Several high-profile deaths on ski slopes in recent years have highlighted a tricky issue for the ski industry: the danger factor of bodies hurtling down slopes at high speeds. Combined with rising lawsuits from slope accidents and the popularity of snowboarding, they point at the need for ski helmets, a controversial issue in snow-user circles.
Most resorts quietly support helmets. No one wants to create an impression that skiing isn’t safe. But that discreet approach changed in December when Consumer Reports announced that one of the top ski helmet producers, Boeri, didn’t make the safety grade on one of its models.
Now, skiing’s helmet safety issue is in the open. In its test, Consumer Reports chilled 13 helmet models to between 0 and 9 degrees and dropped them from varying heights onto steel anvils to recreate field conditions. The Giro Nine.9 and Giro Fuse were rated the highest, while a version of the popular Boeri Rage was deemed “not acceptable” after the shell shattered in impact tests.
Consumer Reports stands by its results. “All the other helmets were tested to the same standard, and they didn’t have a similar reaction,” said John Galeotafiore, a director of testing at Consumer Reports.
Boeri produces about 40 percent of the helmets sold in the United States every year, Ravreby said. But now the company faces a quandary: How do you defuse a negative report without scaring customers away?
In many ways, it’s a problem the skiing and snowboarding industry has always had to face, the perception that the sports are dangerous. And while Timothy White of the National Ski Areas Association, an industry trade group, concedes that snow sports’ rates of injury are higher than, say, those of hiking, he argues that “skiing and snowboarding have been unfairly depicted as deadly by the media.”
As companies attempt to sell more highly profitable safety equipment–$67.3 million was spent on ski helmets last year, at an average of $83 apiece–they walk a thin line. “We don’t want to send a message that this is such a dangerous sport that you have to wear a helmet,” said Boeri Sport USA Vice President Jeff Ravreby. “We don’t want resorts to begin requiring protection.”
But mandates are beginning to pop up anyway. A 6-year-old girl died in 2002 on a Colorado mountain after she crashed into a tree during a ski lesson. She was not wearing a helmet, and the parents sued. The resort, Aspen Highlands, now requires helmets on ski school students. Other resorts, frightened by the litigation, are posting pro-helmet signs.
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Edited by Cara DiPasquale (cdipasquale@tribune.com) and Victoria Rodriguez (vrodriguez@tribune.com)
