The Climb Was the Safety Feature

Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A rule about playgrounds came up in a conversation this weekend (three kids; I spend a fair share of my weekends at playgrounds), and I haven’t been able to put it down since.

The standard for playground equipment in Norway and the rest of Europe is EN 1176, which our own forskrift om sikkerhet ved lekeplassutstyr from 1996 accepts as proof of compliance, and which DSB will point you to if you ask. It sizes the fall protection on a raised platform by height, which you’d expect, and by how easy the platform is to reach, which you might not expect. A deck that a toddler can walk straight up a ramp onto needs a full barrier from 60 centimeters up. The same deck, at the same height, reached only by a climbing net, can get away with a guardrail until it’s two meters off the ground. The drop is identical. What changed is who can get up there.

Playgrounds on cekrem.github.io

The Climb Was the Safety Feature