Keep your seatbelt buckled, even when the sign is off.
Neither has much to do with being risk-takers, although you might be right that a higher arousal threshold desensitized them to risk. It may also be that people used to winning, on some level, expect to keep winning. Either way, we're not just talking about Fortune 500 C-levels here, plenty of people with loads of money and power did nothing to get it, and have no special qualities associated with that ability to get it.
They still often have bad outcomes.
Despite the number of people who go through cancer, it's rarely brought up in polite conversation. It wasn't until I got it myself that all manner of people came out of the woodwork to talk about how someone they knew had gone through the same thing. Many of them have been using concentrated cannabis oil (which my brother also said I should do). After reading a couple of studies, it does have a positive effect on cancers, but the level depends on the type of cancer. In the case of colorectal cancers, it seems to stop the cancer but not kill it, most likely due to the CB1 receptors in the tumour being hypermethylated (as in, the gene isn't being expressed). The level of evidence isn't that of a systematic review, but it's enough for me to give it a go and certainly enough for further research. Unfortunately, the two sides of the argument seem to think that it either doesn't do anything (there's not enough evidence) or that the medical establishment is just a ruse and that cannabis cures all cancer. I prefer to use my critical thinking skills and get the best of both worlds.
I can understand why people might indulge in quackery - I've got surgeons telling me they need to cut out my rectum and part of my lower intestine, even with a full pathological response. Possible side effects are shitting 3 times a day (not so bad) and erectile dysfunction (worse). This has been the gold standard of care for 15+ years now, and the surgeons don't give a fuck about my quality of life, they just want to cut. There's mounting evidence to show this might be overtreating the problem, and that you can get away with a heavier dose of chemo with the radiotherapy. Frankly, I don't want anyone cutting anything out of me unless it's absolutely necessary, but it's hard finding an advocate who would be willing to tell the surgeons to fuck off.
I'm lucky, in this sense: I understand the research and I have access to upcoming studies (I used to work at an institute that did systematic reviews of evidence). Most people won't have such advantages, so they just sit there and do what the surgeons tell them to do, as if they don't have any options other than no treatment. If that's all the choice I got, I'd be wary of the medical establishment too.
Steve Jobs got pancreatic cancer, IIRC. Which has a pretty low survival rate, per wikipedia 5% after 5 years from initial diagnosis. So most likely he'd be dead by now no matter what he would have done.
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/02/1...
http://health.usnews.com/health-news/articles/2013/02/07/ash...
Pedantic, but. Families with $1m net worth are largely late-middle-aged (newly retired) salary workers with paid-off mortgages on their median-priced houses in suburban flyover country, plus ~40 years of 401k contributions and capital gains.
They drive Toyotas and fly economy for their 1-2 yearly vacations because that's what left when the 15% 401k contribution, mortgage on 3bd house, children's educations, and groceries are paid for.
Think teachers, bureaucrats, journalists (pre-internet), scientists, engineers, doctors, and lawyers, in roughly ascending order. What you'd call the upper middle class.
There are about 8 million millionaire households in the US as of 2016 [0].
Private jets are more a feature of the Fortune 500 CEO Davos-going class. $1 million in income maybe, very different from $1m net worth. It's not generally useful to conflate these wildly different wealth levels under the same terminology.
As a result, I try to call out abuse of the term millionaire whenever I see it.
It's an incredible feeling, lots of fun, and if you have to walk up the mountain first it's a nice nature experience as well. Yes, it can be dangerous, but it's a risk you can manage yourself. So it doesn't have to be very dangerous if one follows common advice and also don't ski where there is a high risk of avalanches.
Probably what Michael Schumacher thought to himself, back when he could still think.
Case in point: Chapecoense.
No?
To us it is the same, but to the person with a private jet, there is a substantial difference.
Still, as far as I know, the safety of standard commercial airlines is much better than both charters and private planes. Without the regulators to monitor the maintenance and pilots, it turns out people take more risks.
- Each year, approximately 58 people in the United States are injured by turbulence while not wearing their seat belts.
- From 1980 through 2008, U.S. air carriers had 234 turbulence accidents, resulting in 298 serious injuries and three fatalities.
