Back to School

Posted on August 24, 2008 by Law Office of D. Hardison Wood

For many children who are on the traditional school calendar, it's that time of the year...back to school. The Consumer Product Safety Commission has released a special notice offering back to school safety tips. In an effort to increase child safety, we are posting these tips here. The entire notice, of course, can be read on the CPSC website, found here.

Helmet Safety

Wear a bicycle helmet when biking or riding a scooter to and from school. Make sure your child’s bicycle helmet has a label stating it meets CPSC’s mandatory safety standard. Wearing a bicycle helmet can reduce the risk of head injury by as much as 85 percent.

CPSC staff has reports of an annual average of 80 children under 16 years of age who died in bicycle-related incidents in recent years. About half of the 500,000 bicycle-related emergency room-treated injuries in 2007 involved children under the age of 16. When taking part in other recreational activities, wear the right helmet for that activity. Read CPSC’s “Which Helmet for Which Activity” publication, which helps parents choose the most appropriate helmet, at http://www.cpsc.gov/CPSCPUB/PUBS/349.pdf (pdf).

More than 80 percent of the nearly 50,000 emergency room-treated injuries involving unpowered scooters in 2007 were to children younger than 15. In addition to wearing a helmet, CPSC recommends elbow and knee pads when riding a scooter.

Avoid Children’s Clothing with Drawstrings

Drawstrings at the hood or neck area are a strangulation hazard. They can catch on playground equipment and other items. Remove hood and neck drawstrings from upper outerwear clothing already in your child’s closet, and do not buy children’s clothing that uses them.

Since 1985, CPSC received reports of 27 deaths and 70 non-fatal incidents involving the entanglement of children’s clothing drawstrings.

Movable Soccer Goals

Unsecured movable soccer goals can fall over and kill or injure children who climb on them or hang from the crossbar. Make sure soccer goals are securely anchored when in use. Never allow children to climb on the soccer net or goal framework. When not in use, anchor goals or chain them to a nearby fence post or sturdy framework. Since 1998, CPSC has reports of at least 7 deaths and an estimated 1800 emergency department visits by children younger than 16 years of age that are related to soccer goal tip-overs and structural failures. For more information on soccer goal safety, visit http://www.cpsc.gov/CPSCPUB/PUBS/5118.html

Playgrounds

Each year, more than 200,000 hospital emergency room visits are related to playground injuries. Most injuries occur when a child falls onto the playground surface.

Check with school officials to make sure that equipment has been inspected and maintained. There should be at least nine inches of safe, shock absorbing surface material, and proper clearance around the equipment. Make sure exposed hardware or free-hanging ropes are not part of the equipment. Ropes and clothing catching on exposed hardware can be strangulation hazards. Elevated surfaces, like platforms and ramps, should have guardrails to prevent falls.

School officials should be aware that shading at the playground with trees or other structures is an important consideration to reduce children’s exposure to the sun. Schools should also be aware that hot sun can make playground slides and black rubber matting burn hazards for children.

Listen to CPSC’s podcast on playground safety at http://www.cpsc.gov/mp3.html

We, at our firm,  hope that your children have a safe and productive school year!
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Football and Brain Injuries

Posted on October 5, 2007 by Law Office of D. Hardison Wood
As  we know sports injuries are all  too common in  high schools across the nation.  The injuries are not exclusive to the sport, they happen in everything, football, soccer, baseball, basketball, hockey and more.  It is a promising idea to us that there are studies such as the  this one    where there are monitors placed inside the helmets of football players.  These monitors register to a laptop on the sidelines indicating what type of blow to the head the player just received.
The purpose of the high-tech headgear, which uses six strategically placed, spring-loaded accelerometers to wirelessly beam information to a Web-based system on a laptop computer on the sidelines, is to more effectively – and more immediately – detect when blows to players’ heads may result in concussions or more severe brain injuries.


This also opens the opportunity to better pad the helmets by learning where the hits are causing the most damage. 

“We will look at how hard and where they get hit,” he said, adding that one possible outcome of the work may be determining the need to develop a different type of helmet for high school athletes.

“We may find they’re getting hit in different places and need more padding in those areas of the helmet, for example.”

This is so important, as high school students' brains may not be fully developed and furthermore,  the damage that these injuries cause could evolve over years.
Unfortunately, Broglio said, “what other researchers are finding is that people with multiple concussions have incurred Alzheimer’s Disease at a higher rate. Getting their ‘bell rung’ as high school athletes may have permanent repercussions. There seems to be a link.”
It seems this study certainly is a step  in the  right  direction to protecting our children.
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Bus Safety

Posted on September 11, 2007 by Law Office of D. Hardison Wood
With 70,000 students riding school buses on 2,100 routes in Wake County, there are bound to be mishaps.

But the parents of one local kindergartener said even one accident was too many when their son’s first bus ride landed him in the emergency room.  Read More

First off, it is extremely unnerving that this child's stop was missed not once but twice in the same day, even after his parents brought it to the  attention of the school.  But moreover, it makes one wonder about the safety of the students on the bus.  As we here at the firm, are constantly evaluating car seats, safety belts, crashworthiness of automobiles, and more, a story like this makes us wonder about the safety of the children on those  buses.  It appears this little boy stood up when he noticed the driver missing his stop, and therefore fell, causing an injury to his head.  As we have learned through many cases, what may appear as a slight contusion to the head at first sometimes is just the  beginning.  Should there be seat belts or something on the buses to help keep children from standing and consequently falling while on the  bus?  Something to think about....
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