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A recent episode of 99% Invisible: Play Mountain looked at how the playground got to be safe and boring. "A two-year-old boy named Frank Nelson was climbing a

A recent episode of 99% Invisible: Play Mountain looked at how the playground got to be safe and boring. "A two-year-old boy named Frank Nelson was climbing a 12-foot-tall slide in a Chicago park when he slipped through a railing and hit his head so hard that it caused permanent brain damage. The park system of Chicago was sued and had to pay out millions of dollars to Nelson’s family. At that time, in the late 70s, there were no laws, or real industry standards when it came to the safety of playground equipment. Frank Nelson’s fall was one of a number of lawsuits that led the Consumer Product Safety Commission to publish the Handbook for Public Playground Safety in 1981. Then another standards organization, the ASTM, published its own guidelines. Pretty soon these rulebooks were in the hands of insurance companies and parks departments and school boards across the United States. To this day, almost all playgrounds have to be approved by a certified playground safety inspector. And safety inspectors look for places where kids could fall, or get pinched, poked, or trapped. As you might imagine, all of these rules and regulations make the job of playground designers a lot harder. This is the reason why the playgrounds that you see everywhere all look more or less the same. A majority of playgrounds are “post and deck” systems with standard swings, slides, and monkey bars in one piece of equipment." https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/play-mountain/ https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/play-mountain/

