Skateboarding

Is skateboarding safe?

Mostly, if you stay away from cars. Skateboarding is a sport of falls, and broken wrists, sprained ankles and grazes are part of learning it. Deaths are rare and follow one main pattern: a skater hit by a vehicle on a road.

That makes the risk depend on where you ride. The best per-distance figure comes from Kevin Fang and Susan Handy at UC Davis, who combined California crash data with travel surveys. In 2012, 14 skateboard or scooter riders were killed in collisions with cars in California, at least 10 while travelling. They estimated a death rate of about 21 to 23 per 100 million miles. That is about 0.4 micromortsMicromortA one-in-a-million chance of death. It lets you compare the risk of very different activities on one scale.More in the glossary for a 2-mile ride in traffic (our estimate), and per mile it is more than the British figure for motorcycling. A session in a skatepark, with no cars, carries a small fraction of that.

What injuries do skaters get?

Lots, mostly to arms and legs. US emergency departments treated about 1.2 million skateboarding injuries in children and teenagers aged 5 to 19 between 1990 and 2008, an average of 64,600 a year. Most were boys (89%), and the most common places were home, the street and sports or recreation areas. Only 3.1% were admitted, but children aged 11 to 14 were hospitalised more often than other ages.

The injuries are serious more often than the low admission rate suggests. In a ten-year review of 5,026 skateboarding injuries at Gold Coast hospitals in Australia, 44% were fractures, mostly of the wrist and hand, and at least 48% needed orthopaedic care as inpatients or in follow-up clinics. The average age was 19, with most patients between 18 and 25, so this is not only a children's problem.

Head injuries and helmets

Head injuries are the ones that kill or disable. Over 2009–2018, US emergency departments saw about 100,000 skateboarding head and face injuries, with skull fractures the most common fracture type. Most (77%) came from simply falling off the board, and 7.3% from collisions with motor vehicles.

Helmets help. In a NEISS study of injured young skateboarders and snowboarders, helmet use predicted a lower chance of head injury, and up to 75% of boarders admitted to hospital had head injuries. Yet in US surveys of middle schoolers in 2013–2019, 74.6% said they rarely or never wore a helmet while skateboarding or rollerblading. Observers at skateparks report the same: most riders wear no helmet, pads or wrist guards, and some ride with earbuds in.

Road skating is the deadly part

Skateboards are also used for getting around; UC Davis alone has more than 1,000 skateboard commuters. Fang and Handy watched them and found they travel at about 10 mph on average, close to cyclists, mostly in straight lines and without tricks. Speed is not the issue. The danger is sharing roads with cars as a small, low, hard-to-see road user with no brakes.

The share of skateboarding injuries that happen in streets and on highways has grown since 2000, and so has the share of injured skaters from large cities. In the 1990–2008 NEISS data, all five deaths recorded among young skaters were motor vehicle collisions.

How to skate more safely

1. Wear a certified helmet, every session. Wrist guards cut the most common fracture.
2. Learn to fall: roll onto the shoulder or slide on knee pads rather than putting a straight arm out.
3. Skate in parks or empty spaces while learning. Keep off roads with traffic, especially downhill and at night.
4. Lose the earbuds. You need to hear cars, bikes and other skaters.
5. Check the board: worn wheels, loose trucks and cracked decks throw riders.
6. Keep young children with an adult and away from roads and steep ramps until they have control.

How we scored it

Fatality risk (89) rests on about 0.4 micromortsMicromortA one-in-a-million chance of death. It lets you compare the risk of very different activities on one scale.More in the glossary for a 2-mile ride in traffic, scored per session as for other sports. Park sessions carry far less, but per mile a skateboard in traffic is riskier than a motorcycle. Injury risk (42) is the weakest factor, because fractures are common. Controllability (60) credits helmets, wrist guards and staying out of traffic, and the rescue environment (85) is good in towns. Compare e-scooters, the other small-wheeled ride that shares roads with cars.