HAVING worked in England on building sites in my younger days, I can recall health and safety regulations being formidable when it came to heights. You couldn't take two hands off a ladder without getting a yellow warning from a safety inspector.
Yet we seem to have been content to send our children up to impressive heights on inflatable amusement park devices without batting an eyelid. This "inflatable" sector of the amusement park industry appears to have become complacent, lulled by the idea that inflatables are "soft" physically, as opposed to the "hard" machinery of the traditional carnival rides.
There's no gears to get your hands caught in, no fast-moving edges to crack your skull on. There's no hard surfaces, full stop. They are low maintenance and easy to operate. Apart from the powered fans, there's no moving parts. They rely on the energy of climbing and jumping, provided by the kids. They rely on the force of gravity to provide the fun. And it is fun - except when you're a small child in freefall from 10 metres up.
Plastics technology has provided these easy solutions that are probably hurting the carnival ride businesses. I applaud the new thing, but it appears clear regulation has not caught up with them.
I suspect it's because the idea of health and safety around a bouncy castle seems absurd. Apart from kids colliding with each other while bouncing (and they never seem to), what could go wrong? People hire them for private parties. Far more accidents happen with home trampolines, and you don't require a safety permit to operate one of those, either.