05.12.2018 - Ausgabe: 6/2018

Are we over-regulating our playgrounds? Are health and safety rules taking the play out of playgrounds?

Back in the early 1960s, there were rough estimates that something like 10 to 20 fatal accidents among children occurred in Germany annually on playgrounds or open spaces used for playing.

It was in the 1970s that the transformation happened when high elevation climbing equipment was removed, slides were altered so that they were not so fast and rubber matting was used to provide impact attenuation. Because it was the well-being of our children that was at stake, nothing could be left to chance. At the beginning of the decade, manufacturers, educationalists and safety experts in Germany first got together to draw up safety standards that they considered would help prevent the most common form of accidents. The initial version of German standard DIN 7926 - Playground equipment appeared in December 1976. Its safety objectives were set out on a mere eight pages. Defined in addition to minimum requirements for rails and barriers were maximum fall heights and the form of impact attenuation material required under equipment. Additionally stipulated was regular inspection by appropriately qualified personnel.

The standard underwent partial revision in 1981. Lawmakers in Germany first drew attention to the standard in the annex to the German Technical Working Equipment Act (GTA), pointing out that it could be assumed to be effective. Compliance was thus not made mandatory – it was merely cited as a suitable guideline when it came to the construction of playground equipment.
The standard was revised once more in 1985. This issue of DIN 7926, again with just eight pages in Part 1, was to be the last German-language only version to be published as it served as the basis for the drafting of the European standard in 1989. After considerable wrangling at the European level, the European playground equipment standard EN 1176 saw the light of day in September 1998. It was considerably more complex than DIN 7926; its Part 1 now had 65 pages. EN 1176 was subjected to minor updating in 2003 and extended as a result to 71 pages. The currently valid version, published in 2008, has 88 pages.

We have now got to the point where some people are beginning to ask whether the whole thing has become excessively regulated. "I think our health and safety mentality has got out of hand," claims Ellen Sandseter, a psychologist working at the University of Trondheim and herself the mother of two children. Adults seem to see possible hazards just about everywhere although the likelihood that children could be injured as a result is negligible.

Over the past 12 years, she has been investigating playgrounds in Norway, Australia and the UK, has surveyed teachers and conducted interviews with children and parents. She has published her findings in the Evolutionary Psychology Journal and these lead her to assert that play involving risk is important and absolutely essential if children are to develop normally.

"Safety measures are often simply introduced because someone somewhere is of the opinion that they might be effective," asserts David Ball, a researcher in risk management at Middlesex University London. But it is far more difficult to actually prevent accidents happening. He points out that it is deceptive to concentrate on the risk represented by objects alone. "What is frequently ignored is the fact that children will adjust their behaviour if they are aware that safety measures are in place," he states, adding that many will, as a result, be less careful because they feel more protected. Psychologists call this 'risk compensation'. And because an individual believes they are safe, they can as a result overestimate their own abilities.

Fortunately, serious injuries and fatalities on playgrounds are rare occurrences. An eight-page standard was considered sufficient in 1976 but by 2008, it seems we could only get by with 88 pages. Are we seeing over-regulation of our playgrounds?

 

The opinions of experts

Franz Danner, Dipl.-Ing.(FH), (TÜV SÜD Product Service GmbH):

"There is one clear answer to this question, and that is 'yes'. Almost all the updates introduced in the European standard EN 1176 since 1998 are not derived from real risks or accident cases but are merely based on proposed theoretical accident scenarios. The objective seems to be to avoid every possible risk that adults could possibly imagine and as a result this worst-case scenario approach has been adopted. The consequence is that play value is ignored and playgrounds are becoming increasingly regimented and boring.

Researchers around the world have repeatedly warned us that exposure of children to controlled risk is vital for their healthy development.

When it comes to playground safety, I consider that the existing provisions of the standard need to be reviewed from various viewpoints and certain aspects should be relaxed.

The real objective of the standard should be to enable children to gather a wealth of experiences on playgrounds. And for this to be the case, age-appropriate and perceptible risk must also be present. The standard should only set out measures that would help eliminate uncontrollable and concealed risks. We must allow children to develop an awareness of risk and how to manage it. They will need these insights later on in life – during leisure activities, when driving and when at work."

