Legislator wants ski helmets required

ALBANY - Two days after a Long Island teenager was killed while skiing upstate, a Brooklyn assemblyman wants to make New York the first state in the nation to mandate helmets on the slopes.

Authorities say Erin Malloy-McArdle, 18, was not wearing a helmet when she crashed into a tree Sunday morning at Windham Mountain Ski Resort, about 160 miles north of Long Island. The North Bellmore teen died later of "extensive head injuries" at Columbia Memorial Hospital in Hudson, New York State Police said.

Felix Ortiz (D-Brooklyn) said Malloy-McArdle's death prompted him to reintroduce for the 12th straight year a bill requiring ski helmets.

"If she had a helmet, probably she would have had an opportunity to be alive today," Ortiz told Newsday Tuesday.

Malloy-McArdle's family declined to comment Tuesday. A friend, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Malloy-McArdle was having a birthday celebration at the ski resort and was staying with a relative who lived nearby.

Her family "is completely devastated," the friend said.

If enacted, the law would also require ski resorts to make helmets available and provide injury-prevention education to skiers at a reasonable cost. Resorts would face fines for each skier caught by state parks and recreation officers without a helmet: $100 for a first offense, $200 for a second and so on.

Ortiz said his bill has no companion in the Senate.

Windham Mountain Ski Resort referred questions to Scott Brandi, president of Ski Areas of New York, a trade association. Brandi said Ortiz wrote a "poorly-worded bill" that could affect non-skiers and noted the industry supported a helmet mandate last year for children 14 and under. The measure failed to pass.

"I think it should be someone's choice whether they want to wear a helmet or not," Brandi said, adding Ortiz did not consult with the industry for his bill. "We can't have a bill that's going to handicap an industry because someone wants to create a nanny state."

Brian Rieger, director of the Sports Concussion Center at SUNY Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, said studies are "pretty conclusive" that helmets reduce the risk of head injuries while skiing and snowboarding.

"Strictly from a safety perspective, it makes sense," Rieger said of Ortiz's bill.

The National Ski Area Association said no state has a law requiring helmet use. California and New Jersey have considered similar measures for minors that have not become law.

Ortiz, a Puerto Rico native who said he has never been skiing, said the deaths of Michael Kennedy, son of Robert F. Kennedy, in 1997, and singer and California Rep. Sonny Bono in 1998 first inspired him to introduce the legislation.

Since those deaths, helmet usage has more than doubled to about 57 percent of all skiers and snowboarders in 2009 and 2010, according to the National Ski Area Association. Some ski resorts in the western United States choose to require helmets.