February 22, 2012 //

Hard-headed Nova Scotians

by Iain MacMillan from Spring 2012 issue

 

Well, we all knew it was going to happen sooner or later; we just didn’t expect Nova Scotia to lead the charge into our new, fortified world of skiing.

Back in December, Nova Scotia Minister of Health and Wellness Maureen MacDonald announced that starting next season, it will be against the law to ski or snowboard without wearing a helmet. Must have been a slow day in the legislature.

We were told that over the last 12 seasons there have been 11 traumatic head injuries on Nova Scotia’s ski slopes. (The Minister’s office didn’t offer how many of those 11 were wearing helmets.) I didn’t do well in second-year statistics, but in my uneducated opinion I’d say that given there are hundreds of thousands of skier and snowboarder visits to slopes in Nova Scotia every year, we’re even safer than I thought. I wonder what all the fuss is about— especially when I learned later the helmet compliance rate on the bonnie slopes of New Scotland is already at 77 per cent.

I’m not anti-helmet; I wear one regularly. It’s great to hold a POV and it protects cameras and other electronics when I’m travelling. It prevents itchy hat head, displays stickers and protects the back of my head when the keener at the end of the chair can’t wait to lower the bar. It looks as if it would stop scalp lacerations from low boughs when treeskiing, not that I know anyone who’s actually had a branch scrape the top of his head in the trees. On the other hand, I also can’t imagine two cm of Styrofoam would help much if my noggin, travelling at average skier speeds, was stopped by a tree trunk.

Although every once in a while this final and sad scenario happens at Canadian ski hills, thankfully it’s not as frequent as, say, elderly people wiping out in the bathroom. (And as far as I know, the Nova Scotia Assembly isn’t quite there yet at mandating bathtub helmets or toilet seat belts for everyone who collects CPP.)

Nova Scotia’s government is spinning this as a cost issue. Minister MacDonald says a traumatic brain injury costs $400,000 a year to treat. So hiring provincial helmet police to ensure we’re all in compliance will actually save taxpayers money down the road. Hmmm….

Okay, if we’re talking money and safety, consider how much has already been spent on ski and snowboard helmets—and the resulting dramatic drop in head injury rates. Let’s say on average we’re spending, oh, $100 or $150 on a helmet. If there have been 10 million sold in the last 10 or 15 years, that works out to a whopping $1-$1.5 billion. Imagine the corresponding drop in head injury rates!

Yes, imagine.

Unfortunately, a drop in head injury rates since the majority of us started wearing head protection hasn’t appeared to have happened. But no one knows because the little data that are collected are too vague and they’re easily superseded by the rare, traumatic onslope death. Unfortunately, this all degrades into yet another fervent, anecdotal discussion about one’s buddy, sibling, grandmother… But anecdotes shouldn’t replace actual numbers for head injuries.

Nevertheless, one does have to wonder whether our ski slopes would be safer if $1.5 billion had been spent on something else. Say, education to slow skiers down (me included) on our billiard-table-smooth groomed slopes that didn’t exist when most of us were growing up skiing in a helmetless world.

Twenty-or-so years ago, the New York State Legislature passed a law (followed more recently by Vermont) that requires chairlift riders to head into the clouds with the “safety” bar down. Riding with it up looked dangerous, therefore it was. But in New York and around the world, children still regularly fall off chairlifts, almost exclusively before the first lift tower or just before the last, i.e. when the “safety” bar is being lowered or raised. Chairlifts are designed for adults; little and light bodies don’t have the same leverage you and I do. It’s an inherent design flaw—sort of like two cm of plastic-covered Styrofoam, a tree and 60 or 80 kph of speed. ❄