 

Julian Richter sen. (Richter Spielgeräte GmbH):

"Are we seeing over-regulation of our playgrounds? On the one hand, yes on the other no.

It is not the standard alone that gives the impression or has the effect of over-regulation.

I think it is the unprofessional way the standard is interpreted in certain situations that is responsible for this perception. This is particularly the case where there is inadequate understanding of the purposes of the standard and the result is that restrictions are imposed on the potential scope of activities, something that is ultimately to the disadvantage of children.

To be able to apply the standard (DIN EN 1176) correctly you need, of course, to be thoroughly familiar with it. You also need – and this is almost more important – a detailed understanding of the behaviour of children when they play and of their capacity and skill when it comes to overcoming risks. Are they perfectly capable of

• themselves recognising
• and understanding
• a particular risk and reacting accordingly?

 

As long as we – the adults who draft the standard – are able to provide those risks that are indisputably necessary and that playing children are themselves capable of handling, the potential problems associated with over-regulation are negligible."

 

Andreas Strupp (Dipl.-Ing. FH (Wood Technology), Chairman of the Standards Committee NA Sport 112-07-01 AA 'Playground equipment'), Quality Manager at eibe Produktion + Vertrieb GmbH & Co. KG):

"One thing that characterises humanity is its capacity for play – homo ludens! A glance at the growing body of regulations and standards show that it is also characterised by its fascination with written guidelines.

But this is not all sweetness and light. Every supposedly expedient addition to the standard makes it more difficult for users to recognise what the actual safety requirements are.

Currently being updated are Part 5 – Roundabouts and Part 7 – Maintenance and inspection of EN 1176, and major changes and additions are already apparent in the draft versions. What safety-relevant findings regarding the rate of serious accidents are making all this necessary? Safety regulations should only be appropriately revised when a corresponding new potential form of accident has been identified.
The German Standards Committee NA Sport 112-07-01 has done a good job with regard to the standard sections published in December 2017. We will continue to ensure that essential requirements are not obscured by trivial stipulations and remain clearly recognisable.

Our work is reliant on input from practitioners in the field, as is the work of the European groups that prepare the draft texts.

I thus hope that everyone is willing to face up to the new challenges and to read the standard texts and comment upon them. Our reward will be the gleam in children's eyes after they have mastered challenges on safe play equipment with manageable risks."

 

Ute Eckardt (GALK e. V., Speaker of the working group "Urban play"):

"The frequency of serious accidents resulting in death or serious injury has been continually declining since safety regulations for play equipment were first published. As far as I am aware, no such accident occurred in the whole of Germany in 2013.

So, can we now rest on our laurels when it comes to playground standards?

I believe that, with regard to the equipment currently available, no tightening of the regulations has been necessary for years now. The German version of EN 1176 in its General section sets out very clearly the objective of enabling children to develop confidence in the face of hazards and thus the necessity of allowing a residual risk of injury to persist.

However, the changes being made to the standard seem to contradict this. What sort of serious injuries have been recorded that require that swings can no longer be permitted to be positioned on grassed areas and that it is necessary to make impact attenuation areas even larger? Why is it necessary to ensure that rope net tunnels and tube slides cannot be climbed from outside? Surely every child is capable of understanding that this is not the purpose of this equipment and that they undertake these activities at their own risk? And would it not be an important lesson for them to recognise this risk and yet even so deliberately face up to it?

Why not let our children deal with a couple of risks and thus enable them to develop as a result? Playgrounds must act as places of learning in this regard. Where else can children learn how to control their bodies and protect themselves?

When new equipment associated with unknown risks becomes available, it will be necessary to revise the regulations appropriately. But regulations that simply increase the costs of operation of playgrounds do not provide for increased safety – the result is fewer playgrounds and even flouting of the rules, something we have seen happen in other countries. 

A review of the expediency of all requirements would thus be welcome."

 

Dipl. Ing. Norbert Schäfer, Dipl. Ing. Helga Berger (Stadt + Natur Landschaftsarchitekten):

"Does an increase in the number of traffic signs result in fewer accidents on roads? Of course not – we know this from experience and by way of comparison with the situation in other countries where there is less reliance on road signage.
It is the same in the case of playgrounds – more regulation does not necessarily mean more safety.

