I think we might see a lot of progress in this field in the next couple of decades, given the amount of people that have concussions and brain injuries.
The american attitude towards seat belts is amazing. The article describes him as a great guy, and mentions the belt only a single time, regardless of the fact that, while he did not hit anyone, that crass irresponsibility caused immeasurable injury to his family, as well as massive amounts of cost to the tax payer.
Your attitude towards Americans is amazing. A fascinating and engaging essay of thousands of words, focussing specifically on the remarkable recovery of one patient from a traumatic brain injury, is basically a jumping off point for you to lecture Americans.
Further, the basis for your generalization is off base. There was no seat belt sermon, because that is not what the story was about. He didn't include a three paragraph moralizing preamble about seat belts, not because stupid American attitudes, but rather because he's a good writer. That essay could be written, and you might have enjoyed it more, but it was not the article he was writing.
He did spend half a paragraph propping up the character of that patient on an emotional pedestal for the reader instead of saying something like:
"Dylan was a typical kid with some good sides, who ended up making a completely preventable mistake. Let's see where modern medicine got him despite of that."
There's indeed no need for a sermon, but acknowledging mistakes to be what they are is definitely called for.
And i continuously, in articles about belt-less accidents see a lack of that happening. And in the comments of articles i continuously see people think it completely fine to not wear belts. If that kind of attitude is not something worth commenting on then i don't know what is.
Coming from someone who's brother had the same injuries with a seatbelt, in near exact conditions, I'd tell you remain cautious in opening your mouth again. Should I also blame my brother for driving in icy conditions, or, the government for the roads not being made for these conditions? I bet you made the same sort of mistakes at his age, one too many drinks for getting in car, a lack of a seatbelt or even unsafe sex can cause the same anguish and cost to the 'tax payer'. Just because you didn't have any repercussions for your childish mistakes doesn't mean that everyone who has was pushing their luck every day of their life. Also, the passenger in my brothers accident wasn't wearing a seatbelt and was ejected from the car on impact and suffered minor injuries. Go figure.
You're telling me to put one individual's emotions over the good of the many. I don't buy into the culture of "trigger warnings".
> Should I also blame
Please don't engage in slippery slope arguments.
> I bet you made the same sort of mistakes
No, i didn't, not at that scale. I made mistakes, yes, but none of them come close in scale of long-term impact to drunk driving, seat-belt-less driving or unsafe sex. Simple matter of culture difference. My up-bringing was full of unvarnished explanations about the causation between mistakes and consequences, to the point that this is widely known humor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9z77oztO6UQ
Plus, you keep talking about things unrelated to what i said.
I'm concerned only with seat belts. "One too many drinks" is a thing that's entirely idiotic too, but it doesn't need to be mentioned because the legal repercussions for it in the usa are already huge, as well as the social repercussions. The fact that eschewing seat belts is not treated with similar scorn is the baffling bit here. Nothing else.
Good to see you realise your slippery slope argument to begin with. My arguments were as ridiculous as yours sounded as well as invalid. The contribution here was the growing separation of diagnoses in MCS and VPS which to some of us has been a life long battle as pro-euthanasia often use the argument people who are VPS aren't aware so their is no moral obligation to consider the impact on their life. I went through a high court case where they used MCS to avoid legal settlements to my family when the indicators used by the consultant in this case clearly work towards a new way of diagnosis so we can seek independent advice
After all, risk of head injury in the type of cars young people drive isn't always related to using their safety features. The seatbelt was assumed to cause the most damage in the collision as it caught him and threw his head back into the B pillar.
Your post looks like this part is a wayward mispaste of something unrelated: "The contribution [...] independent advice"
For what remains: First off, i have not realized any sort of slippery slope i am on. I may not have done the best job in explaining my arguments, but i believe them to be sound. I remarked only on your construction of one.
As for your brother, sorry to hear that. It sounds like the car he was driving should not have been on the streets. In germany we have an institution vested with the power to inspect and verify the safety of a vehicle, and any individual vehicle which does not have an unexpired verification mark from them is illegal to drive in public traffic.
I don't know if you have such a thing in the USA or not, or whether whatever is doing that job is just much too lenient.
> as well as massive amounts of cost to the tax payer
I just have a problem with this statement because this sounds like just-world attitude. I think there is still a meaning that people do chime in money for the society as a whole (but I am not in favor of socialism myself, and I am not happy about having at least 1/4 of my paycheck deducted for a dozen of tax reasons). If we were to argue about tax payer money, I think everyone is sharing some dimes, even if his whole family has been paying taxes for others' mistakes.
Is there a country where seat belt is mandatory in every seat in the car? A lot of private shutel buses don't even come with seat belt when I look for one!
