Columnist Susan Snyder: Safety as important as thrills

Tuesday, Sept. 12, 2000 | 9:05 a.m.

Susan Snyder's column appears Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Reach her at snyder@lasvegassun.com or 259-4082.

Are the Consumer Product Safety Commission people a bunch of stodgy old poops, or what?

Now they're saying those shiny fold-up scooters that have become wildly popular from here to Israel are dangerous.

Unfortunately it looks like they're right.

Nationally, injuries among scooter-riders increased from 500 in May to more than 4,000 in August, the commission reported last month. A whopping 9,411 accidents have been attributed to them this year, with children younger than 15 making up 90 percent of those injured.

Most suffered scrapes, bruises and sprains -- afflictions usually caused by skateboards, inline skates and bicycles, the agency said. But about a third of the reports included broken bones and dislocations. Head injuries also have been common.

Terry Vergara, a Sunrise Children's Hospital pediatric emergency physician, said bumps, breaks and bruises typically increase during the summer. She hasn't seen a marked increase in the number of such injuries. But there has been a huge change in the way kids are getting them.

"It has definitely become the new craze and phase of the situation," Vergara said. "Everyone is buying them now. They just have to try them out."

Parents need to understand these are not the scooters they grew up with.

"It's giving a false sense of security that it's an innocent thing," she said. "But it's like giving your child a skateboard or a bicycle."

The narrow, nonmotorized, lightweight gadgets roll on two skinny, inline skate-type wheels. They're fast. Riders should wear helmets and wrist, elbow and knee guards and ride in appropriate places.

"A lot of kids are in the street with them," the doctor said.

Helmets are displayed with scooters at Zany Brainy toys on South Decatur Boulevard. Workers are pushing helmets because of the report, said Jennifer Marino, associate manager.

"We're telling people the helmets are inexpensive, and we have them," she said.

Upper managers are trying to decide whether to carry the rest of the protective gear, Marino said. For now they're referring customers to stores that stock it.

"What the customers do after that is up to them," she said. "But you have to use common sense. You need parental supervision. There isn't a toy in here that I can say, 'Bring this home to your 4-year-old and let him run rampant with it.' There is no such toy."

Certainly no such toy with wheels and designed for use on pavement.

I am a helmet fiend. But I also am a huge fan of the "weeee!" factor. And these jobbies definitely have the big "W." I want one. Grown-ups cannot underestimate the value of a good "weeee!"

Bumps and scrapes are part of growing up. But they should be a much smaller part of it because we're smarter than we used to be. Let common sense prevail. We can protect the kid and still save the "weeee!"

"Everybody remembers their first bike or their first pair of roller skates," Marino said. "You don't want to take that away from them."