There are playground safety standards in place for publicly accessible playgrounds within the US and Canada, which apply to any playground where kids are likely to be able to access it at a local community park, school, church, synagogue, mosque, amusement park or restaurant. Unfortunately, most of these playgrounds are not kept up with and maintained in a way necessary to provide the proper injury protection safety required. 

A lot of this is more frequent in regions and locations where there are limited financial resources available, or ignorance about the steps needed to insure a playground remains a safe environment for children to play while learning valuable social and problem solving skills. Old equipment and surfacing can and does tend to deteriorate over time, with the window of opportunity to properly repair and remedy these problems sometimes limited in time, before the damage has advanced to the point to where something can no longer be repaired and needs to be replaced. 

All of this results in a lot of playgrounds either wasting away due to neglect, or conducting improper repairs that are not safe and can actually create a situation where more harm than good could be likely. A comprehensive playground safety plan helps to avoid this, yet it has to be properly implemented and followed to provide the intended result of greater playground safety for all children.