Why Wear a Ski Helmet?
The good news: Technical advances in skis, boots and binding design have reduced ski-slope injuries. The bad news: 5 to 10 percent of all serious ski injuries involve blows to the head. While skiers were at first reluctant to jump head first on the helmet band wagon, the “celebrity head injuries,” such as the deaths of Michael Kennedy and Sunny Bono caused skiers to rethink the “brain bucket” issue. In fact, in the 1999 to 2000 ski season, 540,000 helmets were sold. One might say that these events knocked some sense into people. Nowadays, it’s more unusual to see someone without a helmet than it is to see someone wearing one. Head injuries are most likely to occur when a tree jumps into your path and refuses to get out of your way. The same thing applies to lift towers. They just don’t have any manners. That said, a ski helmet can minimize the impact of these unplanned encounters. Just ask Stewart Levy, M.D., who surveyed 261 skiers and snowboarders that were admitted to Saint Anthony’
