Playground Risk? A UK analysis

One hears a great deal about the assumed risk of playgrounds, but rarely are the statistics given, even more rarely analyzed or compared to other childhood risk factors.

Here is a reasonable analysis of the problem from the UK:

How risky is play? Should we make sure that every risk to children's health and safety is managed away? How should playground providers reflect the threat of possible legal action? A check on the data about playground accidents and children's injuries produces some interesting results:


Playing in playgrounds is a relatively low risk children's activity
Less than 2% of childhood accidents treated in hospital involve playground accidents
Fatalities in playgrounds are extremely rare
There is one playground fatality every three or four years
This compares to over 100 child pedestrian fatalities per year
And over 500 child fatalities from accidents overall.

However, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) says that there are 40,000 child injuries at playgrounds each year. The data above suggests that the vast majority of these must be minor.

RoSPA does though indicate that it believes that measures taken to ensure safety should not take the challenge out of play in open spaces:

RoSPA strongly believes that these areas should be "as safe as necessary - not as safe as possible"

[source]