"World's Safest", but so what

This week we got a new Sears catalogue. On the back cover I saw this photo, and the proclamation, "World's Safest Trampoline".

This made me wonder what sort of hazard trampolines really pose for users. According to U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) the number of accidents per year rose from "estimated 37,500 in 1991 to almost 100,000 in 1999" and by 2001 the figure was 91,870.

According to the CPSC, "About 93 percent of the victims were under 15 years of age, and 11 percent were under 5 years of age. Since 1990, CPSC has received reports of 6 deaths of children under age 15 involving trampolines."

So, thousands of accidents every year, and a few deaths. I wondered how those figures compare to children injured or killed in automobile accidents. According to the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration about 30,000 people die in traffic accidents every year in the US.

For 2009, the fatalities included 6,770 passengers, 4,092 pedestrians, and 630 cyclists. (If we assume that 1/3 of the total passengers, pedestrians, and cyclists are children, that is about 3,000 deaths, or about 10% of the total.

The 2009 vehicle fatality rate was 11.1 per 100,000 population. With 258 million vehicles registered in 2009. Even if there were only 1 million trampolines in the United States, your child is much better off on the trampoline than driving in a car. (And there are probably far more trampolines, making their relative safety even greater.)

So, if the US authorities were really serious about safety maybe they should think about having everyone on trampolines, and banning automobiles.