So what should we be doing?
We need to provide children with the freedom to themselves and on their own gather experience and face challenges so that they can develop.
The process of learning during the adventure we call life will always be associated with risk and the possibility of accidents. Children are exposed to the new, the unknown and learn over time to recognise hazards and how to deal with them.

We need play and leisure areas in which children can discover what will be essential to them in their future lives. Not only that, but we also need a social mindset that will allow children to have the freedoms they require to develop on their own.

Excessive regulation limits the range of design options and also the learning experience possible. As far as we are concerned, the purpose of regulations should be to identify concealed risks and to prevent target groups being taken out of their depth.

This should be possible on a few pages only. An introductory section that explains the main purpose of the standard would be desirable."

 

Friedrich Blume (Dipl.-Ing., playground consultant, DEULA Westfalen-Lippe):

"The question is not so much whether our playgrounds and equipment are over-regulated but whether the playground equipment standard is actually fulfilling its purpose. The basic intention behind the standard is – or actually was – to prevent children being exposed to unpredictable and unforeseeable risks. It was never the purpose of the standard to prevent all risks and hazards per se.

The standard stipulates that the basic risk associated with all sports and play activities and specified in the 2009 supplement is to be retained so that children learn to protect themselves.

Looking at how the playground standard has changed over the years, it is immediately apparent that it has grown out of all proportion. Part 1 alone that deals with general safety requirements for playground equipment that had a respectable 65 pages in 1998 now has a remarkable 119 pages in the 2017 version.

But does all this increase in regulation make playgrounds safer? I don't believe so. Most of the serious accidents that occurred in past decades could have been prevented if the regulations as defined at the time had been correctly followed. As a consequence, I cannot see that any significant benefit is provided by continually adding to the regulations.

At the same time, there is a disadvantage in that it becomes ever more difficult for manufacturers, planners and playground inspectors to apply the rules.

What would I like to see in future? Back to the basics!!!

There should be regulations covering only those critical situations that represent a proven risk to children while all non-relevant and redundant stipulations should be removed."

 

Sandra Freidank (STADTKINDER GmbH):

"Are we seeing over-regulation of our playgrounds? I am critical of the way that standard DIN EN 1176 has developed. This safety standard for playground equipment has become increasingly obsessed with detail so that the complexity of wording is now incredible. The upshot is that it has become difficult to decipher – even experts dispute the meaning of some of its provisions. Specialists are often unable to understand what the actual safety objective is. And all this is quite in keeping with the current trend to overprotect our children. The standard has become the mother of all helicopter parents!

I think it is making it more and more difficult for landscape architects and playground equipment manufacturers to create play landscapes that are not only suitable for children but also demanding and challenging. Many recent studies report that the motor skills of our children are atrophying so that the daring needed to take on risk is also in decline. It has been proposed that to counter this development, it is necessary to provide demanding, challenging play amenities. And yet the ever more extensively regulated standard is limiting the options for the design of such facilities.

This means that planners prefer to play it safe and create less ambitious play areas. And supervisors and inspectors have been made increasingly unsure what is right and what is wrong!"

 

Mario Ladu (Spielplatzmobil GmbH):

"I suppose 95% of what is in there meets its purpose but the ways in which the standard is applied are rather alarming. The regulations were originally drawn up with playground equipment manufacturers in mind and were then extended to apply also to playground operators. In the meantime, qualified playground inspectors are now refusing to approve playgrounds because a screw is protruding by 9 mm instead of the maximum specified 8 mm or quality B25 concrete has been used in place of quality B15 as specified in the installation guidelines – and this despite the fact that B25 is of better quality. Or because the rough edges of wooden planks do not have the required 3 mm chamfering.

All sorts of possible new risks are being thought up whose only purpose would appear to be to generate more red tape – contact corrosion, dangerous foundations, poisonous substances and plants, fissures in wooden components, rough sawn surfaces and so on. New unwarranted requirements are invented, such as tensile tests to confirm the structural stability of equipment and drill resistance measurements to determine the presence of heart rot in wooden elements.

In short, this extraordinary perversity with regard to how to apply the standard is due to the fact that training institutes have very different ways of interpreting the requirements while individual inspectors have their own subjective understandings of what constitutes risk and what is required.

The new series of standards published in 2017/18 themselves infringe safety requirements and have become less intelligible for all users. We'll probably see more of the same in 2019."

