New Findings on Safety: Some Surprising, Some Not

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04 February 2015

Push to The Latest: No

SAM Magazine—Fairport, N.Y., Feb. 4, 2015—Three new safety-related studies suggest that helmets reduce head injuries, ski and snowboard injuries overall are trending downward, and that terrain parks have not led to an increase in catastrophic injuries. All three studies are in the process of being published in the upcoming ASTM STP: Selected Technical Papers 1582, which will appear this spring.

The conclusion that jumping features within a terrain park do not increase the risk of a fatal or catastrophic injury might sound counterintuitive to some. Ski areas first started building terrain parks in the early 1990s, so researchers were able to compare data from a time when none of the ski areas in the study had a terrain park. During the past 20 years, the rate of fatal and catastrophic injury and the overall incidence of any injury have not changed, according to the authors Jasper E. Shealy, Ph.D., Rochester Institute of Technology, Irving Scher, Ph.D., University of Washington, Robert J. Johnson, M.D., University of Vermont, and John A. Rice, general manager of Sierra-At-Tahoe ski area.

In the study, based on data supplied by NSAA, trauma-related catastrophic and fatal injuries incurred by people while skiing and snowboarding were used to compute the rate of injury per million visits from 1990 to 2010. Data from selected resorts was used to estimate the overall incident rate based on ski patrol reports of serious injuries per 1,000 days of operation at 10-year intervals for 1990, 2000, and 2010.

“The perception that jumping features resulted in increased risk of injury has not been substantiated,” the study states. In fact, the authors say that providing specifically designed jumping features that are tested before being opened may reduce the incidence and severity of injuries to jumpers. Segregating jumping may also reduce the incidence of individuals being struck by jumpers, the study states.

Ski and Snowboard Injuries Trending Downward

In a second study, commissioned by NSAA, researchers found that skiing and snowboarding injury rates are decreasing, and the prevalence of collision incidents with fixed objects and other persons on the slope is also trending downward.

As part of the fourth edition of NSAA's 10-Year Interval National Injury Study, authors Shealy, Ettlinger, Johnson, and Scher examined 13,145 incident reports and 4,618,194 visitation days at selected ski areas over a 40-year period. The skiing incident rate was 3.1 per 1,000 visits in 1980, 2.66 in 1990, 2.63 in 2000 and 2.5 for 2010.

The snowboard incident rate has decreased by nearly 1 percentage point since 2000. There were 6.1 snowboard incidents per 1,000 visits in 2010 compared to 6.97 in 2000. There were 3.3 snowboard incidents per 1,000 visits in 1990, when snowboards first began showing up on the slopes in significant numbers.

In their research, the authors obtained ski patrol incident data from selected ski resorts in the U.S. The data were weighted by the percent of resort visits based on size and location.

Helmets Reduce Head Injuries

Finally, a third study shows increased helmet usage has led to a decrease in the prevalence of head injuries. For this study, the authors conducted a prospective epidemiological study of all medically significant skiing injuries at Vermont's Sugarbush Resort. The study covered 17 seasons, from 1995-96 through the 2011-12. “We specifically focused on all injuries to the region of the head,” the authors stated.

The study showed that during a period when helmet use increased from 8 percent to 84 percent, the prevalence of head injuries compared to all injuries decreased from 8.4 percent to 6.8 percent. The prevalence of potentially serious head injuries declined from 4.2 percent to 3.0 percent during the same time period.

Further, the occurrence of serious head injuries declined from 1 in 4,200 days of skiing or snowboarding to 1 in 11,000 days of skiing or snowboarding. The incidence of any head injury declined from 1 in 8,600 days of activity to 1 in 26,000 days of activity.

“Helmets offer mitigation for head injuries such as skull fractures and scalp lacerations. Increased utilization of helmets was associated with significant reductions in potentially serious head injuries, as well as all head injuries,” the study states.