Old article, but no wonder there were a lot of young people dying in the olden times.
Apparently there are still concrete slides for the kids? https://airlightmagazine.org/airlight/issue-4/the-concrete-slides-of-northern-california/
Dunno if this is an american thing but a lot of these things or similar stuff can still be found at German/ European playgrounds and honestly with most of this things a kid will have way more fun as with those super save, the city is afraid of being sued playgrounds.
E.g. this one here in Cologne, Germany Link to Google maps with pictures
I think this is super funny. Germans aren’t really known for their easy going attitude, is it because they fell off a 4 story monkey bar set? Or maybe they’re afraid of getting pushed off a giant torture swing? I will give you that we are probably over zealous in safety for our kids, but we don’t have universal healthcare, our pocketbooks won’t allow us to fall off a 4 story monkey bars.
I don’t know the reason for this but if I would need to guess then it’s mainly about not being afraid of being sued to bankruptcy in the rare case something happens. Though I really can’t remember reading about anything happening to a child in a news paper, so I assume (or let’s say hope) no to drastic accidents happened on German playgrounds in the last years.
Never considered that health insurance might be an issue to come up with those super safe playgrounds. But yeah if your retirement is endangered by you kiddo climbing up a monkey bar set it might feel way more dangerous. Could maybe also explain to a certain why most European playgrounds are more adventurous then their US counterparts.
EDIT: Also tbh I really do think it’s a good thing for kids to be able to climb up on things and explore stuff that might look dangerous especially to the small ones and learn how to behave their and how to overcome those situations and also learn to improve their body control at the same time as well.
Thanks for talking about all this, I don’t think I realized how much our safety culture is around being able to afford to help them either. I agree, kids should be able to climb on things and explore. I love this one at the Seattle Center, https://seattlecenter.com/explore/attractions/artists-at-play
The other thing at play in America is that the insurance companies promote “safety” and won’t insure these playgrounds if they’re not. I know Americans have a reputation for coddling, but here in Seattle, that’s not really a thing. Probably because it’s a very wealthy city and is surrounded by a lot of nature that will/can kill you. Nature really doesn’t care about being safe.
The thing is though, not all of them survived them.
