7 Surprising Facts About Ski Deaths & Injuries
- The average skier death in CO is a thirty-seven years old experienced male skier wearing a helmet who loses control on an intermediate, groomed run and hits a tree.
- The majority of deaths — 54 percent — occurred on blue, groomed runs, while 31 percent were on expert trails.
- The increase in the number of people who wear helmets hasn’t resulted in fewer fatalities. Helmets are designed to protect riders at about 12 mph, while a skier or snowboarder who collides with a tree or another rider is typically going 25 to 40 mph.
- More than 80 percent of ski deaths in Colorado are men.
- Last season, 54 skiers and snowboarders died at ski areas within the U.S., which saw a total of 51 million ski visits, according to the National Ski Areas Association.
- Researchers at Johns Hopkins recently estimated that about 600,000 people nationally are injured each year as a result of skiing and snowboarding.
- Estimates are that about two injuries occur per 1,000 skier visits — a decrease of 50 percent since the mid-1970s.
You can read more at denverpost.com
What does “experienced” mean here?
“Helmets are designed to protect riders at about 12 mph, while a skier or snowboarder who collides with a tree or another rider is typically going 25 to 40 mph.”
we need to demand they step their game up on helmet making…12 mph?! that’s embarrassing and terrifying
Totally agree, Ive been concussed to the point of double vision while wearing a helmet. Not saying the helmet didnt help, but it certainly didnt help as much as one might expect, or as much as say a NFL quality helmet might protect you. The price point of a well made helmet, and also the aesthetics, are keeping them out of the market. Do you see any serious ski racer wearing an upsidedown stryrofoam bowl on their heads? No, full face with gel or whatever is the real way to protect your dome.
My guide while helisking in AK didnt wear a helmet, stating it would give him a false sense of security.
Calling it an upside-down styrofoam bowl on my head is making me feel unsafe
yep. go full face and have fun snapping your neck on that next face plant.
how about you just don’t face plant?
Nah, I actually like charging which means the inevitable face plant or even tomahawk every once in a while.
Well, I still wear an upside down stryofoam bowl on my head, both when I ride my bike and snowboard, but that’s mainly because I have a kid and want to minimize any risk, also dont ride the lines and hits I used to in my younger years… i.e. I ride with caution but obviously there are inherent risks to the sport and a helmet may or may not offer some protection from those, i just figure its not that uncomfortable and keeps my ears warm and I dont fall very much anyways and there is a chance it might help if I do. I slow down around unforgiving things like trees, lift poles and rocks. Not counting on that helmet to save me if I hit one of those, thats for sure.
My ER doctor friend insists they do help, having seen the evidence of not wearing one. My earlier accident was a collision with a skier on a groomer, we were both going fast. Once I high-sided on my bike and the strofoam shell shattered, so there was some energy absorbed by something other than my skull/brain, a good thing.
It looks like there’s more to it than that:
http://www.telemarktips.com/Helmets.html
“One of the most common criticisms of ski and snowboard helmets is that they supposedly only protect the wearer from impacts occurring while skiing in the range of 11 to 14 mph…”
“…ski helmets are tested in 2 meter drops that achieve about 14 miles per hour (22.5 km/h) at impact, onto a flat anvil. Motorcycle helmets are routinely tested using 3 meter drops which acheive about 17 mph (27.36 km/h), yet it is widely accepted that motorcycle helmets have proven to provide substantial protection against brain injury at much higher speeds.”
“It should also be noted that bicycle helmets are tested using the same 2 meter drops as ski helmets, and like skiers, bicyclists frequently exceed 14 mph in forward speed, yet the famous 1998 case-control study of the effectiveness of bicycle safety helmets by Thompson and Patterson, indicated that bicycle helmet use reduces the risk of head injury by 85%, brain injury by 88% and severe brain injury by at least 75%. ”
So, wear your helmet. And to what BD says, there’s a ‘hardhat’ type of helmet too that prevents serious injury but not concussions. Not saying that’s what you were wearing.
You guys are expecting way too much out of a helmet. Even motorcycle helmets are really only designed to protect your head against the forces generated by your brainium dropping from a nominal ride height. If you it anything else after reaching the pavement it’s not going to so much benefit.
This is because these types of head traumas are most common encountered (in motorcycling, and I have no data I’d put a beer on it about being true for snow sports) and because to absorb a stronger impact you would need significantly more material in the helmet. Would you wear a helmet that weighed 4x as much if it protected you to 25mph? Probably not because it would give you wiplash the first time you went over a roller.
