KAPA’A — Just days after a skateboard fall took the life of a second young Kaua’i man in as many years, riders yesterday were tempting fate and blatantly disregarding rules by ‘boarding without helmets at the skateboard rink at Kaua’i
KAPA’A — Just days after a skateboard fall took the life of a second young Kaua’i man in as many years, riders yesterday were tempting fate and blatantly disregarding rules by ‘boarding without helmets at the skateboard rink at Kaua’i County’s Kapa’a New Park.
While there are no available statewide statistics about skateboard deaths and injuries, those on Kaua’i live with the unenviable label of the island with the most skateboard deaths in Hawai’i.
A new state law requires those under age 16 riding bicycles to wear helmets. Meanwhile, Senate Bill 164, now moving through various committees in the Legislature, would require helmets for those youngsters on skateboards and scooters, as well.
While a helmet law for those under 16 riding scooters and skateboards wouldn’t alone have spared the lives of the two east side men who died from head injuries after falling from skateboards, if they had been wearing helmets they likely would have lived to tell of their experiences, says a state Department of Health injury prevention program manager.
“The cost of a helmet (around $30) is a lot cheaper than the cost of a head,” said Eric Tash, manager of the department’s Injury Prevention Control Program.
“Helmets help. They definitely do,” since the head is the most vulnerable part of the human body, Tash said. “If you have to use one piece of gear, the most critical is helmets, because helmets protect the head on impact.”
“Head injuries are the most severe kinds of injuries, and could leave lasting, lifelong debilitation, disability and trauma,” he continued. “It’s very traumatic for the family, and it’s very expensive. A helmet protects.”
And though everyone from the national Centers for Disease Control, Consumer Product Safety Commission, National Safe Kids campaign and other groups suggest adults and children wear helmets and other protective safety gear while riding scooters and skateboards, the plain fact is that many people don’t.
“People don’t see the risk. If you fall wrong, and you land on your head, any kind of fall is dangerous, especially when the head’s involved,” Tash said. “At slow speeds (like those achieved on scooters and skateboards), helmets are very effective” safety devices.
The Department of Health, naturally, recommends helmets.
While limited statewide and island data is available relating to what the current state Senate proposal calls “toy vehicles,” the Department of Health does report that unintentional injuries (which include falls and, unfortunately, falls from “wheeled personal-powered craft”) are the major cause of death for young people in Hawai’i, and a major cause of disability.
And the state trend throughout the 1990s was that the number of injuries was rising, a trend the department suggests “should be monitored.”
In the unintentional injuries category are car crashes, falls, drownings, poisonings and fires. Unintentional injuries kill 300 people in Hawai’i each year, nearly half of those in vehicular accidents, according to department statistics.
Some 5,000 people a year are hospitalized for unintentional injuries. Falls lead the causes, impacting 160 people out of every 100,000.
The two skateboarding deaths on Kaua’i match the total number of national deaths attributed to scooters through the first 10 months of 2000, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control, which compiles such statistics.
Between January and October of last year, there were 27,600 emergency-room visits from people injured riding scooters nationwide, with about 85 percent of them under the age of 15. Twenty-seven percent of those visits involved injuries to the face or head, according to the CDC.
The Wilcox Memorial Hospital emergency room has seen an increase in scooter-related patients, mostly for minor injuries, said Lani Yukimura, Wilcox Health System spokeswoman.
The skateboard accident that took the life of Kahoku’uluwehi Hurley of Wailua last Friday left one Kapa’a mother fretting over not being able to afford to buy helmets for any of her children — all of whom ride skateboards, scooters, or both.
In the case of one son who rode his scooter at the Kapa’a skateboard park yesterday, she said her best option was to drive him to the park and monitor him.
“I tell him where the dangerous ramps are,” said the woman, who like others interviewed for this story did not want to be identified or photographed.
She said she also worries about a teenage son who rides his skateboard — also without a helmet — near the area where the fatal skateboard accident occurred.
“What happened to that youth could happen to anyone,” she said. “It doesn’t matter what age.”
An 11-year-old Wailua Homesteads youth who rode his skateboard at the Kapa’a park said he worried about his friend’s safety, and would let the friend use his helmet until his friend got one of his own.
The friend, an 11-year-old neighbor, said he expected to get a helmet soon, because his mother was “worried” after hearing about the recent skateboard fatality.
Randy Machado, a Kaua’i County Police Department officer teaching his son to ride a skateboard, died from head wounds suffered in a fall from that skateboard in December 1999.
According to police reports, neither of the victims wore helmets at the time of the accidents.
“It’s absolutely terrible. I really feel for the families,” Tash said. “You don’t think (skateboards) are that dangerous. They are if you land on your head.”
Staff writer Paul C. Curtis can be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 2227) and pcurtis@pulitzer.net
Staff Writer Lester Chang contributed to this report.
