Given the amount of injuries related to mountain biking, is there some specific insurance needed for it? It seems one of those "net-negative for the society activities", like trampolines.
But trampolines and mountain biking are both activities that result in ephemeral injuries. There is the rare case where a particular injury might become chronic, but how is that a drain on society, and not primarily the individual?
by your logic, should we also ban (or require insurance?) for football (hand egg), boxing, martial arts, (Tai chi?), cars, religion, guns, knives, prescription medicine, children, leaving your house at all?
edit; I'm happy to steal more ideas from sibling comments! I already stole football, but now I want to add obesity, and all mental health conditions.
I'm really curious about the context the idea of net negative comes from, but I probably should also take a stab at a conclusion; why contrast individual actions and decisions in the context of society at all? The decision to do anything should stop at 1st order, and maybe 2nd order effects. That is to say, when trying to improve society, it's fair to look down into smoking and say, we should spend attention on fixing this. But it's incorrect to look at an individual decision "should I smoke" and weight it's effects on society. (How will this effect my family, or my environment is 2nd order, and should be accounted for)
There are two factors.
The first is that a drain on individuals is a drain on society. That's why we outlaw risky behavior like lethal recreactional drugs, driving without seatbelts, driving without a driver's license, etc. We try to protect people from themselves in some of the worst aspects that we can.
Second, of course, is health care costs. Activities that constantly result in injury wind up raising the health care costs for everyone, since that's how insurance works.
> by your logic, should we also ban (or require insurance?)...
You already have to have car insurance, yes. And yes lots of kinds of guns are banned in lots of places.
We draw the lines in different places.
It is a pretty interesting thought experiment to wonder whether people shouldn't be allowed to engage in organized sports that are risky, without paying an additional health insurance premium? E.g. if you play professional football, then your league has to pay extra money into the health insurance fund to compensate for all the extra health care treatment their players need and will need.
e.g. amateur MMA is illegal in Norway and I think a couple of other places too.
Isn't this already in use in multiple countries? I.e. if you want to play football (european) in a league, you have to have a license and also insurance that covers playing it in an organized way - for example in a league.
So team sports are already covered by such things, but individual sports like mountain biking or skiing aren't at the moment.
Citation needed. I don't outright disagree, but I do think you state this as if it's a much simpler fact of life then it really is.
> That's why we outlaw risky behavior like lethal recreactional drugs,
Outlawing drugs is a perfect example, that's something we've done in the US that has gone flawlessly. No one has any notes, complete unambiguous success.... oh wait!
You even elude to this, I assume, by restricting it to just lethal drugs. That's misleading at best. There is plenty of space to say this is more likely to harm the community, than it is to support the individual. PCP is a popular example where the misapplication directly causes said individual to become a direct danger to the community.
> driving without seatbelts, driving without a driver's license, etc. We try to protect people from themselves in some of the worst aspects that we can.
It's legal to drive a car without a license. You need a license to prove you're able to do it safely on public property. It's very different to say, you can't do X ever, and you can't do [something unsafe for other people], around other people who are being safe.
> Second, of course, is health care costs. Activities that constantly result in injury wind up raising the health care costs for everyone, since that's how insurance works.
> You already have to have car insurance, yes. And yes lots of kinds of guns are banned in lots of places.
> We draw the lines in different places.
Right, I'm aware, but prove that's actually a bad thing? That's what I'm asking. Is it sane to go "AHHHHH THAT'S RISK! All risk is bad for society! Quick, ban it!". Again, using "Non-lethal" drug, seem to suggest that the risks of banning something out weight the risks of that thing. We already learned that banning alcohol was a net-negative, and we seem to be figuring that out for marijuana now too.
> It is a pretty interesting thought experiment to wonder whether people shouldn't be allowed to engage in organized sports that are risky, without paying an additional health insurance premium? E.g. if you play professional football, then your league has to pay extra money into the health insurance fund to compensate for all the extra health care treatment their players need and will need.
Is this a good idea? Car insurance protects others from your carelessness. Sports insurance protects you from... you? Is it reasonable for society to subdivide itself like that? Should old people have to pay more money for insurance? Should people with diabetes pay more? Should women of childbearing age pay more? Or should we as a society, look down from a higher level view, acknowledge that healthy individuals are better for society, and decide that we're not going to treat individuals differently, that because everyone is in this game of life together, where nobody gets out alive, that we're all going to make it as easy as we can for everybody to be their best, while refusing to define best for any individual.
And knowing what they know now, I wouldn’t let a child play today.
ADDED: I suspect a combination of the negative publicity for football, less equipment for soccer, etc. Even if American football still largely dominates as you get to college and the pros. Some rugby in college but relatively not a lot in the US.
If you have a way to just not have those, the way you can just not use trampolines, I would love to hear it.
