15.12.2016 - Ausgabe: 6/2016

Official standards, EC-type examination and their effect on the safety of playgrounds

By Franz Danner (Product Consultant for Child Safety at TÜV Süd)

The development of playground equipment standards

There are fragmentary records dating back to the early1960s from which it is apparent that every year there were some 10 - 20 fatal accidents in Germany on playgrounds and undeveloped land used by children for playing.

That there was such a daunting number of fatalities despite the fact that there were then far fewer public playgrounds than today can be attributed to three factors:

• There were no technical regulations concerning the design of such facilities or in particular of the equipment used on them. Hence there were no guidelines with regard to aspects such as fall protection, equipment heights, guardrails, size of openings and the characteristics of materials employed.
• Equipment was often manufactured and installed by persons with no relevant qualifications.
• At the time, the concept of systematic inspection of equipment so that any need for maintenance and repair could be identified was still in its infancy.

It was only in the early 1970s that manufacturers, educational theorists and safety experts first came together in Germany in order to draft, in the light of available accident statistics, an effective safety standard for playground equipment. German standard DIN 7926 on children's play equipment was first published in December 1976. This document, consisting of a mere eight pages, outlined the main safety requirements. In addition to minimum specifications for guardrails and barriers, maximum fall heights and basic needs for ground quality were set out. Also recommended was regular inspection by appropriately qualified persons. The standard was partially revised in 1981. This updated version was cited in the annex to the German Equipment and Product Safety Law (Gesetz über technische Arbeitsmittel; GTA) as a potentially effective safety standard. This did not mean that compliance with the standard had been made mandatory but only that, in the view of the legislators, it provided practicable guidelines for the construction of playground equipment.
The standard was again revised in 1985. This version of standard DIN 7926 – Part 1 was still only eight pages long – was the last exclusively national variant of a playground equipment standard for Germany, although it was used as the basis for the preparation of a Europe-wide standard, work on which began in 1989.

After long-drawn out altercation among the various EU states, September 1998 finally saw the publication of the playground equipment standard EN 1176. This represented a considerable enlargement of DIN 7926; Part 1 now had 65 pages. There was minor modification of EN 1176 in 2003 and it grew to 71 pages. The most recent version, with 88 pages, appeared in 2008.

 

The occurrence of accidents

As DIN 7926 was cited in the annex to the GTA in 1981, manufacturers relatively quickly came round to the idea of ensuring their products conformed to these technical guidelines. In addition, playground equipment manufacturers increasingly came to recognise the value of having the 'GS mark' (GS = Geprüfte Sicherheit, i.e. tested safety), originally launched in 1977, applied to their products. Also regular inspection and maintenance of playgrounds was becoming a routine procedure – not everywhere, it is true, but certainly in the major cities and larger communities – in response to the outcome of certain court cases in the 1980s.

By the late 1980s, it was estimated that there were now 1 - 2 accidents annually resulting in death or severe injury in playground environments. This figure has remained essentially unchanged to today; the introduction of EN 1176 has had next to no effect on the frequency or types of accidents.                              

In the mid-1990s, there were two types of accidents that made headlines and made it clear to experts what the limits of the technically feasible are.

There were reports coming out of Scandinavia that larger numbers of children were suffering mishaps after climbing playground equipment or trees while wearing their cycle helmets. Moreover, throughout Europe there were numerous cases of strangulation by drawstrings on clothing, not only during use of playground equipment but also when children were alighting from buses and trains or travelling on escalators.

In both these instances, it is apparent that it is impossible to prevent such events happening by means of technical specifications in a standard. Accidents of this kind can only be avoided by means of the elimination of the cause (drawstrings on children’s clothing) or provision of appropriate information to users and supervisory personnel (remove helmets on playgrounds).

 

Current accident statistics

Clear emphases with regard to the types of serious accidents become apparent when the serious accidents that have occurred on playgrounds and football fields in the last 16 years are analysed. The most common form of accident was caused by collapsing football goal posts (5 x); this was followed, in terms of frequency, by cases of injury caused by the collapse of single mast equipment due to failure of support posts (3 x), cases of strangulation by cycle helmets (2 x), strangulation by narrow cables (2 x) and strangulation by clothing drawstrings while using a slide (2 x).

The main reasons why these accidents occurred were thus insufficient maintenance of support posts and inappropriate handling of free-standing goal posts. Then there were the cords that the victims brought with them, dangerous clothing articles and failure to make users aware of the dangers attendant on wearing a cycle helmet on a playground.

 

Will new regulations mean improved safety?

A revised version of EN 1176 has been in preparation over the past six years or so. The initial drafts have given rise to some controversy among the various international committees because they evidence a growing tendency to introduce ever more stringent regulation. Many of the newly included requirements are often based on theoretical considerations of what is needed to avoid any conceivable form of accident although in many of these cases, it is not possible to demonstrate that the events envisaged actually represent genuine potential risks. So, the counterargument is that these measures will help prevent unnecessary pain and suffering and anyway, surely there's nothing wrong with having too much regulation. But is this really the case?

 

The consequences of the 'ultrasafe' playground

When one considers research publications dealing with the factor of risk in association with play, it is clear that the authors are unanimous in their view that excessively shielding children from risk has a markedly adverse effect on them in terms of both their physical and mental development.

