Government oversight control over extreme sports industry lagging

As the appetite for the adrenaline rush associated with extreme sports grows, so do the instances of injuries and lawsuits related to such activities, Toronto critical injury lawyer Patrick Brown writes in Lawyers Weekly.

“Government oversight control over the industry is lagging, with few standards to monitor and ensure basic safety requirements and no tracking of the number of injuries. Internal statistics are kept at some facilities, but are kept private,” Brown, partner with McLeish Orlando LLP, writes in the article.

In Ontario, more regulatory controls are in place for carnival carney rides and bouncy castles, through the Technical Standards and Safety Act, than for extreme sports, writes Brown.

“A fender-bender on a residential road is reported, investigated and statistics kept, but not when a child is rendered a quadriplegic on a dirt bike plateau jump at a privately-run business.”

Wild West approach

Safety within extreme sports is left to individual operators, creating a Wild West approach, says Brown.

“In many instances they adopt a reactive rather than proactive approach to safety, waiting until a participant is seriously injured before implementing safety guidelines and protocols,” he says. “For this reason, admissibility of post-incident remedial changes plays a crucial role in these types of cases.”

Risk-management protocols are not always based on safety considerations, writes Brown, but instead are based largely on an assumption of defence risk.

“This line of defence may have some limited success with adults, but is not effective with children,” says the article. “While waivers may be legally binding on adult participants, courts have traditionally taken a strict approach to upholding them.”

Brown writes, “Until those who profit from extreme sports spend the required time and funds to develop adequate and responsible safety protocols, a ‘just do it’ and waiver defence will not decrease the number of injuries at their facilities – or the lawsuits that may follow.”