The New York Times
March 2, 2006
By SARAH TUFF

DAVID BLOOM, a 45-year-old skier, had stopped on a trail at Sunday River resort in Maine to give his 5-year-old daughter a rest. The next thing he knew, he was sprawled on the snow. A snowboarder hit him with enough force to shear the bindings off his skis. Luckily, Mr. Bloom absorbed the brunt of the blow and his daughter was unhurt.

''I was furious,'' Mr. Bloom said of the incident, which occurred in 2000. ''If I hadn't been standing there, she could have killed my daughter.''

In January a man was arrested on suspicion of punching and swearing at a 16-year-old snowboarder who knocked down his 8-year-old daughter at a ski resort in Steamboat Springs, Colo. The police said Randell Berg, 52, told them that he ''just lost control.'' Mr. Berg's daughter was unharmed.

Both incidents illustrate the anxiety over accidents between people on the slopes, which have risen 35 percent in two decades. They happen every day at ski resorts nationwide. The majority are harmless, are resolved amicably and are never reported, said Michael Berry, the president of the National Ski Areas Association, a trade group.

But in the last decade, lawyers and industry experts say, they have noticed a backlash against recklessness. Resorts have responded by trying to teach skiers and snowboarders how to avoid collisions, and they are revoking lift tickets and season passes from those who repeatedly refuse to obey the codes of conduct.

Many skiers and snowboarders no longer consider collisions an unavoidable risk. They say accidents can be prevented if people watch what they are doing and remain aware of the consequences they might face in the event of an incident. Lawyers nationwide report increased inquiries about lawsuits after ski area accidents.

Each year nearly 15,000 skiers and snowboarders are injured in accidents involving two or more people, an increase of 35 percent from 20 years ago, according to the research of Jasper Shealy, a professor emeritus of engineering at Rochester Institute of Technology, who has studied ski injuries for three decades. Crashes have also grown more serious, some ski resort owners say.

The popularity of new parabolic (hourglass-shaped) skis, which give skiers more confidence and encourage them to go faster, is seen as a contributing factor. With the old equipment, skiers made neat windshield-wiper turns, zigzagging down a more narrow course and out of the path of others.

''As the equipment gets more and more easy,'' Mr. Berry said, ''we're finding ourselves reminding 50-year-old guys that maybe they ought to crank it back a notch.''

The jumping by snowboarders and trick skiers in terrain parks has also intensified collisions, Mr. Shealy said. ''Once you're in the air, you have no control of where you are going,'' he said. ''You're simply a ballistic missile. If all of a sudden someone cuts in front of you, there's nothing you can do. You're out of luck, and they're out of luck.''

The worsening crashes are making skiers and snowboarders more antagonistic toward others. ''Ten years ago if you had a collision, you just kind of brushed it off and kept going downhill,'' said Brian Fairbank, an owner of Jiminy Peak ski area in Massachusetts. ''Now it's a whole different ballgame.''

Nearly three years after the Sunday River snowboarder knocked Mr. Bloom off his skis, he said he becomes tense when he hears the sound of someone behind him.

Dick Penniman, a ski-accident investigator from Truckee, Calif., also said that jangled nerves may change the way people react to crashes. ''With the anxiety level, you're more prone to blame someone,'' he said.

Another reason why collisions snowball into lawsuits is the ''culture clash'' on mountains between thrill-seeking types and people who don't like taking risks, said Frank Farley, a psychologist at Temple University. ''This is America,'' he added. ''We live and die by lawsuits.''

Snowboarders make many skiers nervous. Because they must stand sideways, snowboarders have reduced peripheral vision, Mr. Penniman said. ''You've got this element where half the people on the mountain are blind to one side,'' he said. ''It certainly causes a lot more anxiety among skiers.''

Experts debate whether snowboarders, who in just two decades have grown to as much as 50 percent of all ticket buyers at ski resorts, cause more accidents. The tendency to point fingers at them, Mr. Shealy said, stems from the loud scraping noise they often make when coming down the hill and ''what used to be the atrocious attitudes of some of the snowboarders in the past, and that's mellowing.''

For the most part it's increasingly difficult for a skier or snowboarder to sue ski resorts after being hit by another person because most states have passed laws placing responsibility for crashes on skiers and snowboarders. Nearly every state with a major ski area now limits an operator's liability, said Jim Chalat, a Denver lawyer who specializes in skiing-related lawsuits. (The exceptions are Arizona, California and Virginia.) And many resorts are refining the language of waivers to gain full immunity for accidents, Mr. Chalat said.

Whether they have a good reason to sue, injured snowboarders and skiers are calling lawyers more frequently. ''People are generally angrier,'' said Roger Castle, a lawyer for ski injury plaintiffs in Colorado. ''People have more of an entitlement mentality -- 'If something bad happens to me, there's got to be a remedy for it' -- and more of a self-determined desire to seek justice.''

Consider an accident in 1999 involving Denyse Hansburg of Eagleville, Pa. She had just fallen at Killington in Vermont and then bent over to reattach her ski when a snowboarder flew over a jump and landed on her. The accident left Ms. Hansburg with a broken left femur, and she decided to sue. ''It was a very reckless thing that happened and certainly should have been avoided,'' Ms. Hansburg said of the incident, for which she received a $100,000 settlement. ''The snowboarder should have known how to handle things. I'm sure she does now.''

In an effort to prevent such accidents, Killington now prints a seven-step code of conduct on its cafeteria trays and coasters. This season Jiminy Peak spent $30,000 on a safety campaign featuring Zeke, a three-foot doll that looks like a bandaged teenager. In one video shown at the base area and on the resort's Web site, Zeke pauses on his snowboard at an inauspicious spot in the terrain park -- a run with halfpipes and jumps -- and is clobbered by another snowboarder.

In Colorado, Vail has created a video, ''It Won't Happen to Me,'' which features ski patrol members who graphically recount accidents in which people have been killed or severely injured. The video, which is shown to middle and high school students in the area and on the resort's television channel, is used to make people more aware of the dangers of thoughtlessness.

The Yellow Jackets, a group of patrol members at Vail, conduct periodic ''sting days,'' when they cluster on ski runs and warn skiers and snowboarders who are going too fast. This winter nearly 800 have been ejected from the resort.

''We get people who just blow through us at warp speed,'' said Bill Jensen, a president of Vail Resorts's mountain division and a volunteer Yellow Jacket. ''It's been a big 'aha' for me. About 35 percent of people on the mountain are oblivious to anything but the tips of their skis.''

Mr. Berry of the ski association said the resorts' new focus on skier behavior is a response to consumer demand. ''Our customers expect us to assert ourselves in a more aggressive way to make people aware of the risks,'' he said.

Still, accidents will continue to happen, and when they do, Mr. Chalat said, handling the situation calmly in the moments after one may be a sensible way to avoid a lawsuit. ''If you're indignant and unrepentant,'' he said, ''that's like saying, 'Please sue me.' ''