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Comment by magicalhippo | Hacker News Reader

> The paper distinguishes risks vs hazards as something the child can perceive & control vs something they can't, like a car or unsafe equipment

I knew someone who worked with designing playgrounds here in Norway, and his focus was on this. He called it subjective safety vs objective safety.

The idea was to maximize objective safety while allowing the kids a lot of room to explore the subjective safety.

This could be say a climbing wall which was tall enough to be challenging, but ensuring the equipment and ground was designed and maintained[1] such that there was no risk of permanent injury should a kid fall from the top.

As most kids love a challenge this induced them to play freely in a natural way, which lead to other benefits including social aspects like reduction of bullying.

[1]: https://www.bsigroup.com/contentassets/fd0e8cd7dd174774890cd...

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"such that there was no risk of permanent injury should a kid fall from the top"

I debate that this is possible. You can minimize the dangers (like having no solid rock underneath, but sand), but with bad luck(and skill) even a small fall can break a neck.

But it is very important, that children indeed fall often, so they learn how to fall without hurting themself. It is up to us to provide a place that is a reasonable environment for it. But kids should also climb trees in a forest - and you cannot clear every ground. Life comes with risk. But if you remove all risk for them, they won't be prepared for the risks they cannot avoid.

> I debate that this is possible. You can minimize the dangers (like having no solid rock underneath, but sand), but with bad luck(and skill) even a small fall can break a neck.

When you are a child you need a LOT of bad luck to achieve that (in contrast to being an adult), if the playground is properly designed.

True, children are fortunately really flexible and have soft bones (and heal fast). But serious injury is still possible and that rules out "no risk of permanent injury". Main danger would be probably the older kid falling on top of a toddler playing underneath. Or someone forgot a wooden stick there - and the result is a eye loss. But even under perfect clean conditions - bad injury with a fall is possible, even when falling on soft sand.

One can imagine all manner of horrors. The greatest risk is an unlived life.

All of this can happen, nonetheless in a properly designed playground the worst thing that a 2 meters fall can do to a child/kid is probably a broken arm or leg. Maybe if they fall full flat on their back something worse can happen, but usually the body tends to put the bottom as the first point of contact.

Traumatic brain injuries, pretty much impossible to completely eliminate the risk of. These can be permanent and life altering. Land on your butt and roll back fast hitting your head on the wall. Done. Rare, but it happens.

My subthread started with "you need a LOT of bad luck". You can have a lot of bad luck, just like people can have a lot of good luck. It's not impossible but you should not plan your life around it.

I agree!

I think about the playground at my childhood elementary school. Swings, jungle gyms, overhead ladders, teeter-totters, all the usual stuff -- in an area paved with either asphalt or crushed stone. Beyond that was a grassy field where you could just run, wander around, play ball, etc. There were a few trees around the perimeter that got a lot of climbing.

Yes you could fall and get hurt. You learned to not do that.

It's possible, but that doesn't mean it should be made impossible. Anecdotal but I've not heard of any "child falls from playground climbing thing and dies" stories. Not from the ones you describe anyway:

There was an 11 year old that died last year, but that was in a professional climbing hall; I'm not sure what happened but they were supposed to be secured. But that was a 13 meter drop, and the fifth incident like that in a 30 year timespan.

And there was a 4 year old that died after falling three meters from a bouncy castle in an indoor play area; the owners of the venue were pulled up on the unsafe conditions in 2013, but due to various mistakes they only got the report nearly a year later and did not remove the dangerous thing until the child fell off and died.

kids chose the level of risk, if you replace grass with rubber tiles they will jump of intentionally. The tiles will break your fall after all. Surely the grown ups have thought this through, I can trust them. Then imitation puts the process on steroids and they all start doing it.

There is no reversing the process, the "upgrades" must continue all over the world. The grown ups aren't thinking at all, they just do what the other kids do. Stuff like conquer markets.

Maybe if you lift Karin over your head, throw her onto the rubber tiles and say: If this was concrete I wouldn't have done that.

> I debate that this is possible.

Sure, in practice. But the goal and intention of the standards for playground safety here is that there is no risk of permanent injury.

Hm, I see this as part of the same trend/problem. Why have unrealistic goals at all, in the name of safety?

Why is the goal not realistic, to minimize the risk?

Even if the whole playground would be made of soft foam - then still 2 kids could bump into each other and one loose its eye.

I've noticed that with group decision making it's always best to argue for more safety, its a winning argument. The argument doesn't need to be valid. The fact that you're defending safety is enough.

I've noticed this rhetorical dynamic in software too.

In group discussions around testing, security & scalability the maximalist approaches are really hard to argue against in meetings.

