Panic on the snowbanks

There are approximately 2.5 million children between the ages of 5 and 19 in Ontario. Of these, a large proportion, according to the Canadian Fitness and Lifestyle Research Institute, enjoy the odd bit of tobogganing. About 85% of children between the ages of 5 and 12 reported tobogganing in the previous 12 months; among teens, it drops to around 55%. At a rough guess, then, we are talking about a child tobogganist population in Ontario in the area of 1.7 million.

I don't have figures for the number of tobogganists among the province's 10 million adult citizens, but let's say it's one in 12 -- somewhere between cross-country skiing (16%) and snowboarding (4%) -- or about 800,000 in all. And let's say your average tobogganing enthusiast takes two trips to the hill a year, in the course of which they might take four runs apiece. Altogether, then, that's around 20 million tobogganist-runs in Ontario each year.

Now: what are your odds? What is the likelihood, as a tobogganist, of injuring yourself in the course of that breathtaking run down the hill? Specifically, what are your chances of injuring your head, beyond the odd bump and scrape? According to the Ontario Injury Prevention Centre, in the winter of 2004-05 the province recorded 108 cases of tobogganing injuries severe enough to require hospitalization. Of these, 19% -- 20 cases -- were to the head.

So as you stand at the top of the hill, toboggan at the ready, consider this: your odds of giving yourself a serious head injury by the time you get to the bottom are 1 in a million. If you take eight runs in a year, chances are you can toboggan for the next, oh, 125,000 years or so without cracking your skull. And your chances of killing yourself? Next to none. According to a report in Tuesday's National Post, “tobogganing accidents have killed at least seven people in Canada since 2003.” That's seven people -- make it eight if you like -- in four years. Two per year. Out of, what, 50 million tobogganist-runs nationwide?

Three of the seven, moreover, died when they were hit by cars. Stay away from any hills that empty onto roads, then, and your chances are something like 1 in 50 million. This is, in short, not a particularly risky activity, which perhaps explains why so many children and adults enjoy it in safety every winter, as they have done for centuries.

But because two children were killed tobogganing in the last month, one in Quebec and one in Manitoba, and because one of the children died of a head injury, instantly the cry goes up: we must have helmets. More than that, we must have mandatory helmets: helmet laws, to be enforced on every hill in the country. For tobogganing.

Until this month, or certainly until about the last decade, it would not have occurred to anyone that tobogganing was such a peril-strewn venture as to require special protective equipment, let alone that every one of the 6 million or so Canadians who might want to take the sled out for a spin once in a while should be compelled by law to buckle up. A search for “tobogganing and helmets” on Infomart's vast database of Canadian publications turns up just one hit prior to 1990, 59 hits from 1990 to 1999, and 98 since then.

Why this crescendo of concern? Has tobogganing suddenly become riskier? Are the sleds faster?The hills steeper? Is the snow slipperier? Is there in fact a rising tide of slaughter on the nation's snowbanks and bunny hills, of a kind that demands the urgent intervention of the law?

Of course not. The only thing that's changed is our neurotic obsession with insulating ourselves from every conceivable risk, no matter how small. Or rather, not every risk, since we blithely ignore all sorts of others -- you're far more likely to be killed on the way to the hill than on it -- but only the ones that occur to us. Such as when two children die doing the same thing in the space of the month. As we say in the business, two's a trend.

Each new intervention only justifies the next. It started with seatbelt laws. Then bicycle helmets came into vogue, though cycling is, objectively, only slightly riskier than tobogganing (one head-related fatality each year for every 100,000 cyclists). Then it spread to the ski-hills: grown adults, pretending they're downhill racers. At the time, I used to joke: what's next, tobogganing? And so I should perhaps avoid anticipating the next recommendation to issue from some coroner's jury run amok or city councillor on the make. Helmets in cars, anyone? Do you know the number of preventable head injuries to passengers in sub-compact vehicles?

Every needless death is a tragedy, every child's death even more so. But a sane approach to life understands that some risks are inevitable, and that if there is anything worse than death it is to spend every waking moment consumed with the potential for mischance. Accidents will happen, our parents used to say, as they pushed us out the door to ride our bikes unchaperoned or play shinny till dark. Were they child abusers?