Life is lived 'at your own risk'.

To have life with no risk is to not live.

In the 50's I remember our neighbors borrowing my dad's toboggan. They brought it back in two pieces and one of them had a leg in a cast. The hill wasn't sued, my dad wasn't sued, the toboggan manufacturer wasn't sued, and they didn't even sue the tree that got in the way. In fact the neighbors bought us a new one. What's changed over the years?

But look at the continued new avenues for people who keep "their eyes on the prize" (lawsuit junkies and the lawyers who empower them) to loot money from producers... I had one of these creatures working for me years ago - she had no problem either faking work injuries or setting herself up for a minor injury that could get blown out of proportion to sue, sue, sue...

I heard that she had over $3M in potential settlements she was trying for between 4 supervisors and their managers. My boss (at the time) forced me to hire her (inside scam, perhaps) and wouldn't tell me that her past 3 supes were being targeted... Kept me in the dark. I documented *everything*, and when she tried to sue *me*, she decided (after my docs went through discovery) to drop her case targeting me. Know who was hypermad about that? Not the employee - but my then boss.

Ready for the best part? (sarcasm meter running...) Found out a couple years ago she still works for us. Same location, but under a new management team... Yeah.

Sometimes... I hate Civil Service...

Idiocy again. Where I grew up snow was very rare. We used cardboard and slid down the weeds. We had a blast, no one was sued and life was good.

I live on the high plains of Eastern New Mexico and we just had a good snowstorm over the weekend. I was coming home on Sunday and there was a family having fun, the dad was driving the truck, the mom was sitting on tailgate and the kids were on a piece of wood being towed behind the truck. They were going slow and it was in a residential neighborhood without traffic. They were being prudent and the kids were having a blast. Reminded me of when I was a kid back in the early 60's and my uncle would tow us behind his jeep on an inner tube or a sled or saucer. This is a small town and things like this still happen and all I could do was laugh and pray that things like this continue.

We use to be able to sled down the Capitol steps.

A few years ago my husband and I were in Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park in southern Utah just after a rare snowfall.
A family was there enjoying sledding for the children's first time.
They were asking their Dad if he knew how to do this...! He replied that he had done this as a child and now it was their turn to learn ...and proceeded to show them how to do it.
It was a magical moment to watch.

I can see it now all of these parents buying sleds and pushing their kids off the edge. of course you can let your kid stay in the house with a television and have his muscles atrophy. how many of you still have hope for the country?

Next we'll have to cut down all the trees or ban tree-climbing since kids can fall!

Protecting people from themselves makes sense in a nuclear reactor, but not in sledding, tree climbing, or one of my childhood favorites, jumping ramps on bicycles.

From the aspect of a child's viewpoint the problem is the adult vision of having a supervised hill with sanctioned activity. Kids ( I was one once ) in my era didn't have adult sanctioned slides. We used to go where the hills were ( a cemetery had several ) and created the slides. I don't believe kids will stop sliding just because the sanctioned sites are outlawed. Where fun is involved kids don't subscribe to regulations very well.

The problem lies with the lawsuit not the activity. Stop the practice of suing for this, and other childhood activities, such as dodge ball, not the activity itself.

What I think is ridiculous is that these suits are even allowed to be brought.

Those two boys in the Gulch wouldn't hesitate to do any of the now-forbidden things. Then again, the Gulch had no regular advocates in it--just one judge who consulted on a friendly basis, for drawing up contracts, wills, and the like.

When I first heard about the sledding bans, I had thought perhaps the local motorists had complained of having to share the streets with the sledders. Now I find it's all about the kind of hazard every kid in my day learned quickly to manage.

The eventual end to these lawsuits and subsequent emergent laws is to keep kids covered in bubble wrap until age 18.