- Of the 298 serious injuries, 184 involved flight attendants and 114 involved passengers.
- At least two of the three fatalities involved passengers who were not wearing their seat belts while the seat belt sign was illuminated.
- Generally, two-thirds of turbulence-related accidents occur at or above 30,000 feet.
Edit: These stats do not include general aviation (private jets, etc...).
Making a quick guess that from '80-'08, Americans average 1MM flights/day, then odds of serious injury are ~1 in 95,000.
Odds of death are 1 in 9,333,333.
Assuming the possibility of taking 3 'average' flights/day, then you'd need to board flights non-stop for 8,523 years to die, on average. 88 years to be injured.
[1] - https://www.quora.com/How-many-people-fly-domestically-in-th...
Note that when looking at airline safety, you'll get misleading numbers if you go back too far. Safety has improved remarkably in the past couple of decades. In the 80s and 90s, a couple hundred fatalities per year was about typical in the US. In the last decade, the typical number is zero. There hasn't been a fatal crash involving an American airliner for over eight years, and you have to go all the way back to 2001 (November, not September) to find one involving a major American airline. Even if you include foreign airlines operating in the US, that only adds one fatal crash and three deaths to the recent total.
So yeah, there really isn't any one "the safety of general aviation." It's a huge spectrum.
Another challenge is reporting. The FAA knows exactly how many flights and how many hours the airlines did last year, but GA activity is much harder to gauge. It's hard to figure out what safety looks like when you don't have a good figure for the denominator.
It was hard to find good stats with quick googling, but this old source[1] suggests that blood clots during flights are the greater risk, killing at least 2,000 people in the UK per year. I suspect that keeping a seatbelt off while cruising lets you shift around more mid flight and would give a small decrease in the frequency of clots.
I guess it depends on (the size of) your aircraft.
In other parts of the world (with more sense) such as Europe, Australia, we're conditioned to always using it due to strict enforcement and as such it's not such a novelty.
NHTSA provides substantial grant funding for traffic-safety enforcement, conditional on the department's enforcement statistics for a particular set of safety-oriented violations, especially seatbelts. The brass encouraged us to take a minimum number of enforcement actions to maximize the chances of having the grant expanded. (It paid a for substantial chunk of our salaries and offered regular 1 1/2 overtime.)
Pretty much every traffic officer I know could find at least 5 reasons to pull over any car, no matter how scrupulous the driver.
A more likely explanation is the severe underfunding and understaffing of prosecutor's offices and state court systems. Most prosecuting attorneys are responsible for carrying hundreds of cases at a time-- they have no choice but to prioritize, aggressively.
(I don't think it alters your point at all because you're still talking about constrained resources and a need to prioritize, but in traffic court in my village the PD is the prosecutor; my negotiation was with a police officer and he in turn represented the results of that negotiation to the judge. Same with everyone else's tickets. Only more serious stuff involved the town prosecutor - he was handling code violations, underage drinking, and a DUI.)
The town prosecutor was handling the only DUI that day. (A town PD officer handled the lesser offenses, including mine.)
Fun fact: At the police department, we actually had the seatbelt alarms for all of our cruisers disconnected. Being able to get quickly in and out without the seatbelts snagging on our gear was the priority at low speed. Most officers are trained to unbuckle and be ready to exit the vehicle before coming to a full stop (technically illegal.)
There is a balance between annoyance and utility. I personally have no problem wearing a belt for the entire flight, including while sleeping. But I'm not to dismayed by those who leave it off, walk around the cabin, go hang out near the cocktail lounge in business class, etc...
Your skull is vulnerable to impacts at speeds that are relatively low compared to full-speed cycling.
On a few occasions I've witnessed a cyclist panic and wobble after being passed far too closely by a car traveling far too fast for such a manoeuvre. This has caused such cyclists to wobble, inadvertently clip the curb and mount the pavement, fall off sideways and subsequently strike their head on a nearby wall whilst falling.
The resulting injury can be very harmful.
Another example of slow-speed head injury: off-road biking down a very steep incline with a loose surface. I've seen people fall and tumble at almost stationary speeds.
So yes you should wear a helmet while biking, but we should not make it mandatory.
