http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/17/sports/othersports/17SKII.html

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This holiday weekend, one of the busiest in the snow sports industry, is the beginning of National Safety Awareness Week, an annual initiative encouraging ski areas to broaden their safety education. The safety awareness week was started in 1999, after the high-profile deaths on skis of Michael Kennedy and Sonny Bono.
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At Wachusett, knowing all seven items of the code has won someone new skis, a new snowboard or a free season pass right on the spot twice every year since 1997, when Wachusett first began this kind of quizzing.
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Many areas, including New Hampshire's Waterville Valley and Bromley in Vermont, are discounting lift tickets by $5 this week for people buying lift tickets while wearing a helmet.
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Knowing is certainly great and a starting point. However, most ski areas lack the necessary enforcement. For example:

1. Getting off a lift (any lift) or rounding a blind curve on a black run at high speed and finding a group of boarders, all in one line, obstructing the way.

2. Entire families of skiers chatting away in the mioddle of a run

3. Getting hit from behind by an out-of-control snowplower way over his head in a run that he souldn't be in

These are all factors that are easy to overcome with consciousness buiding AND just basic enforcement on the part of ski areas.

[This message has been edited by lbotta (edited 01-21-2002).]