's photo.

The sports you compared it to are almost always played in a supervised and regulated situation. If anyone is injured, no matter how slightly, it almost certainly gets written up and reported.

Skateboarding can be done at supervised, sanctioned events too. And in those situations, proper protective gear is mandated. The people whose insurance covers these sanctioned events see to it that things are done right. And injuries to these protected participants are probably rare.

But we're talking about impromptu skateboarding at locations where there is no "supervision" or sanction. So these folks wear no protective gear. And if they get hurt, they probably do not report it accurately because in many cases what they were doing, and where, might have been criminal trespassing. So it's likely that many of these injuries do not get properly classified and attributed.

So while you might have some statistics that claim to show how safe skateboarding is, it's extremely likely that those numbers are based not on what you're seeing in that photo, but on sanctioned events where everyone is required to wear all kinds of pads and definitely a helmet!

So before you go out skatboarding without a helmet, you might want to consider that those statistics almost certainly apply only to sanctioned skateboarding events where everyone is wearing proper protective gear.

The stats for unprotected "street" skateboarding (if anyone could come up with such numbers) would almost certainly scare you a bit more. Nope, give me a helmet, knee and elbow pads, and a cup, please

--
Jim H.

That said "skateboarding is not a crime".

Of course it is - if you do it in the wrong place.

So is golf. If I teed up in the middle of downtown and started whacking balls all over, I suspect that the cops would haul me off immediately! And rightly so.

The point is that just about any sport can be a crime if you do it in an unsafe and irresponsible way and/or in an inappropriate place.

I happen to enjoy target shooting. Should I feel persecuted because I'm not allowed to enjoy my perfectly legal sport wherever I choose to practice?

And clearly, if you're damaging public or private property or endangering the general public, then of course people should be upset. Some people are just very selfish and thoughtless. They're worried about their "rights" yet they're perfectly willing to trample the rights of others.

--
Jim H.

It's based on emergency room visits, not "reported" injuries.

dlesko

I'd be curious as to how the ER knows that the person is telling the truth.

My son is a paramedic, my wife worked at the local hospital for 20 years, and her sister works at the ER here. I'll have to ask them what their experience has been and whether or not they question patients and somehow log or enter that sort of data anywhere.

Is it possible that the statistic is for "injuries requiring an ER visit" yet is based on data submitted by the sanctioning bodies for organized sports?

How does the ER establish how many hours of participation that person had made up to the point of the injury? How do they log the hours of participation by OTHER skateboarders who were not injured? I really find it hard to believe that the typical group of skateboarders is logging all of this data so that when someone gets hurt they can present it to the ER so that these statistics could be compiled.

I can just see it:

"Hey, our buddy here broke his wrist just now illegally skating while trespassing on private property, but here's our log sheet showing how many hours we all have participated in the sport since the last reportable injury occurred. We just wanted to be sure that your database was kept complete even though we realize that this implicates us all in our last few months of trespassing...."

Yeah, right

I am not disputing your claim, but I'd like to see the source and check out how it is that they arrived at their statistics. Data to support claims like this would be extremely difficult to compile in a uniform and accurate way.

So far as I know, people presenting at the ER are not required to give all of the details of how they received an injury. However, insurance claims and the like would probably require that some explanation be given and I suspect that people tend to lie so that the injury will be covered instead of admitting that they were participating in an illegal activity at the time which would almost certainly NOT be covered by their insurance.

It seems like what we really want to see is a statistic that shows the "injuries per man-hour of participation in uncontrolled street-skating by people not wearing protective gear". And then compare that stat to one for skateboarders who are wearing protective gear and participating in sanctioned skateboard events.

Then we could compare both of those figures against the injury rates for people participating in sanctioned football, basketball, and baseball.

I'm certainly not saying that those other sports are safer. It could very well be that the safest of those we've mentioned would be the sanctioned skateboard events. But I suspect that if we had data broken down to show the injury rates for people not wearing proper gear and skateboarding NOT in sanctioned events, the figures for that group would certainly be worse. I'm not sure how it would stack up against the organized team sports, though.

Believe me, I'm no fan of most organized sports and I have zero interest in making them appear to be any safer than skateboarding.

I'm just pointing out that you need to be careful about simply accepting statistics. Often, the things being measured are not what you think they are, or the way things are compared is unfair or illogical.

I think statistics based on numbers of ER visits would almost certainly be skewed horribly due to the lack of recordkeeping and lack of truth in disclosing the causes of such injuries. Whereas the organized sports would not get away with any fraud and would have better stats due to the diligent recordkeeping required.

And no matter what, it'd be pretty hard to draw any meaningful conclusions from any of it. This kind of thing is not trivial to analyze for so many reasons.

So beware of these "statistics". This one, in particular, smells very fishy to me.

--
Jim H.

This guy tried for hours to clear the second level of the steps and the gravel after that.....would have loved to see him land one....than i wouldn't have had to cringe at the potential of seeing blood and bones that afternoon.... eventually i had to pack up and head out with out witnessing the seemingly impossible!

So all statistics are suspect - whats your point then? Yours are just as suspect as mine then, right?

You want links? why? Oh - I know - because you are too lazy to find them yourself...

Go here - scroll to page 4 and read the graph.

http://www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/pubs/cpsr_nws28.pdf#search=%22%22skateboarding%22%20site%3Acpsc.gov%22

and then when your done, read the following:

"We found that skateboarding is a comparatively safe sport"

from here:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=12394867&dopt=Abstract

Both are from the US government. If you have a beef, then speak to them.

Do your research. then talk.

-dlesko

Of course, you are absolutely right.

All statistics are perfectly valid - always. Never question them, for they are never wrong.

And of course, skateboarding without a helmet or pads is just as safe as skateboarding with a helmet and pads.

I can see that clearly now.

So glad you were able to set me straight. I guess I was just being illogical and silly. Sorry to bother everyone, you may now rest assured that no protective gear is required. The statistician has spoken!

--
Jim H.

That's from the British side of me

Tongue in cheek is always welcome. It really irks me when "concerned" parents diss skateboarding because it's so "dangerous" while they're on their way to drop their kids off at a football or baseball game which produces more injuries than skateboarding.

It also bothers me more the way the cops treat skateboarders who are doing NOTHING but riding down the street. We have a friend who was using his board for transportation. Just pedaling down the street going from point A to point B. No grinding public property, no trespassing. Yet the police stopped him and took his board. They told him that skateboarding is "banned" in the town and then proceeded to snap the skateboard in two and then gave it back to him with a warning not to skateboard in the town ever again.

And adults wonder why kids hate the cops...

dlesko