Fascinating insight about playground design.

However, I just want to put your and other reader's minds somewhat at ease about fall fatalities. I assume the construction fatalities are falls on to hard surfaces like metal or concrete. I recently learned, while reading the manual for a back yard swing set, that there are official tables of material depth to protect against fall height.

For example, to protect against a fall of up to 10 feet you could use 6 inches of recycled rubber or 9 inches of wood chips: https://www.cpsc.gov/s3fs-public/325.pdf (pdf)