Denver Haslam was skiing at Colorado's Arapahoe Basin three years ago when he lost control of his skis and flew headfirst into a large pine tree.
The 50 mph crash shattered the college student's right shoulder and rib cage, broke his vertebra and left femur, split his kidney, ruptured his spleen, punctured his lungs and lacerated his pancreas. The ambulance nurse on the ride to Denver's St. Anthony Central Hospital called him a "talking corpse."
Haslam was alive and talking because he was one of a growing number of skiers wearing a helmet, say his doctors.
When singer and politician Sonny Bono and Michael Kennedy, son of Robert F. Kennedy, died eight winters ago from head and neck injuries sustained while skiing, few recreational skiers and snowboarders wore helmets. Last year, one-third of those interviewed on the slopes in a survey by the National Ski Areas Assn. were wearing helmets. More than 600,000 ski and snowboard helmets were sold last season, despite lukewarm support for helmets by the ski industry.
According to the ski areas association, about 39 skiers or snowboarders are killed each year in accidents and 41 suffer serious head injuries or paraplegia. During the 2003-2004 season, the fatality rate was 0.72 per million skier/snowboarder visits and the serious injury rate was 0.65 per million, rates far lower than for sports such as bicycling, according to the association.
Some in the ski industry say that ski areas don't actively promote helmet use for everyone because of fear of litigation when the helmets fail to protect and because they want to avoid suggesting that skiing is not a safe sport.
But ski areas may be reluctant to push helmet use because of previous uncertainty about the risks and benefits.
In 1997, shortly before the deaths of Bono and Kennedy, the American Medical Assn.'s Council on Scientific Affairs published a report that suggested children and adolescents wear helmets but stopped short of recommending all skiers and snowboarders use helmets, citing "insufficient data."
The report relied heavily on research by Jasper Shealy, a professor emeritus at Rochester Institute of Technology, who has raised doubts about the value of ski helmets. Shealy says that while wearing helmets has some benefit, it does not reduce fatalities or the most serious head injuries. He also says helmets might encourage some skiers and snowboarders to act recklessly and could increase neck injuries, especially for children.