daenz 7y ago
You hit the nail on the head. From the article: >“Many agencies fear being sued if a child gets hurt,” said Teri Hendy, the president of an Ohio-based playground consultancy, Site Masters. Ms. Hendy blamed outdated federal rules on playground design developed decades ago by the Consumer Product Safety Commission. She favors more flexible guidelines, arguing that playgrounds don’t have to be boring to be safe. We got to this point because of lawsuits and regulation. Unless we make parents sign waivers for their kids to use the playground, we can expect more of the same. It just takes one lawsuit to ruin it for everyone else, so that's what organizations like these really need to protect themselves from.
- maxxxxx 7y ago
  It’s a really tricky balance. On the one hand we should have rules that don’t allow building unnecessarily dangerous stuff (eg covering toys with lead coating) but on the other hand we shouldn’t expect 100% safety because the only really safe thing is something that doesn’t exist. It’s really difficult.
  - ken 7y ago
    I would say there's a significant difference between the chemical/biological danger from touching a material which appears basically identical to other safe materials and causes toxic exposure over time, and the physical danger from falling or being cut. I want kids to learn that concrete is hard, and the harder you hit it, the more it will hurt. It's an easy lesson to learn, by trial-and-error, and transferable to many other situations. I don't want to make kids try to learn about lead poisoning by trial-and-error. They're not going to succeed at that. Even adults took 50 years of research to stop putting it in gasoline.
    - fjsolwmv 7y ago
      I don't want my daughter to learn about diving into the concrete floor of a pool, or smashing her head into a concrete play structure, by trial and error.
  - HankB99 7y ago
    Delicate balance is the word I would have used. As a scoutmaster (BSA in the US) It seemed to me that many of our youth have no comprehension of their own mortality. I used to try to impress upon them the necessity to stay more than one mistake away from disaster. I recall two incidents that demonstrated this. At a winter camp out the scouts were explicitly warned not to sled on the side of the hill that had trees. One scout didn't heed and hit a tree. He left the campout in an ambulance. Another scout - luckily at the bottom of sandstone bluffs - decided to see how close he could get to the pot formed by a waterfall. He lost his footing and went into the pot which still held water. He was not injured but had to walk the rest of the hike in wet clothes. It was about 45°F so he was pretty uncomfortable. (At this park several people die each year because they make the same mistake at the top of the bluffs.) These are just the actions that resulted in a problem or serious injury. There were many times when the youth got too close to the edge - often literally - and were lucky enough to escape unscathed. On a visceral level I agree with not being overprotective, but being underprotective may not always have the desired effect of instilling a desire to be aware of hazards. Moreover, are we willing to accept the occasional death or maiming of a young person so their cohorts can learn about danger?
maxxxxx 7y ago
It’s a little like terrorism. You can have tens of thousands of people die from cars, smoking and obesity. But if a fraction of that dies from terrorists the whole country changes. If one child gets hurt from a slide or abducted by a stranger the whole country changes to avoid this risk but all the other risks are silently accepted.
- BurningFrog 7y ago
  I have to think a lot of kids died on playgrounds before the late 70s without that happening. I'd guess that something changed at that time so the country was finally rich enough that this became a problem that got attention from The Powers That Be.
- MereInterest 7y ago
  Absolutely. I did the math recently to come up with a comparison for how many people heart disease kills. Suppose the Columbine massacre had never stopped. Rather, all day, every day, the same rate of death kept happening as during the 49 minutes of the attack. You would need 5 of those continuous attacks ongoing at all times in order to be equivalent to heart disease in the US.
  - sopooneo 7y ago
    Does that account for likely years of life lost? If you die of heart disease at 65, that's many fewer years lost than someone getting killed at 15. As gruesome/horrifying as these sorts of calculations are, I do take your point. We often get overly worried about unlikely dangers when obvious ones are staring us in the face.
  - raverbashing 7y ago
    To be very honest heart disease is also overreacted against. Especially when people read things like "food x causes % increase in heart disease" But in the end it is a "natural" cause of death., It's not like people wouldn't be dying of something else 20yrs extra? Sure. 0.5% increase in heart disease for people over 60? Don't waste my time
mc32 7y ago
And yet, if you look, dangerous still lurks. Sharp metal, no failsafes if a critical part fails, “V-like structures which could snag an arm, etc. Now, to be fair, when a critical part fails, the systems are sturdy enough that the whole thing wouldn’t normally come crashing down.
phkahler 7y ago
So the reason they look the same is because designs became standardized to make it easy to meet requirements AND cost. There are still some really great things at some playgrounds. A park near me built a new playground and it has a post and rope dodecahedron that must be 15 feet high. Kids climb and sit at the top. Falling could be pretty bad, but it looks cool af and kids like it.
magicalhippo 7y ago
A friend of mine designs playgrounds for kids, and is very good at it (his designs win 90+% of the competitive bids he enters). He's also worked hard to put in place a playground safety inspector certification system over here. One of his core ideas is that there are two types of safety: subjective safety and objective safety. For example, kids quickly learn that falling from a height is painful, and experiences such as that teaches them how to evaluate their own safety when say climbing. This is the subjective safety. However they're usually not going to be able to correctly evaluate the safety of climbing a playhouse where they might get their head stuck between two planks because the opening between the planks were just right for their heads to fit, but not their bodies. Or that the hood drawstring in their jacket can get stuck in small wedges and openings, especially dangerous near slides. Such issues go under the objective safety. Now, his point is that you can make playgrounds which are objectively very safe, without making them any less exciting. Part of the excitement comes from allowing the kids to explore their subjective safety boundaries, but a lot comes from the design itself. He often works with one of the major suppliers of playground equipment on their new designs, but a large part of his secret sauce is how he places that equipment on the playground. Many playground designers (which at least here are mostly landscape architects) seem to just put one piece there and another over there, without giving much thought to facilitating the flow of spontaneous play from one piece of equipment to the next. Anyway, he could explain this a lot better than me. I just help him out with some presentations and such every now and then.
- ethagknight 7y ago
  Does your friend have a website? If not, can you see me contact info? Email in bio.
  - AriaMinaei 7y ago
    Yes it would be helpful if you could point us to some resources about playground design.
- natdempk 7y ago
  This is a really good take on safety and tooling that can be applied to a lot of things. Thanks for explaining this! Do you have an example of a playground that he’s designed that highlights these principles?
oska 7y ago
> A majority of playgrounds are “post and deck” systems with standard swings, slides, and monkey bars in one piece of equipment." This is not true where I currently live. It's a recently new suburban area (less than 15 years old) in an Australian city with a great number of parks scattered through it. Nearly every park has a playground and they are all different and all very high quality. Indeed, I'm quite amazed at how much money has been spent installing playgrounds. There is a great variety of what is on offer - some have latticed rope climbing nets, some have climbing walls, some have flying foxes, plus many other very imaginative features. They all have soft surfaces under them to cushion falls and most have a shade cloth over them. I am frankly envious of what is on offer to children these days - it is vastly superior and more exciting than what I had as a child. Trees and other outdoor features still exist that are 'undesigned' and can provide significant risk and thrill to the more adventurous child who climbs up and on them. But I applaud the increased safety built into the modern playground. To me it appears to have spurred innovation and imaginative design, not hampered it.
- BurningFrog 7y ago
  Yeah, but you're not part of the US legal system, which OP was talking about.
  - Noumenon72 7y ago
    I am and noticed that almost every playground I take my nieces and nephews to has some unique feature that sets it apart. They're not nearly as standardized as McDonald's play places or adult fitness centers. Someone is either marketing variety or designing it.
    - BurningFrog 7y ago
      It would be interesting to compare it to playgrounds in other countries/jurisdictions. There are probably already websites devoted to this...
bobbyi_settv 7y ago
Maybe it's okay though? Is there real evidence to back up the sentiment that kids have less fun (or get less exercise, develop less physical skills, etc.) in modern "safe" playgrounds?
- circlefavshape 7y ago
  THIS! The playgrounds my kids played in when they were little were a thousand times cooler than the crappy playgrounds I had growing up

