Taller isn't Always Better

This is your biweekly dose of playground knowledge from someone who's spent 20 years inspecting them.

In this issue, I’ll discuss what to look for when deciding on playground companies to work with, and how salespeople can tell you a lot about what a company values.

I’ll also dig into the idea of proactivity versus reactivity when it comes to playground design and safety.

All that and more lies ahead in The Playground Post.

Typical play structures aren’t excessively tall, and there are good reasons for this. Among the biggest (no pun intended) is the very real fear that kids could either jump or fall from dozens of feet in the air and seriously injure themselves. In short, the greater the height, the greater the inherent injury risk.

I could tell you several different stories about times when kids were injured at a playground that checked all the safety boxes; proper surfacing depth, adequate space between equipment, the whole nine yards. In each of these cases, the playground was installed correctly, there was no visible damage to any of the equipment, and no tell-tale signs of accident precursors like debris or divots in surfacing. So what was the issue?

In a word, height. Or, more specifically, an excess of it.

In recent years, more and more playgrounds have incorporated play structures with heights of 30 feet or higher. I’ve often wondered why people buy these humungous play structures despite their glaring safety issues, and I keep coming back to one big reason.

In my experience, some people want a new playground because they believe it’ll put their community on the map and make them a true destination to visit. That’s not inherently a bad thing, but when it becomes their primary motivation, the consideration for kids’ safety becomes muddled at best, and, at worst, completely ignored.

So, before you get a quote for a skyscraper-esque structure, just remember two important things:

Just because your playground passed inspection a few months ago doesn’t mean you shouldn’t continue checking the surfacing. Particularly in the fall months when severe weather is common in parts of the US, examining your playground’s surfacing is more important than ever.

If you’re ever unsure about your playground’s surfacing quality, reference this chart from page 17 of the CPSC’s Public Playground Safety Handbook:

At the end of the day, no two playgrounds are the same, but they all have to abide by the same safety rules. Keep your surfacing depth at a safe level and protect kids from preventable injuries.

Given the fast pace of modern life, it’s important to have a window not just into the past, but into the very recent past. In the context of playgrounds, being able to list exactly how many safety incidents occurred during any given week arms operators with crucial information that can be used when discussing future playground changes.

For instance, let’s say a kid falls off a swing and breaks his arm. Although the temptation may be to just chalk this up as a one-off accident, keen playground data collectors will be able to tell their decision-makers on what date the last playground surfacing check occurred and roughly how much surfacing was used to patch any shallow spots.

If they’ve been collecting data for a while, they’ll also be able to say how many injuries have occurred in that area of the playground over the past year.

Using this data, playground owners can more effectively adjust and pivot their playground safety strategy not just towards compliance, but reducing the likelihood of future safety incidents.

In short, reactivity is understandable when it comes to playground maintenance, but the reaction elicited by an injury should be backed up with hard data so that the path forward can be better illuminated.

If you’re looking for somewhere to start with maintaining and inspecting your playground, check out my free playground inspection toolkit below. It allows you to home in on problematic areas of playground safety and helps crowdsource feedback to ensure that no kid plays on an unsafe playground:

If you’re looking to purchase a playground, ask yourself:

These are the sorts of questions that sometimes prove necessary to make playground plans come to life.

If you have any questions on how to get your playground to the finish line, reply to this email and I’ll give you my take.

A playground is a big purchase, and when it comes to completing a project, there’s no such thing as a dumb question.

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Talk soon,

Nic Breedlove

Certified Playground Safety Inspector

20 years in the game. Still learning.