The pointlessness of banning skateboarding
...The reckless skating law is a compromise version of a proposal that originally included a ban on skating on the sidewalks by any person over age 14. However the provision was later removed, because of the strong discontent of youth. Nevertheless, city and state politicians have been known to advocate such a ban, and it was at least twice proposed in the state legislature. The bottom line with all these ideas and propositions is that they simply don’t work. It is completely redundant to be able to buy a skateboard but not be able to ride it. It doesn’t make sense that skateboarding and inline skating is always viewed as dangerous when more people are killed in almost every other sport. According to a study in Louisiana pertaining to traumatic brain injuries of people under the age of 24, (http://oph.dhh.state.la.us/injuryprevention/docs/sports96_99.pdf) skateboarding resulted in a mere 220,000 injuries while football (which can be played freely by children anywhere in the country) over 435,000 people were injured and bicycling caused over 469,000 brain injuries. In today’s world, it is much harder to become a skater because of all the rules and regulations as well as parents who believe it to be dangerous because of the absent minded media and politicians who advocate it. Arcadia should just take a step back and look at other, more important things instead of something so trivial as skateboarding, whom only a few engage in anyways. Why does Arcadia not ban football, which caused many injuries in P.E. as well as for people playing it as a family recreational activity. Is it because football is supervised? No, it isn’t. It is because football is seen as a great American sport which everybody should engage in, though people get injured much more frequently and seriously. Also, football can cause injury to not only you...