just how dangerous are skateboards? well, in terms of injuries, bike riding is tops!

[skategeezer]

ok,

check this out...if bicycling and football are more dangerous than skateboarding, why show a skater???

Bicycling tops sports with most childhood injuries, study shows

By AZAM AHMED AND JO NAPOLITANO

Chicago Tribune







E ric Field was on his skateboard last August, holding onto the back of a friend’s car, when the wheels on his board gave out and he flipped over.
Without a helmet, Field, 15, suffered a subdural hematoma, four skull fractures and a bruised brain. He was unconscious for two weeks but suffered no brain damage. He quit skateboarding.
“Whenever we would buy him the knee pads or elbow pads, they’d last for a day or two and then he’d put them away because he wouldn’t see anyone else wearing them,” his mother, Sharon Field, said.
More than 65,000 children younger than 15 received treatment in an emergency room for skateboarding-related injuries in 2006, according to estimates presented last week by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. In an effort to promote safety, the agency released data on sports-related injuries incurred by kids younger than 15.
The authors, extrapolating from a sample of 100 hospitals across the nation, estimate nearly 240,000 kids 14 and younger were treated for bike-related accidents, the highest number for any sport.
Football resulted in about 221,000 injuries for that age group, baseball almost 85,000 and operating unpowered scooters just more than 37,500.
“We wanted to make the point that with any outdoor activity, parents need to be thinking about safety as well as the activity itself,” said Nancy Nord, acting chairman of the commission. “Parents should not send their kids out to bike, roller blade or scooter without helmets, wrist guards, elbow pads or whatever is appropriate for their sport.”
The data are significant not only because of the risks for kids, but the costs to society, experts say.
“Injury is arguably the most compelling public health problem facing youth in this country because it is the leading cause of death and acquired disability from ages 1 through 44 years,” said Gary Smith, director of the center for injury research and policy at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. “For the age group they presented, sports and recreation is a very important piece of the injury picture.”
Experts estimate that more than 30 million children participate in sports each year in the U.S. About 3 million children ages 14 and younger get hurt annually participating in recreational activities, according to the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons.
Seventy percent of the kids involved in bicycle accidents are male. Injuries to the face and head are typically the most serious, and a frequent result of bike accidents. Wearing a helmet while cycling can reduce the risk of serious head injury by 85 percent, according to a study in The New England Journal of Medicine.
The new commission report also documents 77 deaths related to bicycles in children younger than 15 in 2004, compared with 149 who died in accidents involving all-terrain vehicles, the data show.
Skateboards were involved in four deaths, and unpowered scooters and football resulted in two deaths each for the same age group.
Experts are quick to note, however, that the risk of keeping children indoors and discouraging them from participating in sports outweighs the risks of sport-related injury.

ACTIVITY and number of emergency room visits...
Bicycles (including mountain bikes) 239,795
Football 220,877
Baseball 84,878
Skateboards 65,130
Scooters, unpowered 37,574
ATVs 32,875
Roller skating 28,559
Softball 27,510
Inline skating 18,712
Lacrosse 5,393

[longboardorific]

i always wear wrist guards when i bike. and knee and elbow pads

[enemy combatant]

I'm actually surprised that bicycles are so low. If you count fatalities instead, bicycles blow all those other activities away.

[Wells]

The relevant metric is injuries per hour of activity; and skateboarding blows away most team sports.

[enemy combatant]

The relevant metric is injuries per hour of activity; and skateboarding blows away most team sports.

Maybe, but unlike skateboarding, it is possible to get a reasonably accurate ballpark estimate of hours spent engaging in team sports.

[Haro]

and to think my mom first told me it's safer to bike than skateboard... glad I proved her wrong a year ago and started skating. I got a groin injury doing a dirt jump and I realized how dangerous bikes can be. Handle bars and pegs are wepons.

[parabola]

I imagine that riding bikes is way more popular than riding skateboards...therefore more injuries.

[Jono92]

My bike got stolen last summer
I learned that my buddy stole it and he accidentily busted the gear changers, it was a $600 dollar bike, I guess I'm just one less kid to be injured on a bike haha...

[tomahawk]

yeah, these statistic are useless imo

theres A LOT more bikers than skaters im willing to bet, so naturally A LOT more ppl will get injured. same goes for football.

I'd like to see # injuries/person/yr type of statistic, that would tell more information. (ie divide #of injuries/yr for a given sport by the amount of ppl that practice the sport)

[GravityRider15]

I imagine that riding bikes is way more popular than riding skateboards...therefore more injuries.

Said it before I could

[VulgarDisplayCFH]

Skateboard Helmets and Protective Gear, Why and Why Not < sublimited skateboard blog > skateboarding and nothing else

[Mile_High_Mark]

I think that kid has his wristguards on "backwards."

[msk]

yeah, these statistic are useless imo

theres A LOT more bikers than skaters im willing to bet, so naturally A LOT more ppl will get injured. same goes for football.

I'd like to see # injuries/person/yr type of statistic, that would tell more information. (ie divide #of injuries/yr for a given sport by the amount of ppl that practice the sport)

Current estimates are approximately 13 million skaters in the US, and 60 million cyclists. So just to be statistically even, there should be almost 5 times as many cycling injuries as there are skating injuries. That being said, those figures are the total number of participants, regardless of age, while the statistics the article quoted were for 14 and under. Don't know how significant the variation could be when adjusted for age...

and to think my mom first told me it's safer to bike than skateboard... glad I proved her wrong a year ago and started skating. I got a groin injury doing a dirt jump and I realized how dangerous bikes can be.

I can direct you to tons of youtube clips of skaters getting groin injuries....

[Justin K]

I broke my collar bone on a bike, hurts way more then road rash.

[tomahawk]

Current estimates are approximately 13 million skaters in the US, and 60 million cyclists. So just to be statistically even, there should be almost 5 times as many cycling injuries as there are skating injuries. That being said, those figures are the total number of participants, regardless of age, while the statistics the article quoted were for 14 and under. Don't know how significant the variation could be when adjusted for age...

exactly, i wasnt saying they were bad perse, just not really "useful" statistics b/c the omit too much information, moreso the type of "statistics" that just wants to make a nice sounding headline

[msk]

I broke my collar bone on a bike, hurts way more then road rash.

That all depends. I've been to the hospital dozens of times for skating over the years, usually for broken bones (I don't think there's a picture of me in existence taken between '75 and '80 where I don't have a cast). The only time I've had to go for a cycling injury was about 15 years ago, after crashing in a crit. Severe road rash (a couple of square feet of it) that got badly infected. I spent a week in the hospital, and they were talking about amputating my left leg if they couldn't control the infection. I've never experienced a broken bone that hurt anything like that did...

[hexagon5un]

[243racing]

That because we mountainbikers are so harcore. It's science people. Believe it.

[ScotchGannon]

In team sports, pads are mandatory. Not so in recreational sports. The only way I can even justify skating, since every single time I do it I sustain some inconvenient injury, is that I always (alright, almost always) wear a helmet. It doesn't make any sense to me not to. I have some nice gashes in it too that make me wonder where I'd be if I didn't wear it so often. I mean, no volcom hat is cool enough to teach you how to speak again, or pay your hospital bills.

[inluvwithsara]

There is always the great equalizer...
add one phase to any activity and it becomes a sure ER trip...
"Here, hold my beer and watch this!"