Use the Schwartz and A-thang’ll be aiight.
What difference does a helmet make when you hit a tree?
Exactly Squally, I wear a helmet so that a tree branch doesn’t impale me, I have hit trees and was glad to have my helmet on for sure it has saved many injuries for me, especially the gaper that puts the ski chair bar down without asking
Getting smacked with the bar by inconsiderate gapers is my primary motivation for wearing a helmet.
A life of difference actually, thats what.
moto helmets(dot3) seem to be the answer however many don’t like the weight and extreme look of them.
No, they really are not. A moto helmet wont do much more than a ski helmet aside from protect your face.
Helmets are never going to stop serious brain and neck trauma at high speeds. Rapid deceleration. eg hitting a tree, is going to cause your brain to compress against your skull helmet or not, what a helmet does is a) deflect force through the shell and b) absorb force through the foam. And
Nope… they can’t step their game up. You got to understand that regardless of how much crap you wear on your head, there is nothing protecting your brain from impacting the inside of your scull. Realistically speaking, there is only so much you can put on your head before you start running into other issues… like snapping your neck due to a giant mass on your head.
A helmet protects you from more than just hitting a tree at 12 mph, statistics like this are notoriously misleading. Consider falling on a steep face above treeline, and sliding, and smacking a rock with your head mid-slide. No helmet and you crack your scull. I have personally had a helmet save my ass in the situation, as well as others.
Better helmets are available- look at the racer ones. Expensive, often ugly, but solid protection at high speeds.
From my amazing unscientific study, a great number of these are trauma cases in hitting trees (eg internal bleeding) and also suffocation classes. Not sure what a helmet is going to do when you puncture a lung, break some ribs and bleed out upside down in a tree well. But yes, let’s blame the helmet industry, just in case we can save ourselves from ourselves.
And “experienced” doesn’t mean “good” especially because I’m soooooo much better than you.
There has been a long argument about how strong to make helmets in the bicycling community. There is a tradeoff between strength of the helmet and how capable it is in small crashes. If it is believed that the majority of crashes are in the 12 mph range then it’s best to design the helmets for such accidents and prevent the majority of concussions. DOT and SNELL certified downhill mountain bike and motocross helmets are readily available and able to take larger impacts.
idiot! when you are cart-wheeling out of a line, you are probably going 10-15 mph.
i would much rather have a hard shell around the dome so a tiny rock doesn’t scalp me…
you ski slow
Helmets reduce peripheral vision. They also feel awkward, get very hot, and make you practically deaf…especially when people hook their iPods up. It reduces situational awareness and they’re rated for such low speeds, it’s pointless to have one.
dumbass
What the hell are you on?!
Goggles reduce peripheral vision, helmets dont unless they are a very odd design. They don’t get that hot even in spring skiing, they dont make you deaf (I regularly ski with music playing in mine and can manage perfectly normal conversations on the lift and at the top of runs).
I would suggest taking the helmet off your face and putting it on top of your head. WTF?
Wait are you talking about a helmet or your cock?
Much like avalanche statistics; the biggest threat to safety is testosterone and safety equipment can only do so much. Safety is something you do, not buy.
Helmets are meant to protect you from Europeans, who immediately slam the bar down on chairs before you even sit down…
Yep
HEY NOW!
We’re just used to bars that come down automatically.
Looks like skiing above the treelike and exclusively off piste would be a good idea, no?
The last 3 bullet points contradict each other. 600,000 injuries out of 51 million visits gives you almost 12 injuries per 1000 visits. The last bullet it saying 2 injuries per 1000 visits. Which is correct because this determines if I wear a helmet or not tomorrow.
600,000 injuries reported by John Hopkins sounds way too high.
What counts as an injury. Maybe cutting my finger on the pop top on a beer can
i broke my eye socket and cracked my helmet in 2 diff places going 50+. they may be tested at speeds of 12 mph, but my helmet saved my life. wear them
so rad
You are sooooo bro core…brah.
When it comes to helmet efficacy, it’s not the speed of the skier that matters. It’s the speed at which the helmet impacts an object or the ground. This may or may not be less, the same or more than the speed at which the skier was travelling even one second prior to the impact. Another consideration is the angle of impact.
Cherry picking a statistic is not helpful to understanding reality no matter what side of a debate you support.
More specific information:
http://www.ski-injury.com/specific-injuries/head
so what this is saying is keep the Assholes at Squaw and out of CO!
fine with me
the thing to also consider here is that most skiers have their shoulders square to the mountain and when they have a collision with a tree, its full frontal not necessarily a back snap or a crash at the crown of the head.
