April 2011 Archives

We're all for any reason to keep kids safe so we're more than happy to inform you that this week is National Playground Safety Week. Safe Kids USA asks "do you know what to look for to make sure your playground is safe? Sometimes the risks don't appear as obvious as those associated with swimming or biking; but, they're there and easy to spot. You just need to know what to look for."

And the risks are all too real - not just at public playgrounds but at home and school playgrounds too. Consider these sobering stats:

• The leading cause of death related to the playground and playground equipment is strangulation, accounting for over 50% of the deaths.
• Nearly 70% of all playground related deaths occur on home playgrounds.
• Falls are the most common mode of playground injury accounting for approximately 80% of all playground-related injuries and about 20% of all deaths.
• About 45% of playground-related injuries are severe, which include fractures, internal injuries, concussions, dislocations, and amputations.
• More from the Playground Safety Fact Sheet

If you are a parent or if you have kids in your life, these stats should put you on alert! It's important for parents to advocate for their kids to ensure safe public playgrounds. It's also important for parents who are homeowners to ensure that any private play areas meet the best and safest standards, too. Don't forget about the pools!

Here are Top Playground Safety Tips from Safe Kids:

• Playground surfacing material should be 12 inches deep and extend 6 feet in all directions around equipment.
• Look for playgrounds with shredded rubber, mulch, wood chips or sand. Grass and soil are not good surfaces.
• Make sure playground equipment is inspected frequently and kept in good repair. If it's not, report this to your local parks and recreations office.
• Remove hood and neck drawstrings from children's clothing and outerwear and don't let kids wear helmets, necklaces, purses or scarves on the playground.
• Don't allow your kids to engage in, or play near, any pushing, shoving or crowding around playground equipment.
• Keep toddlers under age 5 in a separate play area, away from equipment designed for bigger kids.
• Actively supervise kids on a playground. Just being in the same area isn't good enough - they need your undivided attention while playing on or around the equipment.

Safe Kids has a variety of other useful tools to help you know what to look for in assessing playground safety. Here are a few good resources:
Tips for parents in assessing the safety of a playground
Sports Injury Prevention Tips
State laws on concussion prevention (PDF)
Concussion Guide for Parents (PDF)
Sports Safety Checklist (PDF)
Dehydration & heat illness prevention

In this short video clip, the Insurance Information Institute's Crash Test Dummies offer advice on how to choose a good insurance company.

Also check out III's article Five Insurance Mistakes to Avoid... And Still Save Money. We've summarized the five mistakes below, but you can check out the article for a more detailed explanation and ideas for better ways to save money while minimizing your risk of loss.

• Insuring a home for its real estate value rather than for the cost of rebuilding
• Selecting an insurance company by price alone.
• Dropping flood insurance
• Only purchasing the legally required amount of liability for your car
• Neglecting to buy renters insurance

Our last post dealt with various tools and technologies for keeping home inventories, and we just learned about a free new app for iPhones. The National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) have introduced myHOME Scr.APP.book, a tool that lets you capture images, descriptions, bar codes and serial numbers. It looks great. You can see a brief 2 minute video demo below and you can get tips from NAIC's InsureU on how to create a home inventory. And if you don't have an iPhone, there's always the low-tech method, which works too. NAIC offers a Home inventory checklist.

Also, be sure to check our our last blog post for other alternatives.

Tech reviewer Farhad Manjoo of The New York Times recently ran a roundup of apps for home inventories, along with his commentary of the pros and the cons for each system. Manjoo comes from a perspective of organizing and managing possessions, and inventorying as a potential first step in simplifying your life. For those of us in the insurance world, there's another practical purpose to home inventories that can be summed up in two words: Risk management. Should you suffer theft, fire or some other type of loss, having a record of your valuables will help you - whether you need to file a claim, apply for disaster relief, or document losses for tax purposes.

Manjoo reviews several apps for both mobile phones and PCs, with options running from $4.99 to $50. Some have useful features, such as warranty trackers and the ability to upload and annotate photos from your phone. But most require a fair amount of work entering the details manually. One Mac program that he found has bar code scanning ability which simplifies the process, at least for your new possessions.

Whatever system you use, it's important to keep things current, as James Lynch points out in his post What's in your house? at the Insurance Information Institute's blog Terms + Conditions. And he reminds us about Know Your Stuff, a free online home inventory service from III. The following video offers a good introduction.