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Sledding athletes are taking their lives

nytimes.com

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Re: Sledding athletes are taking their lives

#91

Post by raverbashing »

ehnto wrote: post #67
mam2 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like r/imsosmart ... a simple low pass filter would be sufficient to negate the effects you talk about

Have you used a helmet before? They don't track the heads movement very well. It's not that they lag behind or anything, they just move in completely different directions willy nilly. Even tight ones will have much sharper acceleration changes as they bounce around. I regularly wear a full face helmet with tight fitment and straps and it is moving way more than my head is. Is that notsosmart enough?

It would depend on the material on the helmet, some are softer, some are more rigid.

Yes it does correlate directly, as in, a high acceleration will correspond to a high acceleration (maybe lower intensity, maybe low-passed in frequency) but it is a direct correlation

Yes it would be better to measure internal accelerations, but I wouldn't feel comfortable wearing a helmet that's being subject to 80G's

Re: Sledding athletes are taking their lives

#93

Post by watwut »

matz1 wrote: post #22
gnramires wrote: post #19

This seems totally unacceptable. We should stop having this sport in the Olympics (implicitly supporting this madness) -- of course athletes are free to do as they chose, but we cannot encourage such pointless self-destruction and misery. An alternative to save the sport is completely redesign it to limit maximum accelerations. Usually injuries follow power laws so I doubt even that much reduction would be necessary…

>pointless self-destruction and misery. Maybe its pointless for you, fair enough but it can be meaningfull for other people, i myself think it's interesting.

When the sport is on Olympic and we encourage people to push themselves to maximum or encourage kids to pick it up, then it is not anymore about individual feeling from risk.

It is risk taken to earn.

Re: Sledding athletes are taking their lives

#94

Post by stareatgoats »

Our culture is rife with such, arenas where (mostly young) people put their life and health at risk for the merriment of the couch potatoes that make up the bulk of the public.

We can't outlaw it as long as there are people who rely on it for their livelihood, and large swathes of the populace are insensitive to the sufferings of strangers to the point of enjoying it, immensely.

Re: Sledding athletes are taking their lives

#96

Post by sbierwagen »

matz1 wrote: post #22
gnramires wrote: post #19

This seems totally unacceptable. We should stop having this sport in the Olympics (implicitly supporting this madness) -- of course athletes are free to do as they chose, but we cannot encourage such pointless self-destruction and misery. An alternative to save the sport is completely redesign it to limit maximum accelerations. Usually injuries follow power laws so I doubt even that much reduction would be necessary…

>pointless self-destruction and misery. Maybe its pointless for you, fair enough but it can be meaningfull for other people, i myself think it's interesting.

https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/one-mans...

>Many have poured scorn on Curry’s venture, particularly since it doesn’t have a charitable component. “This is the most pathetic waste of man hours that could have been used for good that I’ve seen in a long time,” one typical YouTube comment says. On the forum where he first heard about Dick Tree’s idea, Curry posted a spirited, if nihilistic, rebuttal. “To say that our lives are pointless and our achievements meaningless is to state the obvious,” he wrote. “No matter how grand our achievements or how broad their scope, time turns all to dust and death destroys all memory. But that does not mean we cannot ascribe our own meaning to what we do.”

Re: Sledding athletes are taking their lives

#97

Post by UweSchmidt »

stareatgoats wrote: post #94

Our culture is rife with such, arenas where (mostly young) people put their life and health at risk for the merriment of the couch potatoes that make up the bulk of the public. We can't outlaw it as long as there are people who rely on it for their livelihood, and large swathes of the populace are insensitive to the sufferings of strangers to the point of enjoying it, immensely.

I don't think people would willingly sacrifice other people's life and health; it's just generally difficult to

- understand long term consequences

- understand risk

- relate to other people's struggles

- work against financial interests (as you mentioned)

Given enough information we can outlaw activities, and in the case of sledding, simply taking it out of the Olympic Games would probably put an end to the sport.

Not sure what to do about my beloved NFL though.

Re: Sledding athletes are taking their lives

#98

Post by nabla9 »

TBI seem to have huge consequences that are not connected to the TBI.

In the US 2% of the general population is arrested annually. Of those who have had TBI roughly third. A similar one-third rate was found in a community sample of children and adolescents with TBI. In death row inmates it's even more common to have received TBI in childhood.

https://www.brainline.org/article/traumatic-brain-injury-pri...

https://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/21/arts/damaged-brains-and-t...

Re: Sledding athletes are taking their lives

#100

Post by 082349872349872 »

jbverschoor wrote: post #81
onion2k wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's nonsense. We can assess risks and determine the probability of injuries and the severity of them, and issue bans accordingly. "If we ban X then W, Y and Z are next" is just fearmongering. There's no reason why we can't ban something without banning other things that are much less dangerous. Most "slippery slope" arguments are so obviously fallacious I'm surprised people still try to use them.

Horseback riding Is super dangerous

Equestrians are the anti-gymnasts, being among the oldest olympians. Consider Ian Millar's 10 olympic appearances.

(The longer one does it, the safer it gets. A local hospital's emergency room statistics showed the first 200 hours are the most dangerous, declining thereafter.)

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