Saturday, February 21, 2009

13 year old boy dies skiing

A Korean exchange student in Toronto died while on a ski trip to Snow Valley with his school. After the accidental death of the boy it was revealed that an $8 provision on the permission slip for the rental of a helmet may have saved his life. After the fact one parent said that she assumed helmets were mandatory. Why would someone say that? It's so clearly bullshit. Who reading this wore a helmet, or saw someone wearing a helmet, when we went skiing as kids? I can't for the life of me think of ever seeing someone on a ski trip wearing a helmet. I know that with the crazy style of snowboarding that is getting popular helmets are becoming more fashionable but they are certainly not to the point that a school board would make them mandatory. These parents are probably in their late thirties or early forties and should be thinking about when they went skiing. Were ski helmets even invented when they were kids?
Further to that the school board is defending its permission form with the opt in helmet program by arguing that parents carefully read permission forms and therefore were aware of the provisions. I highly doubt this too! Did your parents sit down and read all of your forms or just ask you what it was for? Did they even ask what it was for before signing it? Nothing like tragedy to bring out the worst in people.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Given this is Canada, there is a high probability they could barely read the English. This may sound racist but in a recent part-time job working in a call centre, I would approximate about 10% of people living in this country can barely speak English or French. The forms were in English, highlighting the importance of integration into the new society they have chosen, and likely fought, to live in. I wouldn't even consider moving to Korea without having a basic understanding of Korean, smarten up folks!