Up to 10,000 accidents take place on Finnish ski slopes each year

Stark figures come from earlier victim survey

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As the country settles in for the first of several "skiing holiday" weeks, the Finnish equivalent of a half-term for schools, some sobering numbers have appeared about the dangers of going on the slopes. According to the Federation of Finnish Financial Services up to 10,000 accidents causing physical injuries take place in the ski slopes of Finland each year.
     
The federation bases the rather alarming figure on information retrieved from a new computer run on data taken from the 2006 National Victim Survey.
      Executive manager Sari Tollet of the Finnish Ski Area Association (SHKY) considers the figure -made public by the Federation of Finnish Financial Services and the Home Accident Prevention Campaign - very high indeed.
      According to Tollet, the Ski Area Association and the Finnish Red Cross’s ski slope duty officers’ corresponding figure is significantly lower.
      “The monitoring and prevention of ski slope accidents are central operations of the association.”
      “Before I can comment on the presented number of accidents I have to find out through what kind of calculations such a high figure was achieved.”
     
In the largest ski resorts the Finnish Red Cross ski slope duty officers give first aid to more than a thousand ski injury victims each year. The SHKY reckons the annual total figure of mishaps is “a few thousand”.
      “In Finland the number of accidents in proportion to the number of skiers is significantly lower than say in the ski resorts in United States or Central Europe”, Tollet points out.
      Researcher Kati Tiirikainen of the National Institute for Health and Welfare explains that the number of annual ski slope accidents has been obtained from the National Victim Survey, in which 8,290 Finns over the age of 15 were interviewed.
     
The citizens were asked about general physical exercise accidents resulting in a physical trauma within the previous 12 months. They were also asked to specify in which discipline the mishap occurred.
      From the answers a statistical estimate was drawn regarding the number of ski slope accidents in proportion to the entire population.
      Communication manager Joonas Vuorenpää of the Federation of Finnish Financial Services says that the information of 10,000 annual ski slope accidents is something new to the insurance companies as well.
      “When an average compensation figure is EUR 6,000, we are talking about a substantial amount of money.”
      Fortunately, the majority of the ski slope accidents are minor shoulder and wrist injuries.


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