It’s back to school season! It’s great if you’ve made it through the past few summer months without your child getting hurt. You’re not completely in the clear though. When your child heads out to recess during their school day, you likely won’t be there keeping a close eye on them. Their teacher will be watching as many as two dozen children. It’s no wonder playground accidents occur here in Oklahoma.
Data compiled by Safe Kids Worldwide (SKW) shows that playground injuries are the leading reason children age five to 14 get hurt. At least one-half of those incidents involve kids between the ages of five and nine. Female children are slightly more likely to become involved in a playground injury than males.
They also found that 75% of those children who suffer injuries do so at public playgrounds. One-third of all accidental playground deaths also happen there. While nearly 70% of the children who are hurt on their home playsets are injured while using their swings, just over 50% of the injuries that happen on public playgrounds happen while climbing.
SKW’s research shows that one of the primary reasons that children get hurt on playgrounds is because they aren’t adequately supervised. Their data suggests that this may be to blame for at least 40% of all such accidents. This is responsible for as much as 32% of schoolyard injuries and 5% of daycare ones.
Aside from climbing equipment and swings, one of the leading causes of playground injuries is strangulation. At least 56% of all kids’ deaths occur because kids become entrapped or entangled in playground equipment. Another 20% of fatal incidents result from falls. As for the latter, many children die because these playgrounds life-saving, impact-absorbing surfaces around the equipment.
Teachers should be focused on watching over the children that they’re entrusted to take care of when they’re out on the playground, but they’re often too busy doing other things to do so. Schools often put the maintenance and safety of the equipment on the back burner and instead focus their attention on what they deem to be more pressing matters.
If your child has been hurt or killed on the school playground or at a park here in Tulsa, then a personal injury attorney can help. They can aid you in building a case that will ensure that you receive fair compensation for what happened.