Going off the deep end over diving boards.

last updated 8 January 2015

United States

Steve Moore

The trial lawyers have declared war on summer, said Steve Moore in The Wall Street Journal. My community swimming club in Fairfax County, Va., can no longer afford the insurance premiums on its 3-meter diving board, so it’s coming down. The boys at the club won’t get to drench nearby sunbathers with their cannonballs, watermelons, and other splashy dives. The girls can’t practice their graceful, twisting somersaults. Nor is my local pool the only one affected. “Diving boards are disappearing across the country,” and new pools are being built without them. Ask why, and you’re told it’s to protect “the children.” How, exactly? Every year, about 50,000 people are seriously injured or drowned at pools. “That’s a big number,” but diving boards are implicated in fewer than 20 of those accidents. When a diving accident does occur, though, the lawyers pounce. They routinely win awards of $5 million or more, even when no one is negligent. The payouts inflate every pool’s insurance costs and keep countless kids off the high board. It’s all part of the ongoing campaign to eliminate “unacceptable dangers from even the most routine activities.” Hence, school lunchrooms without peanut butter and toy soldiers without guns—and pools without diving boards. But those precautions may not make our children any safer. Kids, especially boys, like to take chances. If they can’t launch themselves from the high dive, they’ll take some other risk. “Boys will be boys,” whether the lawyers like it or not.