Re:New Zealand school tossed its playground rules
by velik_m on Monday March 31, 2014 @01:35AM
(#7499824)
That is 20% drop in injuries.
EDIT: it's actually a 25% increase as ebrenes correctly pointed out. Server me right for trying to do math early in the morning...
Re:New Zealand school tossed its playground rules
by ebrenes on Monday March 31, 2014 @02:31AM
(#7499987)
No, it's not. That's one injury per population amount, so the lower the second number the less people you "need" to get one injury.
Assuming a fixed population size of 1 million, given the 1980 prevalence of injuries you'd expect about ~689 injuries. With the 2012 prevalence of injuries you'd expect about ~865 injuries. So it's actually an increase, not a drop.
We might accept a few more phobias in our children in exchange for fewer injuries. But the final irony is that our close attention to safety has not in fact made a tremendous difference in the number of accidents children have. According to the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System, which monitors hospital visits, the frequency of emergency-room visits related to playground equipment, including home equipment, in 1980 was 156,000, or one visit per 1,452 Americans. In 2012, it was 271,475, or one per 1,156 Americans.