You haven’t lived until you’ve either drowned in a frozen lake!
If you go driving, you could die. You don’t need to do it, so why bother?
If you play golf, you can get hit in the head with a ball and die. But you do it anyway.
If you step into your bathtub, you are stepping into the most dangerous place in your house. You don’t really need to (you could, after all, simply take showers in a shower stall), but I bet you don’t think that way.
There are plenty of activities, leisure and not, that carry much greater risk of death than ice skating on a pond. Give it a rest.
I’ve fallen though the ice. It is not ness fatal. One time I was about halfway between knee and waste deep. The other time a bunch of us kids were playing in a widening in a creek. (maybe 50 x 40 feet) The ice was broken up and so you could hop from chunk to chunk (and pole chunks about). I stepped right into a place where there were no chunks.
I was wet and cold, but was able to walk home (1/2 a mile or so). Altho I made it out OK, I do not recommend this to others!
Brian
Balls of steel there.
I’ve lived all my life along Lake Michigan, and respect it greatly. Even so, I can generally figure out some safe limits for walking on the ice. It involves a number of factors, including how many days in a row it’s been freezing, how high the ice rim has built up at the water’s edge, whether the ice has been shattered by a storm recently, whether the local creek is still flowing into the lake, how far the ice goes out, whether my dog is willing to go on the ice, etc. etc. etc.
Frankly, I won’t go to the edge of the ice if the water at the edge is more than two feet deep, or if the edge of the ice is more than a foot above the water. I’ll never go onto ice on Lake Michigan that’s on water deeper than that.
Better stay away from Ottawa, then! We skate on the canal!
As for Lake Michigan ice, I’m (unsurprisingly) with Qadgop. I’ve ventured out pretty far onto the lake ice, but only when it’s been cold for a long time… and I tend to stick to the large ice mountains whenever possible, as that way I know there’s at least several FEET of ice between me and the water.
I’m into kite telemark skiing. My big traction kites tow me on my skis for mile after mile. It’s quite a wonderful activity. Frozen lakes make it possible.
Knowledge, experience, and conservative judgment make for safe excursions onto ice. Here is a very good post on the Canoe Country Bulletin Board by Pete Zebich that covers the essentials of travelling on ice: http://www.network54.com/Forum/9927/message/1132284161/Staying+Dry%2C+Getting+Wet
Piles of loose lake ice can be tricky. Even when the surface ice is a foot thick, pressure ridges can open, and leave nothing but a snowpile between you and icy lake water. Personal experience tells me that lake Mendota (in Madison) is big enough to have treacherous ice ridges, lake Michigan is probably far worse.
It’s safe if you think before you skate. You can tell if the ice is to the piont of totaly safe without difficulty. The dead people are the idiots or fools that like to court danger until the coin is due. All the official skating areas have signs that say when the ice is safe if you can’t tell. Most of these local sites are cleared by plow trucks before they get the all clear, and the parks department checks the ice daily. To be safe you sould only go out with an experienced person until you learn what ice is not safe to ice fish on.
Oh yeah, I definitely know about those. Big fun! But I test my footing before putting my weight on it, and I don’t go beyond the shoreline alone.
BTW, there are significant differences between ice on the shore of Lake Michigan and ice on the shore of one of your puny inland lakes. 
Specifically, the waves on the lake toss up chunks of ice to form the ice mountains… and they can get HUGE if the waves are rough and the temperature’s right, to the point where falling OFF of one onto solid ice becomes much more of a concern than breaking through the ice.
I grew up a few miles from Lake Michigan and I can’t remember anyone stupid enough to walk out on the ice. As elfbabe noted, you basically have a bunch of little ice hills washed up on shore. To even get to flat ice, you need to go up and down those piles of ice. That’s hard enough as it is, and you really have no idea what’s on the other side.
For ponds/rivers, you get the biggest guy around and have him walk carefully, watching and listening for cracking. Common sense is the key- it has to be below freezing for weeks before a sensible person even tests the ice. If Wisconsin has been anything like Michigan in November, it simply hasn’t been cold enough long enough to even try.
Growing up in northern Ohio, the local ponds would freeze over, but we didn’t start walking on them until it was at least January. When my friend’s dad deemed his pond ‘safe’ the ice was usually 5-6 inches thick…it was like walking on concrete. By that time, it would take a huge amount of pointed weight to break the surface. It was usually only safe in January and February…by March, we stopped going out there. Too much danger.