Ski helmets policy statement from Canada West Ski Areas Association

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  • Phil Christie

    Iain-

    I enjoyed your accurate observation re the wearing of a helmet ( Spring
    ’12 ed. ): to protect your head when another chair lift rider insists
    that, without notice, and before advancing 3 m, the safety bar must be
    immediately crashed down!
    My now 3rd. generation of helmets has taken such a blow several times.
    I began wearing one in 1992, after returning from a year off, due to
    neurosurgery.  This in turn was due to my crashing into a very
    immovable, inappropriate piece of ‘farm fencing’, on the hill, in a
    blizzard.  After winning the law suit, this type of fencing was removed
    and confined to the farms and orchards where it belongs!
    Regarding the letters suggesting there are: 1.too many reports on the
    testing of skis and equipment and 2. couldn’t “a few hardcore locals and
    skiers who don’t teach for a living” do the testing.
    I find the info. informative and interesting, even if I don’t read all
    of it.
    The testers must be C.S.I.A. certified so we can obtain a consistent,
    experienced and professional assessment.
    Most of us could never possibly test to the extent these skiers do.  I
    have bought skis and boots on their recommendation and have been very
    pleased.  Keep it coming!

    Phil Christie
    Aylmer, ON

  • skimag

    Regarding your recent editorial,
    “Hard-headed Nova Scotians” Spring 2012. I agree with you it would be possibly
    safer to make the slopes safer than spending 1.5 billion dollars on helmets
    except maybe, as is often, for those skiing above you that mistakenly collide
    into you.

    But for the individual Canadian skier I
    firmly believe that spending only $200.00 to protect your head is a MUST DO
    rather than trying to get the resorts to spend 1.5 billion. So I’d say do as I
    do… Wear your helmet every day to help protect your very valuable head. A
    $200.00 investment is so much easier then to do die.

    From skiing, I personally have had 3 severe
    brain injuries plus mild ones but I was always wearing a helmet in the downhill
    speed crashes and against all odds I can still walk and talk reasonably well.
    BUT NOW! I never go skiing without wearing a helmet. NEVER for any of the 54 days
    of skiing last year- Still a Uvex helmet!

    BUT I still think one manufacturer should produce a much safer helmet
    than for current Canadian government regulations. Then sell it at a higher
    price for the extra safety for those Canadians who ski and are at risk.

    The manufacture would also still sell their
    current helmet for those that wanted to initially safe a few bucks.

     

    Sincerely Yours,

     

     

     

    Dave Irwin

    Crazy Canuck

  • Ryan Robinson

    Dear Ski Canada;
    I am profoundly disappointed in the editorial featured on pg. 5 of the
    Spring 2012 issue written by Iain MacMillan about helmets in skiing and
    their newly mandated use on Nova Scotia’s Slopes. As someone that has
    had several serious head injuries, and many more besides prevented by
    wearing helmets in a variety of sports, his dismissive attitude towards
    their efficacy cannot stand.
    It may be true that a helmet cannot prevent an injury if you are skiing
    and hit a tree directly, at speed, but to act as if that is the only
    impact a head is likely to take while skiing is dangerously stupid. To
    act like helmets cannot prevent any injury is dangerously stupid.
    Further, in the same breath that he dismisses the number of severe head
    injuries on ski slopes, and wonders how many of them were wearing
    helmets when they were injured, he stakes that helmet use is at 77%. Is
    it possible that the injury rates are so low because the helmet usage
    rates are so high?
    It is clear that there are impacts so great that no helmet can prevent
    an injury during them but many impacts are not that severe and modern
    ski helmets work very well at protecting people during those less severe
    (and more common) impacts. Mr. MacMillan and the publishers of Ski
    Canada should issue an immediate retraction and apology for such
    reckless disregard for the importance of helmets. If Mr. MacMillan is
    not willing to do that, if he feels his opinion is correct and that as
    editor this space is an appropriate place to share it then I think he
    should be removed from his position because clearly his judgment is
    poor.
    You are not producing some tabloid, or some sort of shock journalism
    where the headline is more important than the content. Ski Canada is a
    respected publication with generally well thought out and prepared
    articles. You should be ashamed to have published such an ill-conceived,
    logically unsound, reckless, dangerous and stupid article on something
    so important. Shame.
    Cheers,
    Ryan Robinson