How One Brain Came Back from Unconsciousness
nymag.com
nymag.com
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.
"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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
As for your last question: In the three biggest german-speaking countries it's mandatory since 1976, with only a small number of exceptions at this date: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sicherheitsgurt#Einf.C3.BChrung
Violations are punished with fees, as well as with points in a register that can, if accrued enough, lead to loss of the driving license. http://www.bussgeldkatalog.de/anschnallpflicht/
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 :)
The european attitude towards about everything on HN is bad.
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.
> 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."
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."