Anyone of a certain age will remember these bad boys. Spend time polishing them, so you'd fly off the bottom.
That one's before my time. Seesaw, roundabout, swings, monkey frame about the only other ones I can think of. I remember we played this game on the roundabout where one person dashed a shoe off the side, spun it fast as fck and then you had to lay down and try and nab it. I did my shoe, but there was a big fck off nasty nail sticking out the wood and I sliced about 3 inches across the bottom of my foot. Bled like hell all the way home and my mum put my foot under a cold tap, bandaged it up and that was it.
These would fly, I was one of the big kids when these came on the scene and we'd make them go like hell.
I remember taking my kids to the park where we used to go, couldn't believe the difference, non of that stuff, all gone, even the big swings, they were probably about 4 mtrs high, get as high as we could and see who could jump off and get the furthest distance. All the stuff now, not much taller than me and safety flooring every where.
If they get the rubber tarmac right then there's very little danger at all from falls with most playground equipment. It was always the concrete floor that was the problem back in the day, rarely the equipment.
I believe it's head injuries it's helped with, don't think it's made much difference with broken arms etc, as it's usually the way you fall, more than what you fall on, with those. I sure I read something like that, a few years back.
Yeh that's right about head injuries. It does reduce the risk of other injuries because the amount of force needed is far less on concrete. I know a lot of school playground equipment is still quite high. Even with safety frames/rails there's a risk of falls.
I was at the park with the kids and a young girl 8 or 9, fell off the monkey bars, her feet probably 3ft off the ground, heard the snap, broken half way up her forearm. I've seen 3 or 4 kids break their arms and it's weird they have the same reaction, hard to describe the look but once you've seen it, you know it.
Thankfully not seen one but was called to one where a girl had done it in the playground. She was 6 and that scared the crap out of me. God I think back to the **** I used to get up to with friends, climbing derelict factories. Surprised no one broke their neck!
I think kids mostly know their limits and even though some of the stuff was mental looking back, most of us would only go so far, it always seemed the same lads that got the breaks etc, the one's that pushed it, I know my one mate was in hospital most summer holiday's, once when he got shot by a girl with a 22 air rifle, the funny thing about that, he'd done a self tattoo of a small cross on his arm, the pellet when straight in the middle of it, it was ****ting himself as he knew his mom would go apeshit when she saw the tattoo, when she took the dressing off, he waited with bated breath, only for his mom to say " ooh look, the hospital have marked it where the pellet went in". The sad part, his family all thought it was me that shot him, even years later I bumped into his sister and she bought it up, she still didn't believe me.
If we had rubber flooring back in the day we'd rip it up, pile it up and jump off the top of the witches tit onto it.
