"Spills, and chills; In a car-seat culture, sledding's free-for-all spirit stands out - and leads some to seek new safety rules" by Keith O'Brien, Globe Staff | February 1, 2009
MELROSE - .... In a regulated world, where children are consigned to ride in car seats for years, forced to wear helmets while bicycling, and lorded over by anxious parents worried about just about everything, there remains at least one final frontier of unbridled freedom: the great American sled hill....
Not anymore.
Some communities, like Raynham, along with many private golf courses, have chosen to ban sledding at certain locations in recent years. Others, after consulting with lawyers, have posted signs warning people that they are sledding at their own risk. And some people are pushing for a law that would require children, 12 and younger, to wear a helmet while sledding....
State Senator Steven Panagiotakos, a Lowell Democrat who has sponsored the mandatory helmet bill.... argues that a state that requires children to wear helmets while bicycling - as Massachusetts does - should mandate the same equipment for sledding. But police wonder how they would enforce such a law, and town officials are just as mystified about how to restrict access to snow-covered hills or regulate an activity that, by its very nature, encourages chaos.
Spills, falls, flips, and crashes - the events that make town officials anxious - are the very things that make sledding fun. And then there's this wrinkle: State law protects landowners, including municipalities, from liability so long as they aren't charging a sledding fee or operating with "willful" negligence, and that means there's a compelling argument not to regulate the activity at all, said David R. Lucas, special counsel for Melrose.
"Unfortunately, the more you regulate it, the more likely you are to incur liability," Lucas said. "If you say, 'Sled here, in these marked lanes,' and something happens in those marked lanes, the city's in trouble."
Well, at least the lawyers will be happy.
And so, as the issue is debated, sledding remains pretty much what it was a generation ago: a wintertime free-for-all. The only difference, said Brookline town counsel Jennifer Dopazo, is that city officials and private landowners are now well aware of the activity's inherent risks.
"Anybody could fall off their sled, break their neck, or hit a tree. And it's tragic," said Dopazo. "But where do you draw the line? Do you post a police officer up there after every snowstorm?"
Not when they can't solve murders, rapes, and robberies!!!
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Of course, there is always a tragedy that is REACTED TO by authorities:
In Wilmington, just last year, officials decided to place two tires around an exposed pipe on a hill at the Woburn Street School. It was a precaution that came too late for one sledder.
On a school snow day in January last year, Beth Doherty, then 15, went to the hill with a friend to go sledding on a snow tube. On just the second run of the day, Doherty laid down and her friend laid down on top of her and, together, they sped off, spinning down the hill through the deep, powdery snow, right into the exposed pipe. On impact, Doherty fractured her skull in three places and cracked a vertebra in her neck.
That makes me cry. I can just imagine the young girls laughing and having a great time, only to have fate so cruelly intervene. I wonder how long they suffered out there before someone found them.
She survived and avoided paralysis, but had to be hospitalized for eight days, didn't return to school until last fall, and will live with the lingering effects of her injuries for years.
Her short-term memory comes and goes. She fatigues easily. She can no longer play sports like she once did. And with the return of winter this year, Doherty said, she has been having trouble sleeping at night.
"I haven't had any dreams related to the accident," she said. "But I'm just on high alert, worried about slipping or falling."
The snow and ice, she said, is a reminder of what happened last year, and she is trying to move on.
Doherty's sledding days are over.
So are mine; I'm way too old for that now.
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