KEY POINTS:
The parents of Keegan Straight should be proud that in the midst of coping with their 9-year-old son's fatal accident on his new dirt bike, they urged parents not to stop their "kids from being kids" and to carry on biking.
In spite of doing everything right - their boy was experienced beyond his years, supervised by adults, wearing the correct protection, including a helmet - he crashed in the wrong place at the wrong time and died.
Accidents do happen through nobody's fault, despite every safety check. But usually parents, consumed with guilt and grief, call publicly for tighter regulations - even a ban - on whatever risk-taking has led to their personal tragedy.
Thus we must now all wear cycle helmets on pushbikes, including children with trainer wheels. With the increasing popularity of skateboarding, including motorised skateboards, will this be targeted next?
Go to any beach and you'd be forgiven for thinking you'd returned to the early 20th century when, for modesty reasons, all flesh was covered.
Today, children's skin must not see a glimpse of the sun, unless parents want to brave the judgmental stares of over-protective adults who can't mind their own businesses.
I'm a melanoma survivor, so I know it's no fun to suffer from this disease, but a recent spokesman for the Cancer Society, who pronounced "there is no such thing as a healthy tan", is plainly wrong.
If sunshine was the sole cause of melanoma, how come the entire population over the age of 50 is not suffering from this cancer?
Sensible protection - sunscreen and a hat - is fine but paranoia has brought us to the situation where some young adults risk suffering from vitamin D deficiency through insufficient exposure to sunlight.
Similarly, the fashion for "organic" non-iodised salt, bought by "Worried Well" middle-class parents, means otherwise healthy children are in danger of developing goitre problems.
But I digress. Taking risks is part of life and life itself is life-threatening. Take one form of risk away from kids and they'll seek another.
As farm children, my unsupervised brother and I made trolleys out of apple boxes nailed to a plank, with a piece of wood across the front on which we attached small pram wheels.
We had large pram wheels at the back for extra speed and a piece of rope to steer.
We'd haul it up the top of the road then career recklessly down the steepest incline until the inevitable crash ensued - pram wheels hitting large stones don't make for controllable steering and there's nothing like sliding along a metal road on your naked thighs to introduce you to pain.
Days were spent picking small gravel out of our legs, but that didn't stop us going back for more.
As adults, we grit out teeth and silently wish we could strangle boy-racers, but if these modern-day nuisances didn't experience speed-induced adrenaline rushes when they were children, I can understand why they want to challenge authority - and get up everyone's noses - today.
I filed this column from somewhere in the South Island, where I'm with friends, 4WD-trekking through the rough and beautiful hinterland. Last Tuesday, I thought I wouldn't live to write another word.
Led by local 4WD guide Mike Powell, we drove to the summit of Birch Topping, 1032m high. Ascending was scary enough, but coming down I started hyperventilating with terror.
If we slid off the track and bounced down the mountain, I could envisage the headline: "Eminent QC killed, along with wife [who she? Ed.]"
Shaking their heads, readers would say we're crazy and deserved to die, driving up the side of a mountain, mutter, mutter. But the danger's more than half the fun, and when it's over, there's an exhilarating sense of facing down your vertigo.
Schools take pupils on outdoor pursuits for the same reason but, as much as teachers try to encourage self-confidence through boldness, over-anxious parents find ways to wrap their kids in security blankets.
Kids just wanna have fun but we're spoiling it all. I know it's not acceptable to say all this in a summer when people have drowned all over the country, but how many of these fatalities are the result of Kiwis never learning to survive in the water?
Once, every child learned to swim, and lifesave, at school but health and safety regulations have put paid to that. Cash-strapped schools can't afford swimming pools' upkeep, so they're filling them in.
Bureaucrats force us to comply with stupid OSH regulations and, so long as every box is ticked, they're happy. If non-swimmers drown as a result, well, that's the problem of another government department.
The Department of Labour will classify Keegan's death as a farm workplace accident and tighten the rural OSH screws even further. Their actions won't save a single life, but they will ensure the lives of scores of kids are risk-free, bland and far removed from the Kiwi can-do mentality.