 

Dr. Dieter Breithecker (Federal association for the advancement of posture and exercise, BAG):

"The value of active play – children need active play and self-organised exercise. This is an important prerequisite for their health and their ability to develop social skills and the capacity for action. An elementary quality of play is that it should involve hazard and risk and provide experiences that get under the skin. These genetically engendered needs, the desire to interact with diverse and challenging surroundings stimulated by curiosity and the urge to explore, promote the normal processes of growing up and are essential to us if we are to function properly in our socio-political world.

Anything that curbs these natural self-organisation processes inhibits development and thus has far-reaching consequences. But the regulations are not in themselves the problem. They are no more than tools, guidelines with complex phraseology that needs to be correctly interpreted; it is appropriate planning on the part of equipment manufacturers and landscape architects that is essential. This must be pertinent to the needs of children and not to what adults think is right. When an amenity is planned with what children want in mind and is thus play-orientated, it can only contribute to their mental, physical and social development. But here it becomes necessary to convince those responsible for the upbringing of children, increasing numbers of whom are becoming overprotective of their charges.

Regulations become a problem when they mean that public and private spaces are supplied with inappropriate furnishings in the form of attractive but unchallenging and resilient features that have little play and adventure value. For example, climbing frames often provide for little more than going up and down while balancing equipment rarely allows for complex exercises that promote the sense of equilibrium."

 

Günter Beltzig (Belzig Playdesign):

"Play is determined by the inclinations of the individual. It is not something for which rules can be laid down. It is the same with safety. I first encountered the standard at an early stage and at that time it was a safety standard. But today what we consider a safe playground has become a dangerous playground. In the past, children were capable of dealing with risk. We have now become obsessive when we think of safety. Our children are the product of an affluent society in which parents are no longer willing to countenance risk. When parents are present with them on a playground, children are unable to develop the ability to protect themselves. They will learn if they experience an accident. Play that does not involve some form of risk is simply not real play. Children must be allowed to encounter risk, although this risk must be predictable and appropriate to their age.

Risk is a part of life and contributes to learning. Self-reliance and appraisal of the capacities of each individual child because what a child can do today, it would not have been able to do yesterday. And what it will be able to do tomorrow it will not have been trained to do by others and is something that it will need to experiment with.

The standard is relevant to practice and does provide for risk to be included. When a child overestimates its own abilities, it must not suffer as a result. Fall attenuation is an important factor here.

The standard can be stimulating. And inspiring. I always ensure my designs are inspected by the TÜV accreditation organisation. All proposed changes resulted in improvements to my designs because I considered them from the safety point of view.

What do I find annoying about the standard? It is purely a collection of safety regulations. It does not describe play activities and does not encourage planners to think about what constitutes a good playground.

In an ideal world, public open spaces would be planned to ensure that children could act as the equals of adults everywhere. Perhaps an impossible dream?"

 

Wernher Böhm (böhm Landschaftsarchitektur):

"I have no idea how I managed to survive the playgrounds of the 1970s and 1980s – it is right and important to have safety standards. They provide, as always, essential guidelines for everyone involved in a construction project.

However, there does not seem to be any sense in the massive increase in health and safety regulation we are witnessing. Public open spaces and playgrounds have long been safer than they have ever been and yet more and more health and safety legislation is appearing. And why is this?

Health and safety has now become an economic factor. Anyone who believes that health and safety regulations are primarily there to protect people or property is under a misapprehension.

The brave new world of health and safety impacts on everyone, from window cleaner to chairman of the board. Unless health and safety regulations are constantly revised and updated, no one would be able to earn money with them.

Insurance and health insurance providers need them so that they can use them as an excuse when a claim comes in to shift the expense onto someone else – their client or those involved in the relevant construction project.

So there is good reason to believe we will be seeing the imposition of more health and safety rules in future, irrespective of whether they are needed or not. As I see it, over-regulation not only leads to more overheads and costs for those undertaking construction projects but also reduces the need for individuals to take responsibility for themselves and to develop the ability to identify and evaluate risk. At the same time, I must admit I do wonder how I managed to keep a whole skin on German playgrounds and open spaces in the 1970s and 1980s when there was nothing like the level of regulation we see today.

