3 Unexpected Injury Hazards at Football Stadiums
When you go watch a football game, you expect the injuries to happen on the field of battle. After all, 300-pound men who can run 40 yards in less than five seconds are not charging down the field to hit you. Still, you may be surprised at the amount of football stadium injuries to befall fans.
Fan injuries can range from the comical to the tragic. And the source of injuries are usually not from where you would expect.
Here are our top three unexpected ways that a football fan can get injured while attending a game:
- Escalators/Stairs. Sliding down the handrail of escalator or stairwell is never a good idea. Too often, fans have been injured and killed when they tried to horse-around or show off on escalators. Most recently, a 45-year-old Houston Texans fan fell to his death when apparently trying to slide down a three-story handrail. To no surprise, alcohol is suspected to have been a factor in the deadly accident.
- Weather. When it's blistering hot, you can get blisters on your bum. And when it's freezing cold, well, ice can come crashing down on your head. In the past several years, injuries related to both hot and cold have occurred at Cowboys Stadium. In the summer of 2010, a woman says that she suffered third degree burns and required a skin graft when she sat on a scalding hot bench outside the football stadium. And in 2011, ice and snow apparently fell off the dome of the stadium onto visiting fans below.
- Fan(atics). Probably the most dangerous thing you'll encounter at a football game is other fans. Fan is short for fanatic (see Oakland Raider fan) and you could get verbally abused or beat up for wearing the wrong color jersey. And when alcohol is at play, you could get verbally harassed or beat up even when wearing the right color jersey.
Attending a football game is generally a fun event. However, you also have to be careful as you're typically dealing with large crowds and large quantities of alcohol. If you have been injured while attending a game, you may want to talk to a personal injury attorney to help determine if you can recover damages.
Related Resources:
- Golfer Sues Over Bird Attack on Course (FindLaw's Injured)
- HS Football Coach's Extreme Practice Gets Him Sued (FindLaw's Injured)
- NJ Little Leaguer Gets $14.5M for Baseball Injury (FindLaw's Injured)
