Liability fears prompt some cities to close sledding hills Jessica Reilly/AP A boy in Dubuque, Iowa, careens down snowy slope. The city is one of several in the country curtailing sledding in public places because of fears of liability claims. As anyone who has grown up around snow knows, part of the fun of sledding is the risk of soaring off a jump or careening around a tree. But faced with the potential bill from sledding injuries, some cities have opted to close hills rather than risk large liability claims. No one tracks how many cities have banned or limited sledding, but the list grows every year. One of the latest is in Dubuque, Iowa, where the City Council is moving ahead with a plan to ban sledding in all but two of its 50 parks. We have all kinds of parks that have hills on them, said Marie Ware, Dubuque’s leisure services manager. We can’t manage the risk at all of those places. A study by Columbus, Ohio-based Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children’s Hospital found that between 1997 and 2007, more than 20,000 children each year were treated at emergency rooms for sledding-related injuries. Lindsey Bauman/AP Two 7-year-olds head down a Kansas hill. Some [...] newsnyork/liability-fears-prompt-some-cities-to-close-sledding-hills/
Posted on: Tue, 06 Jan 2015 23:31:29 +0000
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