Busses are designed in a way in which adding seat belts would be more harmful. It has to do with a combination of the seat in front of the person, how the seat they are sitting in is made to be very strong but collapse forward where the front seat acts as an airbag of sorts.
There is a How it's Made episode on school busses that explains it in short detail.
I can say, in my area, public transportation has never had sear lets, and do not to this day. The school busses are still all very old, and I doubt they have them. They did not when i went to school, and I don't see retrofitting them without full seat replacements as they are designed to break away and assume you are not connected to the seat.
Oh i have no issue with the money being paid. I'm proudly socialist, and i'm glad that such a thing exists.
That said, i do consider it the duty of any civilized country to make seatbelts mandatory where reasonable, in order to protect the country as a whole against the stupidity of a few, and that with almost no cost to boot.
I don't know about country wide, but Calif. has mandatory seat belts, I think $50 a ticket, and doubling each time thereafter. Though I have gotten about 5 seat belt tickets when the law first went into effect and it was always just 50.00 and does not affect your insurance or driving record. Things may have changed since then, that was a long time ago.
I don't personally agree with them, there are cases where not wearing them save you. Mt brother was tossed out of the windshield instead of getting crumpled into a small box of metal that was once a car.
Motorcyclists would be hitching a ride on a death trap if they were strapped, whereas, even at 50+ you can, if practiced, sort of roll out of a fall and you just slide on the pavement. You may get a little banged up but rarely a trip to the hospital. Impact another car or object and you are probably screwed, but I would say no more screwed than being in a car and getting tossed out the window at 50+mph.
I always felt it my decision to handle my life how I desire, so if I want to die and don't care, I can not wear my seatbelt, if they catch me, I am happy to pay the fine.
I have since long ago just started wearing it as every car I get into I get told to put it on, so it has just become habit. But I hate the way they ride on my neck, tighten on my stomach, and are generally restricting and uncomfortable. I spend more time adjusting with my eyes off the road than is probably safe, and this can't be don't pre-driving as belts tend to creep up on my like a loose pair of underwear :)
I think it's a bit much to draw any wider conclusions, and who knows who paid for the healthcare? But you're quite right, overall, about this particular incident - this guy was a stupid twat, and his family suffered the consequences.
Among the bigger first world nations the USA has an extremely low rate of seat belt usage. ( http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sicherheitsgurt#Anlegequoten ) And from comments on previous articles this is not even frowned upon, although this varies from region to region, and in general people from places like Portland seem to consider this behavior insane.
> He's not a "good guy" because he didn't wear a seatbealt?
Yes. He was a danger to himself, as evidenced; could've been a physical danger to others; and actively was a danger to others, economically. All of this because of a conscious decision. Where i am from he would have been actively shunned, and berated from anyone close enough to him to care.
You have no evidence that the seat belt would have helped (it was a side impact, and the driver's side door was caved in). You have no evidence that his treatment was funded by taxpayer money and not by insurance. You've made no explanation of how he could have been "a physical danger to others." But aside from that:
> Where i am from he would have been actively shunned, and berated from anyone close enough to him to care.
You know what? I don't believe you. I don't believe that there is anywhere on this sorry planet that a reasonable person would say "You know, Bob was a good friend of mine. A solid guy. But when I heard about that car accident, I marched right into his hospital room and told him to get out of my life. Life's to short to coddle people who make a mistake."
Also, given that you complain about "American attitudes," it seems awfully American of you to blame a person in distress for consuming public resources set aside specifically to help people in distress. You're a short step from channeling Reagan ranting about "welfare queens."
> You have no evidence that the seat belt would have helped
There's no evidence either that it wouldn't have helped, but a good chance of it having potentionally helped and a vanishingly small chance of it being detrimental. The article says he hit a patch of ice. It's entirely possible that that momentary loss of control would have been dampened by a belt keeping him straight in his seat so he could've avoided the obstacle.
> You have no evidence that his treatment was funded by taxpayer money and not by insurance.
True. I admittedly do come from a society where in almost all cases tax payer money would be involved in the medical treatment and i did jump to a conclusion there.
> You've made no explanation of how he could have been "a physical danger to others."
There was no need to since it's utterly obvious. Lack of belt excacerbates any kind of loss of control in which the driver is subjected to forces moving them about in the seat, by making any further control attempts much more difficult; thus increasing chances of further uncontrolled collisions with other traffic participants.
> I don't believe [...] I marched right into his hospital room
Now you're jumping to conclusions. The kind of thing you're saying is obviously unreasonable so i did not consider it worthy mentioning that i was not talking about that. I was talking about what would have happened throughout his life before that.
> You're a short step from channeling Reagan ranting about "welfare queens."