(In my experience, musculoskeletal injuries are rarely completely ephemeral, they tend to have long-term effects, even if minor.)
And bonus point; if we're talking about sociatial responsabilities, given injuries are unavoidable, shouldn't we be trying to fix our responses to them rather than trying to limit people from enjoying life? Mountain biking in fun, so are trampolines. Strictly speaking, the world where we've solved injuries (think any sci-fi pantopia) is better than the world where we didn't because we just outlawed getting injured.
As I said, I agree that bans don’t make sense. But the costs are real, and therefore one should take care to avoid injuries instead of trivializing them.
It's at least arguable and perhaps even true that we as a society would be better off if everybody used tobacco at 1950's rates and therefore got skinnier, especially if we all just dipped Zyns or similar smokeless "low harm" nicotine formats instead of smoking.
That said, I personally use 0 tobacco/nicotine etc.
It is simply wild how many ways nicotine can find to kill humans. All kinds of stuff stems from the lowly cigarette. Obesity impacts many more people (that is to say, we have more fat people than smokers/tobacco users), but it's far from as significant a health risk. I'm not sure we know enough to quantify vapes and chew vs. obesity.
A lot of the injury risk when mountain biking is reasonably easily mitigated by controlling your speed and walking the bike through terrain that's above your skill level. There was a report out of British Columbia a few months ago about injury rates, and they were high, but BC is also a major downhill trail region.
Certainly, compared to road cycling, I know more people with major injuries from being hit by cars than from crashing solo on a mountain bike. And for my own cycling injuries - a few concussions, the worst of which was on the road bike (during a race) and a few torn rotator cuffs/mild AC joint separations.
Curiously enough, I have been road cycling for 10+ years now (and mountain biking much longer) and I only just picked up my first crash and injury from road cycling on Jan 1. I crashed and sprained my wrist. :-(
Speed must be part of it. Low sun and going into the back of a parked car or other obstacle is a common mistake, and road bikes get up some good speed on most rides. Many riders pass 80kmh on a regular basis, which doesn’t leave a lot of room for error. I’m rather slower than that, but 50-60kmh would be a daily event.
Yeah, with downhill biking, “controlling your speed” means making sure you go fast enough to land the jump on the intended downslope. Go too slow and you’ll land wrong.
_hit by drivers_, you meant?
(i don't think either of those things should result in higher insurance prices, just continuing the thought.)
Wait, do they not? I genuinely assumed they did. I remember when I got private insurance through my work I had to fill in some questionnaire. It was "free", but it was a taxable benefit so you knew how much you were costing the company and me and my friends had different rates.
I wonder what the actual statistics are when it comes to costs with active people that are more likely to be injured vs obese people that are less likely to be injured but more likely to suffer obesity related illnesses.
> Wait, do they not?
Why should they? It's not obvious at all that smoking causes higher costs; a smoker who gets lung cancer is a smoker who never needs the medical care we give to the elderly.
Life insurance can and often requires an actual physical exam. And can exclude specific activities such as flying on small private aircraft from coverage.
On top of that for smokers, the amount of sin taxes they pay on cigarettes over their lifetime almost always exceeds their entire life-time medical costs.
You're behind the times lol -- UK
Paid out a lot of $$$ to quietly settle numerous sexual abuse claims/lawsuits.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockey_Canada_sexual_assault...
Medical insurance generally covers your own accidents/mistakes, because it's not like you're going out searching for them for fun.
I wonder if the guys from Jackass had trouble finding health insurance.
Meanwhile I don't have enough fingers and toes to count up all the people I've known personally who have been killed or crippled in auto collisions.
That also means nothing, because you said nothing about how often the coin is flipped.
The first papers that show up in google say "Mountain biking athletes were found to have an overall injury risk rate of 0.6% per year and 1 injury per 1000 h of biking." and "75% of the injuries were minor, such as skin wounds and simple contusions"
4000 hours per serious injury would mean 2000 hours per coin flip. A hypothetical person that bikes twice a month, 4 hours each time, for 20 years with these accident rates, would have flipped the coin once.
But if the accident rates were 10x higher, you could easily still get the same results. One person is just not enough data here. Let's use the real data that show it's pretty safe.
For society only; what's the TCO of a mountain biking injury times the rate of injuries, over the TCO of obesity and depression times the likelihood a sedentary lifestyle results?
without access to that data, his anecdote does appear to be a stronger argument than literally no data, no?
I think that a big part of the issue is that banning it sounds a little like banning all sex because someone might get a venereal disease. Yeah, maybe there are some negatives, but there are also a lot of positives, and people are really like the positives.
The good thing is, then, I'll be mandated to go mountainbiking instead of staying sitted in front of a computer all day long!
How can I vote for your program?
I'm imagining some rough sandpaper layer that comes off every time you shower until it's smooth anyway. Glue is expensive, you know?