Age appropriate equipment is required to maintain proper safety, and obviously we wouldn't expect an 18-month old toddler to handle a playground climbing apparatus, nor would some simple colorful tires embedded and barely extending above the ground be of interest to a 10-year-old. Post the age range for each playground, so people can be properly informed, designating separate play areas within the same playground for different age groups. There are different abilities, so it's often best to have separate play areas within the same playground. 

Here it's vital to understand the NHTSA, whose crash test data was used to establish the currently unsafe safety standards of 1,000 HIC and 200 G's for playground safety surfacing, conducted new tests in 1999 that resulted in updated thresholds within their March 2000 report. It clearly stated that TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury) or death was likely at only 390 HIC for ages 3 and younger, 570 HIC for ages 4-5, and 700 HIC for ages 6 through adult. So, this establishes the current playground fall safety standards of 1,000 HIC are indeed unsafe. 

WIth that in mind, the selection of equipment no taller than 4 feet for toddlers and safety surfacing providing lower than 390 HIC scores, is advisable. Likewise for a kindergarten play area, still not to exceed 4 feet in maximum height, where the surfacing should not exceed 570 HIC, and so on for a gradeschool playground no greater than 8 feet in height with 700 HIC fall safety surfacing. Choosing any apparatus of greater elevation or a surface higher than the respective maximum HIC thresholds of 390, 570 and 700 is just not a wise decision, based on the widely available plethora of information available. A good example of this is our founder's story published in 2014 at the online Playground magazine website, Are Our Playgrounds (and Industry-Related Fall Safety Standards) Really Safe?, and the link takes you to the story on SafestPlayground.com. 

While on that website, you can view gif diagrams of how different safety react to provide their related impact attenuation during a fall impact, using a depiction of what has long been a standard type ot testing device, that emulates a child's head impact. These also show what happens if an impact is at an angle, in addition to a straight vertical drop.