In other counter-intuitive statistics about biking, passing at the red light is good for you.
"Rafi, how many of your friends have died in motorcycle accidents?"
"Pfft, nine. Buy NONE of them were from head trauma, they all died from massive spinal trauma."
Be honest... are you just playing the reference game, or do I need to be really worried?
And, pretty much 100% of the time I go snowboarding, I wear a helmet.
What I'm trying to surface (apparently poorly) is that life, to some degree, is about managing risks. And we often respond carte blanche scenarios with exactly the same response, regardless of whether it's proportionally required.
Cycling - on road, moving fast, around anything else moving fast, at all treacherous conditions - sure, yes wear a helmet. But, casual cycling on a nice day, protected path - probably not required.
Another area of proportional risk response - portable devices on planes. At one time, end of the world if you had one on during takeout (seriously, other passengers would freak out if they thought yours was on) - and then, all of a sudden - every airport/airline in the United States lets you read your kindle, play games on your phone. People realized their responses were not proportionate to the risk.
Regarding the law - it's illegal in Redwood City to ride on the sidewalk, but almost 100% of "Utility" cyclists (that is, people taking short trips who aren't decked out in "cyclist" gear) almost always ride on the sidewalk; and the police certainly did not make it a priority to ticket them - and given the density of police cars in Redwood City, any given cyclist traveling a few kilometers was likely to be seen by one, if not more police officers.
No, bicycling is fairly high-risk in general, like skiing, or any other sport that involves a human body travelling faster than the average set of legs can walk it around. Even just going around the block a few times there's always the chance of some random events leading to an unfortunate encounter with a tree.
Of course, it's not skydiving either. And life is a series of risks, I'm not saying don't do it.
I think the cost of wearing an aircraft seatbelt while you happen to be seated is rather lower than the cost of having to wear a bicycle helmet, though.
Well, they do. Better to be a goober with an unfractured skull, though.
Regarding helmet hair, I had a colleague who had the most amazing hair spikes (think coffee cup sized), who would very carefully put a cycle helmet on every day before cycling home.
I can't imagine fashion sense is much of a reason, that seems like a strawman argument commonly conjured up by helmet laws advocates.
What is this based on? My own intuition is that the risk is many times higher on a bike.
That said yeah if you're "wiping out" more than like once every few years you're doing something seriously wrong (or at least taking an unnecessary risk). I've only once had any kind of incident on my cycling commute.
Once I saw it, I had to slam on the brakes so hard my rear brake cable popped out of the handlebar, disabling the rear brake completely and I was putting full pressure on the front brake. I didn't have time to react and avoid going over the handlebars, and I hit my helmet on the pavement. (Thankfully, I did stop in time to avoid the truck hitting me).
Was I doing something seriously wrong? Yes -- I was riding a bike without a properly adjusted rear brake cable. However, this sort of mechanical issue (and any number of others) could happen to any riders who aren't much more hyper-diligent about maintenance than average.
Who knows if we'd even be having this conversation had I not been wearing a helmet that night.
From a public health perspective, evidence suggests making helmets mandatory is counter-productive, and so I don't support those laws. However, I still maintain that anyone who cycles without a helmet is fucking stupid.
Maybe we're all "fucking stupid", but by the stats someone cycling without a helmet is less stupid than someone driving, at all. There's this weird, disproportionate cultural obsession with helmets for cyclists and cyclists only.
https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/13379/cdc_13379_DS1.pdf (Table 10)
It's actually the reason why I don't use the bike share program, even though I have a station right next to my apartment building. I could ride it to/from the train station or the grocery store, but I'm paranoid about not wearing a helmet, and hauling the bulky thing around all day is a massive inconvenience.
Mandatory helmets protect cyclists from injury - but make cycling less popular. Fewer people cycling means they get less exercise and increase other health risks. On average it's a health benefit to cycle without a helmet, compared to driving - and of course people are still welcome to add helmets if they don't mind them.
I don't think one needs to be confined to the seat for the whole flight duration, but when sitting down, there is no good reason not to wear a belt either.
I kind of want the helmet-in-public fashion trend to kick in.