daenz 7y ago

You hit the nail on the head. From the article: >“Many agencies fear being sued if a child gets hurt,” said Teri Hendy, the president of an Ohio-based playground consultancy, Site Masters. Ms. Hendy blamed outdated federal rules on playground design developed decades ago by the Consumer Product Safety Commission. She favors more flexible guidelines, arguing that playgrounds don’t have to be boring to be safe. We got to this point because of lawsuits and regulation. Unless we make parents sign waivers for their kids to use the playground, we can expect more of the same. It just takes one lawsuit to ruin it for everyone else, so that's what organizations like these really need to protect themselves from.

maxxxxx 7y ago
It’s a really tricky balance. On the one hand we should have rules that don’t allow building unnecessarily dangerous stuff (eg covering toys with lead coating) but on the other hand we shouldn’t expect 100% safety because the only really safe thing is something that doesn’t exist. It’s really difficult.
- ken 7y ago
  I would say there's a significant difference between the chemical/biological danger from touching a material which appears basically identical to other safe materials and causes toxic exposure over time, and the physical danger from falling or being cut. I want kids to learn that concrete is hard, and the harder you hit it, the more it will hurt. It's an easy lesson to learn, by trial-and-error, and transferable to many other situations. I don't want to make kids try to learn about lead poisoning by trial-and-error. They're not going to succeed at that. Even adults took 50 years of research to stop putting it in gasoline.
  - fjsolwmv 7y ago
    I don't want my daughter to learn about diving into the concrete floor of a pool, or smashing her head into a concrete play structure, by trial and error.
- HankB99 7y ago
  Delicate balance is the word I would have used. As a scoutmaster (BSA in the US) It seemed to me that many of our youth have no comprehension of their own mortality. I used to try to impress upon them the necessity to stay more than one mistake away from disaster. I recall two incidents that demonstrated this. At a winter camp out the scouts were explicitly warned not to sled on the side of the hill that had trees. One scout didn't heed and hit a tree. He left the campout in an ambulance. Another scout - luckily at the bottom of sandstone bluffs - decided to see how close he could get to the pot formed by a waterfall. He lost his footing and went into the pot which still held water. He was not injured but had to walk the rest of the hike in wet clothes. It was about 45°F so he was pretty uncomfortable. (At this park several people die each year because they make the same mistake at the top of the bluffs.) These are just the actions that resulted in a problem or serious injury. There were many times when the youth got too close to the edge - often literally - and were lucky enough to escape unscathed. On a visceral level I agree with not being overprotective, but being underprotective may not always have the desired effect of instilling a desire to be aware of hazards. Moreover, are we willing to accept the occasional death or maiming of a young person so their cohorts can learn about danger?

maxxxxx 7y ago

It’s a little like terrorism. You can have tens of thousands of people die from cars, smoking and obesity. But if a fraction of that dies from terrorists the whole country changes. If one child gets hurt from a slide or abducted by a stranger the whole country changes to avoid this risk but all the other risks are silently accepted.

BurningFrog 7y ago
I have to think a lot of kids died on playgrounds before the late 70s without that happening. I'd guess that something changed at that time so the country was finally rich enough that this became a problem that got attention from The Powers That Be.
MereInterest 7y ago
Absolutely. I did the math recently to come up with a comparison for how many people heart disease kills. Suppose the Columbine massacre had never stopped. Rather, all day, every day, the same rate of death kept happening as during the 49 minutes of the attack. You would need 5 of those continuous attacks ongoing at all times in order to be equivalent to heart disease in the US.
- sopooneo 7y ago
  Does that account for likely years of life lost? If you die of heart disease at 65, that's many fewer years lost than someone getting killed at 15. As gruesome/horrifying as these sorts of calculations are, I do take your point. We often get overly worried about unlikely dangers when obvious ones are staring us in the face.
- raverbashing 7y ago
  To be very honest heart disease is also overreacted against. Especially when people read things like "food x causes % increase in heart disease" But in the end it is a "natural" cause of death., It's not like people wouldn't be dying of something else 20yrs extra? Sure. 0.5% increase in heart disease for people over 60? Don't waste my time