As Anita Bundy of the University of Sydney puts it: "The risk is that there is no risk during play!"[1] Ellen Sandseter of Queen Maud University in Trondheim has undertaken a study in which she has demonstrated that children use risk to overcome their own anxieties. It would seem that there is a direct correlation between the willingness to climb on tall equipment during childhood and the development of acrophobia in later adulthood.[2]

Not only this, but excessive regulation is resulting in the creation of progressively standardised, humdrum play options. The use of tall equipment, loose materials, stones and adaptable spaces are avoided in order to enhance 'safety'. There are several negative outcomes associated with this trend.

The first is the displacement effect. User attitudes change when they are confronted by boring playgrounds that offer little or no excitement and children move to nearby spaces that provide more challenges. Hence, the targets of children and young people seeking thrills have become garage roofs, bus shelters, lamp posts, building sites, transformer stations, railway lines and roadways. Here there are not just risks but very real dangers that can prove fatal although when deaths occur, they are not seen as being playground-related.

While dull playgrounds promote the displacement of play to non-supervised areas, they also lead to changes in behaviour. Boredom generates aggression towards other children and this aggression not only finds an outlet in vandalism but in unpredictable activities that no amount of regulation can hope to control.

Excessive risk prevention additionally ends up sending the wrong messages to children. They become used to an unnaturally safe environment that does not require them to adapt their behaviour to the actual situation. They do not need to develop their own safety strategies because whatever they do, they find they will come to no harm. So they can jump with impunity from the very top of a piece of play equipment – the ground, it would appear, is there to absolve them from any folly. In this situation, it is not possible for them to develop effective self-protection behaviour patterns; in fact, they are more likely to come to develop dangerous attitudes to risk.

Unattractive playgrounds do not encourage children to undertake physical exercise. In our era of whole-day school and electronic media, times spent in physical activity are being drastically shortened and the incidence of obesity and disorders such as type 2 diabetes is growing.[3]

Then there are other, perhaps not quite so immediately apparent consequences, associated with the economic consequences of regulations. An example of this is the shock absorption requirement in impact areas.

Currently in discussion is a reduction of the presently authorised HIC value (i.e. the head injury criterion, used to measure the likelihood of head injury arising from impact) while at the same time, natural ground is being more negatively rated in this respect; this could well result in massive cost increases in connection with playground design and maintenance. Local authorities are already adopting a policy of reducing the size of playgrounds or even closing them completely because they have fewer resources at their disposal. It is the small play facilities next to residential sites that will first fall victim to the axe. There is also an increasing trend towards the construction of so-called 'landmark playgrounds', in other words, centralised facilities that have a relevance beyond their own locality.

Unfortunately, this does mean that children will have to travel further to get to a playground and they will only be able get there with the help of their parents (and their car) or on a bicycle. Children will thus spend less time on the playground and spend more time travelling. This means a serious reduction in time spent in physical exercise, more pollution and greater exposure of children to the possibility of accidents, as passengers in a car and especially as cycle riders. Again, those who fall victim to the increased traffic on our roads are not perceived as being 'playground causalities'.

 

Just how dangerous - in relative terms - are playgrounds?

In English-speaking countries, occupational risk is assessed in terms of the Fatal Accident Rate (FAR). FAR represents the number of calculated fatalities that will occur for every 100 million man-hours worked. FAR can also be used to evaluate risk in the leisure sector.

A very conservative calculation of the FAR value for playgrounds in Germany for the years 2000 - 2016 provides an approximate result of 0.1. If this value is compared with the FAR value for other recreational activities and road use situations, it becomes quite clear just how safe playgrounds are. Studies undertaken in the USA similarly report an average of one fatal accident a year on playgrounds; here the corresponding FAR value is very probably much lower than that in Germany because of the much larger size of the population.

If we compare the FAR value for playgrounds (0.1) and cycling (38), we find that using a pedal cycle is thus some 380 times more dangerous than playing on a playground. The consequences of the closure of playgrounds in the immediate vicinity of residential areas so that increased travel to reach play facilities is required are alarming.

Assuming that children require just an extra 1% of the time they would normally be spending on a playground to reach it on a bicycle, the risk of such playground-related fatal accidents would rise by a factor of 3.8 (1% of 380). This would increase the annual fatal accident rate from the current 1 to about 5. We could then expect some 57 additional deaths outside playgrounds over a period of 15 years. At the same time, this increase in serious accidents would not appear in any playground accident statistics; this would be seen as an increase in traffic-related accidents.

 

The spotlight approach

Here a problem is revealed that I consider represents a major fundamental issue with regard to the evaluation of playground safety. Technical measures can be put in place to prevent and hinder almost all play activities that involve some form of risk and are thus attractive to children. The upshot is that accident rates on playgrounds are reduced to a minimum.

The result of a blinkered restriction of accident statistic analysis to playground sites only (the 'spotlights') would mean that an initial 'positive effect' would be identified; however, there would be an associated massive increase in negative effects elsewhere that this approach would fail to diagnose.

 

Conclusions

The existing, in some cases very restrictive standards and regulations and the intended revisions to the safety requirements for playgrounds need to be subjected to extensive critical review so that any negative side-effects involving serious health risks that these generate can be circumvented. It is essential to take into account the results of research to ensure that we put in place that which will promote the healthy development of our children. The analysis of the current situation with regard to accidents shows that it is not increased tightening of the regulations that we need to provide for the well-being of our children, but appropriately designed, challenging, child-orientated playgrounds that are subject to suitable maintenance.

 

 

Image: Franz Danner