Dustin Fink’s theconcussionblog.com. So here is what I found. An amazing number of people die every year from riding their bikes. In 2008, 93 kids under 15 were killed and 13,000 suffered injuries. The statistics are sobering. Check out the link. http://www.bhsi.org/stats.htm And then there is skateboarding. At the bottom of the post is a list of links to stories detailing accidents that have killed kids, permanently injured them, or at the time of publication brought them to deaths door. Visit the second link in the list and you will read about the parents of a kid with critical head injuries who say they are getting support from the people in the hospital room next door whose son also suffered a critical head injury a few days before. Here’s an unofficial tally of skateboard deaths from 2006. http://www.silverfishlongboarding.com/forum/longboarding-concrete-wave-magazine/46038-skateboarder-deaths-2006-report.html This list is just from the past few weeks, so imagine what the list would look like if we ran a search for the year. Since skateboarding, as are many of the other “X-Games” type activities, is performed in solitude and/or without any supervision or other organizational/safety controls, the injuries – including head injuries – must be severely underreported. Certainly, the helmets used (if used at all) by skateboarders cannot truly protect the head from the repetitive contacts experienced during falls. These injuries happen in the streets, at skateparks, parking lots and other areas of public accommodation, as well as on private property, and throughout the year; there is no skateboarding season. With the popularity of this activity the real injury numbers, and health care costs, must be staggering. Skateboarding clearly represents an extremely unsafe risk to kids and yet the sports media and their partners constantly glorify this, and other, high-risk, activities. http://orthoinfo.aaos.org/topic.cfm?topic=a00273 http://www.khon2.com/news/local/story/Skateboarding-accident-victims-parents-speak/Kk1gpa7WGkqI7CzMCxB4lg.cspx http://www.vagazette.com/articles/2011/10/12/news/doc4e9422c885f35591411208.txt http://www.mailtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110923/NEWS/109230348/-1/NEWSMAP http://www.khon2.com/news/local/story/UPDATE-Salt-Lake-boy-injured-in-skateboarding/OjKf7H-11E-CipA0zbOcqw.cspx http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?subjectid=18&articleid=20110927_18_A13_OralRo811963 http://redondobeach.patch.com/articles/skateboarding-fall-nearly-kills-boy http://www.nypost.com/p/entertainment/tv/anderson_cooper_saddened_after_teen_PU0jyFjKc5c18mZ5wjOTiK
