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Trampoline parks seem like fun to most kids and maybe even some adults. But failure to take reasonable safety precautions can lead to serious injuries, including spinal cord injuries, according to a recent report by CNN. For example, a 17-year-old boy who went to a trampoline park in April was turned from an active athlete and happy person, to someone just grateful to still be alive.
Because of the injuries the young man sustained at a trampoline park, he has to slowly and painfully attempt to learn to walk again, and to be able to bathe and feed himself without assistance. At the moment, the teen is not even able to hold a pen and write without great difficulty, which will be a real obstacle when he attempts to return to school in the fall.
The teen and his mother have sued the operators of the trampoline facility in a personal injury lawsuit for damages. They say there have been 17 other families in the area of the same facility who also suffered serious accidents because the facility didn’t do enough to promote safety.
In the last two years alone, the facility operators admit, its insurer has settled four such personal injury claims, while six lawsuits are currently pending in the courts and eight more lawsuits are in the planning stage. Approximately two out of every 1,000 trampoline jumpers gets injured, the owners of such facilities say, with some of the injuries being of the very serious life-changing variety.
Despite this, trampoline centers are part of a fast growing industry, with many new facilities opening in Philadelphia and the rest of the nation. Families of young people injured at such centers say that serious injuries may result from a lack of proper supervision and lax or nonexistent enforcement of rules barring the use of a single trampoline by multiple persons at the same time. In some instances, such “double jumping” has caused fractured legs and other injuries.
Source: CNN, “Lawsuits ignite debate over trampoline park safety,” Emanuella Grinberg, July 27, 2012