Amazon.com is having a $9.99 “Indie Music” blowout and I just started compulsively adding items to my cart with some classics to fill my collection. Had to stop myself when I realized I was pushing over $100 of CDs into the cart. Ack. Delete, delete, delete… don’t need to - and shouldn’t! - spend all my disposable income on music…
You are currently browsing the monthly archive for April 2007.
Seatbelts save lives
Jim Macdonald over at nielsenhayden.com
Do you know how we can tell the difference between people who were wearing their seatbelts and those who weren’t, at the scene of an automobile accident? The ones who were wearing their seatbelts are standing around saying “This really sucks,” and the ones who weren’t are kinda just lying there.
This is not to say that all unrestrained traffic accidents are fatals, or that seatbelted folks are invulnerable. But if you’re playing the odds….
The proximate cause of this post is the recent automobile accident involving Jon S. Corzine, governor of New Jersey.
Dr. Robert Ostrum said that Corzine’s surgery was successful but noted that the governor would need two more operations on his leg in the coming days. Doctors also inserted a breathing tube that would remain “for days to weeks, until [Corzine] is able to breathe on his own again,” Ostrum said.
Corzine had a broken sternum, a broken collarbone, a slight fracture of his lower vertebrae, a broken left leg, six broken ribs on each side and a laceration on his head, said Dr. Steven Ross, head of trauma for the hospital.
The two other persons in the vehicle sustained minor injuries. Bet you’ll never guess which two were wearing their seatbelts.
(Or—from a few years back—beautiful young princess, millionaire boyfriend, drunk driver, bodyguard—hit an abutment at a Whole Bunch of Miles Per Hour. Who lived? Answer: the guy who was wearing a seatbelt.)
Did you ever notice how often the words “unrestrained passenger” turn up in Trauma: Life in the ER just before something Really Messy rolls in the door?
In a collision, you have three or four sub-collisions all taking place in sequence. First, the vehicle hits some object. The vehicle abruptly slows, but unrestrained objects inside it continue at the same speed, in the same direction. Then the unrestrained body hits the interior of the vehicle, and starts to slow. That’s the second collision. That body’s internal organs are still moving at speed until they hit the inside of the chest (or get cheese-sliced by their supporting ligaments—and that’s where you get things like bisected livers or aortas). The fourth collision is when the bowling ball you left on the rear deck hits you in the back of the head, because that continued at the same speed in the same direction. Newtonian physics: Learn it, live it, love it.
There are two major routes that unrestrained persons take in a front-end MVA (Motor Vehicle Accident). Up-and-over or down-and-under (AKA “submarining”). With up-and-over, the upper body launches forward and up. The head strikes the windshield. (This produces the classic “windshield star”) Your injuries here include concussion, scalp laceration, and various brain bleeds. You can suspect fractured cervical vertebrae (and if you have a fracture with compromise to the spinal cord at C-4 or higher, you’ve lost the nerves that control chest expansion and the diaphragm. “C-4, breathe no more,” as the saying goes).
Go a little farther through the windshield, and it isn’t unexpected to leave some or all of your face behind stuck in the broken glass. You’d be surprised by how easily faces come off the facial bones.
You can also expect fractured wrists, arms, and shoulders, from folks trying to brace themselves.
A little farther through the windshield, all the way out of the vehicle (a situation we call “pre-extracted for your convenience”), and in addition to whatever damage you took on the way through, you get the damage from hitting the ground, trees, and metal poles at however-many-miles-an-hour.
Sure, you hear people talking about wanting to be “thrown clear” in the event of an accident. If you want to simulate being “thrown clear,” go to the fifth floor of a building and jump out the window.
Let’s talk briefly about being thrown clear, because it happens more often than you’d think. Unrestrained driver: side impact. Vehicle spins. Driver goes out the window. In one case I recall, the driver was half-way out his window when the vehicle rolled over on top of him. That was the second-most grotesque scene I’ve ever been to. Another scene, the driver went out the window when it spun. The vehicle went into a snow bank and was drivable from the scene. The driver went into a river and drowned.
Any time you go to an accident and the windows aren’t rolled all the way up and unbroken, look 200 feet in all directions for the other patients. It’s pure heck finding them three days later when someone wonders why all those birds are over there, or when someone at the hospital wakes up enough to ask “Where’s Joey?”
