SomeCities Try To Block Sledding Runs
Ten-year-old Wesley Pope jumped on a sled and bombed down a snow-packed hill.
“Keep going, son!” his father Russell yelled. "Have fun."
The Popes live in Overland Park, Kansas. After a mostly snowless winter, they finally got a chance to go sledding one afternoon last week.
In other parts of the country, a lack of snow is not the only thing keeping kids off the hills. A growing number of cities have made sledding against the law.
Cities Say Sledding Is Risky Business
Dubuque, Iowa, is the latest city to do that. In January, city council members voted to ban sledding in 48 of the city’s 50 public parks. Repeat offenders will be fined $750.
Other cities — including Des Moines, Iowa; Montville, New Jersey; Lincoln, Nebraska; and Columbia City, Indiana — have taken less extreme measures. Some are banning sledding only on the most dangerous hills. Others are requiring helmets and outlawing jumping ramps and thin sledding sheets. In Paxton, Illinois, park officials even removed a steep sledding mound.
Cities are taking such steps because they fear someone might get badly hurt or even go to court because of injuries they or their children may get.
“Sledding is a risky activity,” Dubuque’s city lawyer wrote in proposing the ban. “It’s not unusual for people to talk about their accidents or near accidents along with the fun times they’ve had.”
Nationwide, sledding injuries sent nearly 230,000 kids to emergency rooms between 1997 and 2007.
Banning Does Not Always Work
Cities have been successfully taken to court and sued for millions of dollars following sledding injuries. In Omaha, Nebraska, $2.4 million went to the family of a 5-year-old who became paralyzed after her sled hit a tree. In Sioux City, Iowa, a jury awarded $2.75 million to a man who injured his spinal cord after crashing into a stop sign. In Boone, Iowa, $12 million was awarded to a sledder who collided with a concrete cube.
The fear of such lawsuits is behind the movement to ban or limit sledding. However, for some cities, banning sledding is not easy. Omaha prohibited sledding at a popular hill as a test, but allowed it again after residents ignored the ban. As city lawyer Tom Mumgaard put it: “It wasn’t practical.”
Instead, the city posted warning signs. It also stationed sentries at the hill and put hay bales around trees and pads around posts.
Better In A Park Than On The Street
At the Overland Park hill where the Popes were sledding, safety measures have also been taken. Hay bales were in front of light poles and a fire hydrant.
Russell Pope said he hoped the concern for safety would not become an outright ban.
“Kids’ safety is paramount to us parents — but there’s always a risk," he said. "I understand there’s money involved, but you can’t take all the joy out of being a kid. If you don’t go sledding in the winter, all you’ve got is your iPad and SpongeBob. I’d rather they get out there and get some exercise.”
Some say the new ban in Dubuque has made sledding more dangerous there. The city has many steep streets that might attract kids if they are kept out of parks.
“It may have invited more injuries if it has driven kids off the hills and into the streets,” law professor Craig Lawson said. “The parents ought to be getting out there yelling at the elected officials and telling them they’ve made sledding more dangerous for their kids.”
Indeed, children who sled-ride on the street are five times more likely to end up in an emergency room than children who go sledding in a park. In addition, injuries from street sledding typically are worse and are more likely to involve serious brain damage.
Laws Have Changed
Dubuque’s sledding ban has led to many protests, and not just by kids. Following the ban, two middle-aged brothers slid down a hill holding signs, one of which read “Don’t tread on my sled!”
Lawson said it did not used to be possible to hold cities responsible for sledding injuries. “If you went sledding, you understood that it was inherently dangerous and did so at your own risk,” he said. However, toward the end of the last century, laws changed to allow juries to decide if city negligence might have contributed to an accident.
The question now is whether a city could have foreseen a risk, Lawson said. “So if you create a sledding hill and right at the bottom is a large hard object that you could hit, a jury could decide that a reasonable city would have taken steps to make the hill safer.”
As a result of the change in law, more cities have been losing lawsuits.
Meanwhile, back on the Overland Park sledding hill, 11-year-old Lydia Pope frowned at the idea of a sledding ban.
“I wouldn’t like it,” she said. “Sledding is what you do when there is snow!”