The basic intention of all regulations is to provide for safety, transparency and systematic rules. If our natural environment here on Earth had been designed by a standards committee, there is no doubt we'd all be much safer, but everything would be so much more unattractive and uninteresting."

 

Peter Schraml (Massstab Mensch):

"Are we seeing over-regulation of our playgrounds? In order to answer this question, I'd first like to outline what has been behind the continuous augmentation of the playground equipment standard. Our currently valid DIN EN 1176 is a European standard. Its precursor, DIN 7926, was a German regulation only. During the most recent revision of DIN EN 1176, the German standards committee alone produced 164 annotations while there were 116 pages of annotations submitted by all involved countries relating to changes and regulatory requirements. Because we operate a democratic system, it was necessary to add to the text of the standard. At the same time, DIN EN 1176 now also contains extensive explanatory image material.

Many wish to have clearly set out rules for their activities so that they can be sure that what they are doing is safe. The standard has been drawn up with this wish in mind. Similarly, they may also want areas for which there are no detailed regulations – simply because this may be unnecessary – to be characterised in detail and appropriate measures to be prescribed. This was how the concept of providing for safety was perceived over the past 100 years but over the last 20 years a different notion has taken root, also among lawgivers, and in place of concrete stipulations safety objectives are now defined that we (often) find difficult to comprehend.

The standard conforms to the needs of playground equipment manufacturers and playground operators and inspectors when it comes to protecting themselves. And they can do this by demonstrating that they have complied with their legal duties with regard to safety. This is necessary because increasing numbers of people are willing to commence litigation. Even if a child suffers only a minor injury on a playground, people look for someone to blame, ignoring their own or their child's possible responsibility for the outcome. When it comes to the courts, they tend to look back to the provisions of the past.

Having said all that, compliance with the requirements of the standard is only one way of making playgrounds and equipment safe. The same level of safety can be achieved using other means – so regulation would no longer be necessary. If we accept the basic premise that regulations should be provided only for situations in which there is a possible recognisable risk, that alone would reduce the extent of the regulations in the standard.

Since DIN EN 1176 has been in force, the rate of serious accidents has been stable and about one fatality per year has been registered. To eliminate this residual risk, it would be necessary for people to assume more responsibility and supervise their children rather than look for a scapegoat elsewhere. This is a problem that is not just associated with the playground standard but regulations in other areas.

But at present we are facing a much more pressing dilemma. Many children are no longer able to themselves play creatively, they are spending less time out of doors and are thus becoming incapable of themselves recognising risk."

 

Jobst Seeger (landscape architect):

"Social transformations entail the introduction of new forms of play and play equipment that depart from the scope of regulation and may also require the imposition of new rules. It is quite apparent that the increase in the number of pages in the standard is in stark contrast with the constantly low rates of accidents we have seen in recent years. It would be better to have a straightforward standard rather than one that deals with each and every possibility. And regulation should not be employed to reduce the level of risk on playgrounds so that what should be places where children can be active and garner experience become mere sites of rest and relaxation – if this is the objective, why bother with playgrounds at all? We know from the past how important it is to undertake regular inspections while the inclusion of regulations on possible trap sites in the standard has reduced the number of accidents. And for this we needed forward-looking regulations that do not go into excessive detail. The present standard goes into sufficient detail in terms of the extent of the various play scenarios covered. The extension of the standard by the inclusion of further details would have a negative impact on the wealth of experience that playgrounds can offer. Children need challenges, need to be able to encounter new risks, learn to overcome these and develop as a result. For many children playgrounds are the only environment in which they can practice their risk-assessing skills – this aspect of these amenities must thus be preserved."

 

Steffen Strasser (playparc Allwetter-Freizeit-Anlagenbau GmbH):

“Are playgrounds over-prescriptive? In my opinion, the development of the European standard has served its purpose ever since its launch and has thus considerably helped to reduce serious injuries and accidents at European playgrounds.

However, regarding the future norm development, it should be taken into account that the absolutely necessary challenge and risk of playing  must not be completely eliminated. In addition, it should be avoided to hamper innovation by being over-prescriptive.

Nevertheless, the European standard is a unique feature which allows to provide ALL European countries with equal game ideas, concepts and products which would be considerably more difficult, not to say impossible, without the European standard. Hence, I am absolutely convinced that good norms are to the benefit of us all.”

Image: Franz Danner