Use of helmets on snowy slopes on the rise
- Font Size:
- Default font size
- Larger font size
By Kay Luna | Friday, December 21, 2007 |
Ryne Sullivan, 17, of Bettendorf listens to music under his helmet.(Jeff Cook/Quad-City Times) Buy this Photo
VIDEO: Skiers use their noggins
Skiers talk about the importance of wearing helmets …
Watch Video
They race down snow-covered ski slopes, jumping and skidding on snowboards and skis.
Yet some still wear little more than winter caps on their heads.
While the overall risk of getting hurt on the slopes remains relatively low, the use of safety helmets is on the rise across the bistate region, Iowa and Illinois ski resort officials said.
“I think that’s more the trend now. Most everybody’s wearing a helmet these days,” said Stewart Stoffregen, marketing director at Chestnut Mountain Resort in Galena, Ill.
Newcomers to the sport seem to wear helmets more often than experienced snowboarders and skiiers, added Ed Meyer, general manager and part-owner of Ski Snowstar in Andalusia, Ill., which opened Saturday for the 2007-08 season.
All three of the ski resorts within easy driving distance of the Quad-Cities — Snowstar, Chestnut Mountain and Sundown Mountain in Dubuque, Iowa — sell helmets. Sundown rents them as well.
Helmets are required for downhill racing at the resorts, but they are optional the rest of the time.
The headgear has become a habit for Mark Dietz, the general manager at Sundown, who said he wears a helmet as a role model for resort visitors and his own family. Even when he goes with his wife and children to ride bicycles, skateboard or go inline skating, all of them wear helmets, he added.
“Some of the biggest holdouts were the old folks, the 45-year-old-plus people, who grew up skiing,” he said. “But even more and more of our instructors and ski patrol have been wearing them.”
“They don’t stop every injury, but they do soften that blow,” he added.
The helmets are not only functional, they’re fashionable, too. These days, helmets come in all sorts of flashy colors and designs in an effort to appeal to young people, Dietz said.
Some have speakers built into them for listening to iTunes. And people can purchase covers — made of a stretchy fabric — to slip over the helmets that make them look as if spikes are coming off their heads or like they’re wearing clown hairdos, he added.
“You see skateboarders out and they’re not wearing helmets, but they’ll come here to snowboard and wear them,” he said.
That’s good news, considering that a new review of 24 studies from 10 countries published in the current issue of the journal Injury Prevention shows catastrophic head and spinal injuries are on the rise — particularly among young male snowboarders.
In the United States, snowboarders are almost twice as likely to be injured as skiers, according to the researchers.
The increased risk coincides with the growing popularity of acrobatic and high-speed maneuvers on the slopes, the journal notes.
A reduction in injuries from 1970s levels is credited by the journal primarily to better ski equipment, but several of the studies it reviewed show the risk of severe head injury was found to have increased over time.
Helmets can protect people from certain kinds of injuries, Meyer said, but he noted that they do not prevent the most common injuries — to hands and fingers — he sees at Snowstar.
When people fall, their instinct is to reach out and buffer themselves, he said.
A helmet sometimes just makes kids “think they are bulletproof, and they kind of start taking things to the next level,” he added.
“It all comes back to some common sense to ski and board within your limits.”
Kay Luna can be contacted at (563) 383-2323 or kluna@qctimes.com.
Learn More:
The National Ski Areas Association is focusing on a new helmet awareness initiative at lidsonkids.org.
del.icio.us
Digg
NewsVine
Fark
reddit» More Local Stories
- Romney and Huckabee campaigns go head-to-head
- Use of helmets on snowy slopes on the rise
- Salvation Army program gets toys, clothing to area families
- Teen drunk in I-35 crash that killed area native
- Frozen fog carrying harmful particles
- Candidate profiles: Fred Thompson proud of laid-back demeanor
- Man gets 8 years for DUI related death
Highest Rated Articles from the last 7 Days
- Technology News Articles
- Computers, MP3, Phones & More. See Product Pics, Specs & Reviews.
- www.NexTag.com
- 2008 Diet Of The Year:
- Finally, A Diet That Really Works! Seen On CNN, NBC, CBS & Fox News.
- www.Wu-YiSource.com
- Cheap Airfare
- Compare multiple travel sites. Discount web fares made easy.
- www.LowFares.com
- Ads by Yahoo!