The person who objects to the max safety approach can easily come off as an uncaring gambler whilst the advocate comes off as idealistic at worst.

> Why have unrealistic goals at all, in the name of safety?

because "Only 2 out of 200,000 kids will be permanently maimed" is a harder sell to the public than the impossible "Our goal is zero injuries.".

"Our goal is zero injuries."

This I would sign, too.

"Goal and intention ... there is no risk of permanent injury."

This not. If you design proper and guide the small children enough, you can achieve no permanent injuries with some luck (for a specific playground over some time), but you cannot rule it out, that eventually something very bad might happen and this would just give parents false security.

I have seen this actually quite often. Young parents who assume, that the playground is totally safe, so they let then children do really risky things without realizing the danger - and this is dangerous. I mean children should do risky things and other people(mainly the grandparents) freak out when they see, what my small kids are allowed to do. But as a climber and parkour enthusiast - I guide and assist them first, till I know, they can handle this particular new situation and I try to raise their awareness of what they are capable and when they should rather stop or shout for help. And of course, I am near, so I can assist in critical situations. But I know that accidents will happen. And they did, but luckily nothing serious so far (because I was there). But I know, that I am not in 100% control of the situation all the time, just not possible. But if I would be scared because of the remaining <0.1% - my nervousness would affect them and make them insecure. Fear makes knees shaky ... and then they fall.

Here's what the standard[1] that holds in EU says:

The aim of this standard is first and foremost to prevent accidents with a disabling or fatal consequence, and secondly to lessen serious consequences caused by the occasional mishap that inevitably will occur in children's pursuit of expanding their level of competence, be it socially, intellectually or physically.

This part of EN 1176 specifies general safety requirements for permanently installed public playground equipment and surfacing. Additional safety requirements for specific pieces of playground equipment are specified in subsequent parts of this standard.

This part of EN 1176 covers playground equipment for all children. It has been prepared with full recognition of the need for supervision of young children and of less able or less competent children.

"This part" in the above refers to EN 1176-1.

[1]: https://nobelcert.com/DataFiles/FreeUpload/EN%201176-1%20(20...

"The aim of this standard is first and foremost to prevent accidents with a disabling or fatal consequence, and secondly to lessen serious consequences caused by the occasional mishap that inevitably will occur in children's pursuit of expanding their level of competence, be it socially, intellectually or physically."

Sounds very reasonable to me, with no unrealistic goals. I think we should be careful to not argue about semantics ... my point above was just about the absolut statement of "no risk of permanent injury should a kid fall from the top". The way you written it (I did not follow the link) - it said 100% safe. If you meant "very close to 100%", what is what people usually do with natural language, then there is no disagreement.

> what is what people usually do with natural language

Well I did write it using using natural language and not a programming language, so that can be taken as a given.

Ah, but we are also on a pedantic nerd site here, with many people wishing for more accuracy in common language..

And formal language for regulations are also not natural language and accuracy matters there, so I assumed the quote above from your friend was more in this style. Let's leave it at that :)

Having a cold here so fuse a bit short, sorry about that.

That is funny, (or not really), because I also have a cold with infection of some nerves and my brain is partly scrambled by painkillers. Hope you get well soon!

> Young parents who assume, that the playground is totally safe, so they let then children do really risky things without realizing the danger

Some parents just want to let the kids loose on the playground and then {do something} completely absorbed from reality, without raising the eyes and taking a look.

Yes, me too sometimes. But only after I verified, that my children are comfortable with the scenario (on a new playground, we have not been before).

But what I meant was for example parents encouraging their toddlers to do unsave stuff. Like riding down a steep slide, where they could fall off left or right from it. (And some toddlers apparently did fall out - because now there is no more slide, it really wasn't a safe toy for all kids, but slightly older kids 3+, could ride it without problems).

I spoke to some of those parents and they really were not aware of the dangers, they just assumed a slide is made save for all kids. And they were thankful for the warning.

The entire point of the article is that this is wrong.

There’s a lesson in there for adults too, with things like life changes and job changes. A lot of things that feel subjectively risky are not actually risky. You want to make sure the downside is covered but then aggressively take paths with high information discovery and variance.

Also I see a lot of playgrounds that are designed according to the rule that "if you can reach the thing on your own, you are old enough to handle the risks of the thing".

It's quite brilliant. Very small children up to almost teenagers can play on the same structure and challenge themselves in appropriate ways for their skill, because of the initial skill threshold in reaching the more risky parts.

I'm the first to admit that even as an adult I have had fun on those, by climbing the exteriors and leaping across long gaps. I hope it benefits my children that I can play with them that way.

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