Hotter in summer, but they look cooler. ;-)
FWIW, I thought it was weird at first having to wear a helmet. I'm from the UK. Now, though, it just seems bizarre that I wouldn't. It's my skull! My brain is in there. It only takes one idiot, and knocking my head off concrete from 6ft up at even 10km/h sounds like a terrible idea. Anything that cushions the blow, even if that blow is unlikely, now seems like the most obvious idea in the world.
If the cops stop you (which they do, occasionally) and you are actually wearing a skate helmet, not rated for bike riding, that doesn't count as 'wearing a helmet' and you'll be fined.
(I'm sure the idea of being fined for wearing the wrong helmet will horrify some people but remember, that's the law here. The law also says you need a bell on your bike. It's rare, but the bike police do random stops and if you don't have a bell, strictly speaking, you'll be fined. Never happened to me, but it can.)
((Which, by the way - and sorry for the errata with the double-brackets - I actually support. I ride through central Melbourne. Pedestrians are a nightmare. Having a working bell is actually important. They cost $5. The law is a public service which, in this case, works. Get a bell.))
Kinetic energy is also the reason why the flight attendants try to lock as much as possible of the loose items to the overhead bins or under the chairs.
Having personally done a header over the handlebars onto my helmet, resulting in a dented helmet and an un-dented head: yes, I'd recommend it.
> anyone riding a bicycle,
> even if they aren't going at
> high-speed on road, should
> wear a helmet "just in case"
I'm probably heavily influenced by the fact that I live in one of these places (where helmets are a legal requirement).
All I could think while reading this is "yes, you definitely should always wear a helmet!!"
I recall seeing studies showing that helmet-laws generally coincided with low use of bicycles. Places where cycling is extremely common (like Denmark and Holland) never seem to have them, and it's uncommon to see cyclists using them unless they're doing something particularly dangerous (riding in traffic, off-road, etc).
Speed only makes a difference if your head hits something whilst moving at that speed. Or you can just fall off at a walking pace, and the acceleration between the top of your head to the ground is enough to kill you. Happened to a guy on the local trail a few years ago, as happens elsewhere as well.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-happens-when...
Also, it's not like they never have no idea which airplanes are around them until they visually see the airplane. They could turn on the sign earlier if they know earlier.
If your neurological integrity isn't worth some hours in a seat, I guess that's your choice to make though.
Uh, no? "an Airbus A380-800 was observed by the crew passing 1000 feet above" http://avherald.com/h?article=4a5e80f3
> You're basically saying that we should plan for accidents
Yes, whenever possible. It should make sense, really.
> because
...because it's sometimes possible and predictable, in which case it logically makes sense to plan for it.
> wearing a seatbelt is somehow... what? Cumbersome?
Not because of that. But yes, it is cumbersome. Makes it harder to relax, sleep, get up, etc... is this really that shocking to you?
They saw the plane, and 1-2 minutes later... bang. We already went over this.
We did, that's why it made zero sense that you said this was predicated on not being aware of the positions of other planes. They were aware of this a full 1-2 minutes earlier at least. They could've turned on the sign. The solution was totally implementable.
It is a little annoying when you have 20-30 minute seatbelt periods with barely any actual turbulence but there you go.
In a car you usually fasten your seatbelt all the time so that you don't have to guess when the risk is going to occur. In a plane there's no reason not to act the same way.
Sure there is. The chances of dying in a car accident are around 1% whereas the same in an air accident is, like, 100x less likely?
It's like how you wear a helmet when you're in a construction zone but you don't wear a helmet when walking around the city despite the nonzero chance that something might fall on your head. (Or do you?)
The reasons there are less accidents in the planes is not because they are inherently more safe (ever read up how helicopters work?), it comes from the rigorous rules around everything flying. The rules exists mostly because something happened and the industry set rules to make it not happen again.
You wear helmets on construction sites because the risk of something falling on your head is so much higher when people are working with loose tools in high altitudes, hanging from ropes or whatever. (And the company is responsible for your safety so will protect their asses from getting sued.)
And all of them will avoid passing under a large aircraft at 180 degrees.
Source: my father is an airline pilot and they always take the time to learn from severe incidents.
Is there any leeway to adjust your heading slightly and then correct back?