I have gone seasons wearing a helmet every time, and other seasons with out wearing one at all.
The choice is up to you, however safety is always key when doing anything. Just like wearing a life jacket while out boating is a safe bet, not everyone does it.
To each their own!
The Denver Post article was written by an ambulance chasing plaintiffs’ attorney who regularly goes after the ski industry. It’s biased to a fault.
The goal of this article is to try to get public support for more regulations and more lawsuits against “evil” ski resorts when people are injured or killed skiing. “It’s anyone’s fault, except the skier.”
Take it with a grain of salt.
As Jamie Pierre said, “If something I do was dangerous enough to require a helmet, I wouldn’t do it.”
Not to make light of his death, but if apply that logic to beacons and avalanche education and you’ll see how ill-informed that quote is. Just because you don’t accept a danger as real does not make it so.
I don’t wear a helmet or a seatbelt so don’t run into me.
I don’t know what is so surprising about most of the points presented. I get a google alert on articles popping up on the Internet about skiing and I see the deaths. As is noted, almost always competent skiers on runs well within their abilities hitting a very obvious obstacle. The Denver Post article while maybe not being able to scientifically proving it pretty sums up what happens, guy is carving and goes to change edges and one ski is stubborn and goes off on its own, usually after a brief moment, we yank that ski back and get it in synch with its brother, but have that happen at the worst possible moment and its all over.
I had this happen once but the time it happened was fortunate and the consequence was going into a mogul field and not into a tree or a building. I caught an edge and ended up going straight a lot longer (what are these events, like a half second, still you can go quite far in 1/2 second if you are cruising 30+ mph) than I wanted to. I pulled that ski back and turned away from the moguls, but for a moment there I really thought I was about to get a bumpy and unintended initiation into bump skiing.
My helmet, may not be of much help if I hit a riblet or a tree at 60 mph, but I hit the snow hard a couple weekends ago and it helped, I whapped my head hard and I saw stars, popped up and shook it off and finished the day. Earlier in the season I fell and had a ski release and that ski fell onto my head. That may not have injured me too bad, but if it came down edge first I might have got a nasty cut, in any event I am glad that is a mystery.
Another article wanting to banish us to ski simulators in the arcades.
Learning to crash and protect your face and head with your arms is an effective way to avoid helmet support. Helmets on beginners and intermediates inhibit focus and in my opinion cause head first falls even with the lighter weight helmets today.
Beginners should always wear helmets, especially kids since their skulls are softer than full grown adults. Plus on green runs you are way more likely, as a beginner skier or snowboarder, to be blindsided by an out of control beginner snowboarder (or occasionally skier). Just go hit a green run on a crowded day if you want to see this in action.
Trees never get out of the way.
The helmet I wore when I almost plunged a twig into my skull helped deflect the twig and instead just gave me a concussed brain, a spur in my neck that severed some nerves to my left ear (now I cannot hear in my left ear), but I would have been a stuck pig if it weren’t for that helmet. I may have lost a couple brain cells, and hearing in my ear from the whiplash that hurt my neck, but I’m still living and without a helmet I would’ve been a goner.
You all have your own opinions, but they are based on experiences. When you experience hitting a tree and the moment before you hit it you think you will die, and then you wake up and you are still alive after hitting something that should’ve killed you. Then you can have an opinion that really matters.
Someone needs to make a helment to protect your junk!
it’s ok to not wear a helmet, it’s called Darwin’s theory of evolution. weed yourself out of the gene pool.
i love thisss
Exactly. Don’t need a helmet if you have nothing to protect.
just toss your helmet after the first two feet of your hundred- foot huck.
You’re not hucking anything that big.
Have your friend throw a rock at your head with and without a helmet.
Which one hurt the most?
Terrible Grammar…Please tell me that somebody proof-read this!
no brains, no headache
I don’t own a POC currently, rather a Smith (my mistake), but as I understand, the POC is better made than most others, having a harder multi-impact shell (on the pricier Bug model) and a much thicker layer of compressible foam. They look bigger on your head, check Ingrid’s, but provide more safety I believe. If you charge all the time, might be a better selection. (not spam I swear)
Helmets only protect what is within their specs, but many crashes are that type. I have crushed several Smith and Giro helmets in the last 6 years and got a substantial concussion every time. What would have happened with a wool cap I have no idea.
Cyclists are way too obsessed with weight (helmets weighed by the gram) to ever wear an appropriate helmet for the speeds they normally ride.
Still, every possibility to save your ass is worth looking at.