Ski on asphalt: the dangerous game of habaneros children in rain

Havana/When it rains on Havana, the city becomes a scenario as dramatic as dangerous. Throughout avenues and flooded streets, groups of children and adolescents cling to moving vehicles to slide on the asphalt, as if they were practicing a kind of “urban skiing.” Sometimes they are attached to guaguas, even load trucks. Some drivers stop and rebuke the minors. Others, on the other hand, accelerate or zigzagen with punitive intention or, perhaps, in search of an irresponsible dose of adrenaline. Everything seems part of a game, until the tragedy is imposed.

This newspaper witnessed a recent scene in white. Under an intense rain, a group of children – some not over ten years old – clung to a car to skid. The driver stopped, went down and rebuked them. Minutes later a police patrol passed. Several cars Pitaron, calling the attention of the agents, but they continued long without intervening.

Although the practice has been denounced in social networks and captured in videos by independent media, there are no official statistics that document fatal accidents directly associated with this behavior. However, the general panorama is alarming. In 2024 alone, Cuba reported more than 7,500 traffic accidents, with 634 deaths. Children and adolescents are among the most vulnerable groups.

In April 2025, the National Safety of Children’s Road Safety was held in Havana under the slogan “Free the risks, it reaches your destination”, with the participation of the Ministry of Interior, the Cuban Society of Pediatrics and UNICEF. There worrying figures were discussed and educational workshops aimed at adolescents were organized. But outside the enclosure, in the streets, everything remains the same. Institutional initiatives seem to focus more on ideological campaigns or to combat drug use, leaving phenomena like this, as visible as ignored.

Similar practices have been registered in other countries under the name of Skitchingwhich describes the action of holding a vehicle while it goes on skates or skateboard. Although it does not happen in rain conditions, the risk is analogous: speed, lack of protection, and traffic. In the United States and Australia, where this practice has caused multiple accidents, even deaths, has been prohibited in several states. In Ohio, after the death of a 16 -year -old teenager who fell from his skateboard while he was towed, a specific law was proposed to sanction this modality.

In Cuba, poverty prevents many children from having access to skateboards. It is the rain, paradoxically, that fills that emptiness. But the Havana urban context only multiplies the danger: streets full of garbage, pavement full of potholes, swallows without a lid, old vehicles without adequate brakes. All configures a lethal scenario. In February 2025, a 13 -year -old boy died after falling into an open sewer during an flood. It was dragged by the current before the sight of the neighbors. His death caused a wave of complaints on social networks about tragantes without a lid in neighborhoods such as Luyanó or El Vedado, where other people have been injured by similar falls.

Despite the evidence and the growing citizen concern, no official entity has launched a campaign aimed specifically to this behavior. Complaints arise mainly from users on social networks, from Facebook to neighborhood groups, which also warn about the absence of adult surveillance, institutional neglect and the deterioration of infrastructure as factors that enhance the risks. The country’s own statistics recognize that pedestrian outrage remains the third cause of death in traffic accidents, but there are no concrete measures to address this type of street practices.

It is not necessary to wait for a major tragedy to take action. What some consider a visual eccentricity of Havana downpours is, in fact, a time bomb that compromises the lives of minors. While the city sinks between potholes, rains and abandonment, children continue to cling – literally – at risk.