Safety Foundation Sends "First of Its Kind" Safety Survey to Resorts

SACRAMENTO, Calif., July 24, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- The SnowSport Safety Foundation (SSF) announced today that it sent to California mountain resorts the "first of its kind" survey to gather information on family safety and injury prevention policies and practices. Snow sports are a popular source of family recreation with many resorts actively marketing to families and yet, unfortunately, there continue to be a number of deaths and serious injuries occurring every year to children and adolescents at California resorts. SSF is asking resorts to voluntarily complete the survey (www.snowsportsafetyfoundation.org/research.html) as an update to and expansion of the 2010 California Mountain Resort Safety Report. The information collected from the completed surveys will be published prior to the 2012/2013 snow season and will provide comparative information on the resorts as well as assist parents in selecting the safest possible resorts for their families.

"Statistically, children and adolescents have twice the injury rate of adults," said SSF's founder Dr. Dan Gregorie. "And many of those serious injuries, such as falls from lifts and collisions with poorly padded lift poles, unmarked snowmaking equipment and natural hazards, are preventable or could be substantially reduced in severity."

The mission of SSF is to improve snow sport safety through research and analyses as well as provide information and education about injury prevention. This survey expands upon the information collected from the SSF 2009/2010 on-site inspection of California resorts, which has been published as the California Mountain Resort Safety Report.

The survey, designed with a "check the box" format for easy completion, requests information on policies and practices in several categories such as impact protection, trail design and maintenance, resort boundaries, terrain parks and more. The information requested should be readily available to resort personnel. The resorts have been asked to return their completed surveys by September 1, 2012. In addition to providing valuable information to parents and the resorts, themselves, the survey will help build a reliable database to track and enable improvements in the safety and injury prevention policies and practices across all resorts in California.

According to Gregorie, "Parents currently have little or no information with which to assess the safety of the California resorts they choose for their families. The information from the SSF survey will be valuable to parents, health professionals and schools who share our interest in children's health and safety." 

The SnowSport Safety Foundation (SSF) is a not-for-profit organization established in 2008 to improve snow sport safety and injury prevention through research, data analysis, information access and education.

SOURCE The SnowSport Safety Foundation