The recent deaths of two U.S. Ski Team members in an avalanche at a resort in the Austrian Alps have raised questions about the risks of these sudden snow slides. Since then, North America has settled into the skiing high season, with scores of skiers and snowboarders every day willingly participating in a sport fraught with risks of all kinds.
In our modern, safety-conscious world, we have gradually eliminated all things fun and dangerous.
But somehow, skiing is still around.
Skiing is incredibly dangerous, even without avalanches. You can careen into a tree, fly off a cliff or just take a nasty fall. Even the ski lifts look like creations of a Third World country, with their rickety safety bars and sagging cables. And then there are avalanches: a mass of snow, ice and rocks sliding rapidly down the mountainside. They are caused by natural conditions, such as new snowfall or sudden warming. But they differ from pure “Acts of God” in that humans can trigger avalanches as well. From a liability perspective, humans have no control over solar eclipses or meteor strikes; we have a modicum of control over avalanches.
In fact, government agencies use howitzers or explosives to cause them under controlled circumstances. Other times, backcountry skiers set them off accidentally, and with tragic results.
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The law has evolved to protect the industry from extinction by seriously limiting liability. Although that denies access to the courts by would-be plaintiffs, perhaps overall that’s a good thing. It reflects our social mores about some risky activities.
Make no mistake about it, if the merry-go-round and the seesaw had generated more tax revenue, they’d still be around. At least we still have skiing — for now.
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