Fear pushes sledding downhill

On Tuesday, I poked fun of my adult tendency to cast doom, gloom and dire warnings of danger on stuff a younger version of me once saw as super awesome fun. Sledding, for example.

Meanwhile, in Dubuque, doom, gloom and danger now have become a city ordinance.

The City Council there voted Monday to restrict sledding to just two city parks, fearing the specter of big lawsuits. Dubuque's call is getting national media attention. That's not surprising, given all the irresistible storylines. Innocent childhood fun thwarted by our overly litigious society and a nanny state run amok.

Grab the helmets and Bubble Wrap. Paging Lenore Skenazy.

Dubuque leaders insist they didn't want to do it, but the Iowa Legislature made them. Lawmakers failed to pass legislation expanding cities' legal liability protection to include sledding and tubing. Folks injured in sledding accidents in Omaha, Sioux City and Boone have won big jury awards and settlements. Dubuque could be next.

The Republican-controlled Iowa House did approve a bill expanding the liability shield to cover sledding on a 55-45 vote in February 2013. Republicans sided with cities, but Democrats sided with trial lawyers, the Bar Association and other opponents. When it reached the Democratic Senate, it died without debate.

I'm not sure why it's a big deal to add sledding and tubing to a list in the Iowa Code already including skateboarding, in-line skating, bicycling, unicycling, scootering, river rafting, canoeing and kayaking. But then again, I'm no trial lawyer.

Still, you don't have to be a lawyer to recognize that the liability protection cities are seeking isn't really a get-out-of-lawsuits-free card. The protection is limited. If you fall off a sled and break your arm, the city isn't liable. But if cities make a boneheaded decision that jeopardizes public safety, they'll still get dragged into court.

In Omaha, two girls were injured on a hill that sloped into a stand of crabapple trees planted by city workers. The Nebraska Supreme Court ruled that the city knew the trees posed a risk but failed to 'decrease or eliminate” that risk. In Boone, a woman collided with a 'concrete cube.” In Sioux City, a guy slid into a no-parking sign. Would a liability shield cover these cases? It's no slam dunk.

Neither is the case being made that cities face some sort of massive lawsuit risk. We're talking about a handful of claims out of the thousands of folks who have jumped on a sled. Fear of lawsuits is far greater than the actual risk, and it's the sort of disproportional fear that's been guiding an awful lot of government decisions in recent years.

The Economist's Will Wilkinson wrote this week that the assault on sledding is 'inspired by the same sort of simpering caution that keeps Americans shoeless in airport security lines and, closer to home, keeps parents from letting their kids walk a few blocks to school alone ...” His piece is titled 'Home of the unbrave.”

If a city detects a real safety issue and wants to ban sledding from a particular hill, fair enough. But making public parks off-limits en masse for fear of some nebulous legal risk goes too far.

' Comments: (319) 398-8452; todd.dorman@thegazette.com