Fifty-five people per day wind up in ERs from ski and snowboarding injuries. Spread across all the ski resorts, the numbers may not sound so daunting. But many of these injuries could probably be avoided if speeds were moderated. How to accomplish this? It might be simpler than you think. Every ski resort knows where the majority of injuries take place. They know because they dispatch sleds and ski patrollers to carry the injured to first aid stations. If they do the statistical analysis, and they most probably do, then why don’t they station their yellow-jacketed personnel along those runs at those dangerous points?

Sure, we find a few potent lift-ticket-pullers at the bottom of junctions, but that’s not where the crashes are occurring. They happen when out-of-control, straight-lining skiers and boarders are barreling down the slopes, unable to stop before taking out their victims, sometimes with devastating results.

Every season, one of us scared-to-death types writes about the peril, but to no avail. The reckless racers continue on their merry ways, uncaringly careening at breakneck speeds, thinking only of themselves and believing that nothing bad can ever happen to them or because of them.

The solution is to station more people at more critical points to slow the speeders down on the threat of pulling passes. A second, less exact and certainly less effective option is to employ cameras. The unfortunate third option is for those who have been hit to sue the pants off those who injure them. That’s if they can catch them because, too often, the perps become hit-and-runs. By the time of options two and three, however, the damage will have been done. All that’s left is to be one of the daily 55 and to try to mend the pieces.