mc32 7y ago

And yet, if you look, dangerous still lurks. Sharp metal, no failsafes if a critical part fails, “V-like structures which could snag an arm, etc. Now, to be fair, when a critical part fails, the systems are sturdy enough that the whole thing wouldn’t normally come crashing down.

phkahler 7y ago

So the reason they look the same is because designs became standardized to make it easy to meet requirements AND cost. There are still some really great things at some playgrounds. A park near me built a new playground and it has a post and rope dodecahedron that must be 15 feet high. Kids climb and sit at the top. Falling could be pretty bad, but it looks cool af and kids like it.

magicalhippo 7y ago

A friend of mine designs playgrounds for kids, and is very good at it (his designs win 90+% of the competitive bids he enters). He's also worked hard to put in place a playground safety inspector certification system over here. One of his core ideas is that there are two types of safety: subjective safety and objective safety. For example, kids quickly learn that falling from a height is painful, and experiences such as that teaches them how to evaluate their own safety when say climbing. This is the subjective safety. However they're usually not going to be able to correctly evaluate the safety of climbing a playhouse where they might get their head stuck between two planks because the opening between the planks were just right for their heads to fit, but not their bodies. Or that the hood drawstring in their jacket can get stuck in small wedges and openings, especially dangerous near slides. Such issues go under the objective safety. Now, his point is that you can make playgrounds which are objectively very safe, without making them any less exciting. Part of the excitement comes from allowing the kids to explore their subjective safety boundaries, but a lot comes from the design itself. He often works with one of the major suppliers of playground equipment on their new designs, but a large part of his secret sauce is how he places that equipment on the playground. Many playground designers (which at least here are mostly landscape architects) seem to just put one piece there and another over there, without giving much thought to facilitating the flow of spontaneous play from one piece of equipment to the next. Anyway, he could explain this a lot better than me. I just help him out with some presentations and such every now and then.

ethagknight 7y ago
Does your friend have a website? If not, can you see me contact info? Email in bio.
- AriaMinaei 7y ago
  Yes it would be helpful if you could point us to some resources about playground design.
natdempk 7y ago
This is a really good take on safety and tooling that can be applied to a lot of things. Thanks for explaining this! Do you have an example of a playground that he’s designed that highlights these principles?

oska 7y ago

> A majority of playgrounds are “post and deck” systems with standard swings, slides, and monkey bars in one piece of equipment." This is not true where I currently live. It's a recently new suburban area (less than 15 years old) in an Australian city with a great number of parks scattered through it. Nearly every park has a playground and they are all different and all very high quality. Indeed, I'm quite amazed at how much money has been spent installing playgrounds. There is a great variety of what is on offer - some have latticed rope climbing nets, some have climbing walls, some have flying foxes, plus many other very imaginative features. They all have soft surfaces under them to cushion falls and most have a shade cloth over them. I am frankly envious of what is on offer to children these days - it is vastly superior and more exciting than what I had as a child. Trees and other outdoor features still exist that are 'undesigned' and can provide significant risk and thrill to the more adventurous child who climbs up and on them. But I applaud the increased safety built into the modern playground. To me it appears to have spurred innovation and imaginative design, not hampered it.

BurningFrog 7y ago
Yeah, but you're not part of the US legal system, which OP was talking about.
- Noumenon72 7y ago
  I am and noticed that almost every playground I take my nieces and nephews to has some unique feature that sets it apart. They're not nearly as standardized as McDonald's play places or adult fitness centers. Someone is either marketing variety or designing it.
  - BurningFrog 7y ago
    It would be interesting to compare it to playgrounds in other countries/jurisdictions. There are probably already websites devoted to this...

bobbyi_settv 7y ago

Maybe it's okay though? Is there real evidence to back up the sentiment that kids have less fun (or get less exercise, develop less physical skills, etc.) in modern "safe" playgrounds?

circlefavshape 7y ago
THIS! The playgrounds my kids played in when they were little were a thousand times cooler than the crappy playgrounds I had growing up