Okay, let’s look at down-and-under. In this one the patient goes forward and down, under the dashboard. Here’s where you’re going to find fractured femurs, broken knees, and compression fractures to the lower spine. If you’re asking “Is it possible for a human femur to be pushed through the floor of the pelvis?” the answer is “Yes.” If you ask me how I know that, the answer is: “Seen it done.” Unrestrained driver, 40 MPH impact.
As the legs collapse accordion-style, the patient’s chest hits the dashboard. This can give you rib fractures, a fractured sternum, cardiac bruising, or that ruptured aorta that we all love so well.
The nice thing about going submarining is that there usually isn’t any brain damage (unless you got clonked on the knob by that bowling ball, and seatbelts won’t help with that). On the other hand, femur fractures can be, and frequently are, fatal.
I think I’ll leave Traumatic Asphyxia, Hemo/Pneumothorax, and Flail Chest for the Trauma and You post that I’m going to do one of these days. Let’s just say that they’re associated with having your chest hit the dashboard or steering wheel, and they Really Suck (and not in a good way).
Seatbelts stop you from going up-and-over or down-and-under, or out the window. Sure, seatbelts can hurt you too, but hey, you’re in the presence of large amounts of free-floating energy.
So.
Effective May 1, 2000 New Jersey’s seat belt law is being upgraded. Police officers will be able to stop and issue summons to drivers and front seat passengers solely for not wearing their seat belts.
The fine is $20 and $26 court costs.
The penalty can be death.
The Yankees just lost a close game to the Oakland A’s in the bottom of the ninth (sigh.) It’s 11:10pm here in San Francisco but it’s 2:10am back in New York. Watching them game tonight reminded me of how, when still in NY, I would call West Coast series “late” games because they wouldn’t start until around 10, 10:35 in the evening.
I have fond memories from middle school and high school of listening to the Yankee games on the radio late at night. On school nights, I would lay in bed tucked in under the covers, my room dark and quiet except for the light on the stereo and WABC 770’s baseball broadcast playing at a low volume. I would doze off to sleep during slow games to the sound of the crowd in the background and steady play calling of John Sterling (I was a big user of the Sleep option, otherwise the radio would be on all night); during close games, I’d be wide-awake, eyes open, awaiting the go-ahead run or shut-em-down save. Extra innings games were special: I’d reset the Sleep option to make sure the stereo didn’t turn off in the middle of a crucial 11th inning at-bat and accept the fact that I was probably going to be very tired in the morning when it was time to get up. Of course, the next morning was always much better if the Yankees won the game.
Can you think of a better Easter tradition than going down the famous windy part of Lombard Street in San Francisco on plastic kid Big Wheels? Apparently this has been a tradition in SF for the past six years, where grown men and women dress up in costume, get liquored up (optional, though it seems to be a popular choice), and ride plastic Big Wheel tricycles down the hill. Luckily, I found out about it just in time today and was able to walk the two blocks from my apartment to the top of Lombard Street for the start of the “race” at 4pm.
It was a madhouse of people at the top of Lombard Street at Hyde. The traffic was snarled very badly, as cars waited in long lines, stopped at an incline along the steep hills. As 4pm neared, we anxiously awaited the arrival of the Hyde Street cable car, which would stop at the corner of Lombard and Hyde and block traffic. As the trolley clanked up the hill, the Big Wheel riders (drivers? navigators? captains? jockeys?) ran into the street and jostled for position. The rest, in pictures:
Hundreds of people lined the hill for the seventh annual BYOBW
Waiting for the cable cars
It’s here! And full of confused looking tourists.
Who’s ready to go down this hill??
Costumed drivers (I love the two guys with big Beaker heads)
“Oh my god, what have I gotten myself into?!”
Dozens and dozens of spectators can only smile in amusement as they watch the plastic wheeled carnage.
Heat One is barely over but they’re ready for round two.
Wakka wakka wakka
Sir, I dare say that tricycle is too small for you.
Mario and Luigi took some time off from their usual (plumbing and saving Princess Toadstool) to drive a few heats.
I took a video of the start of the first heat with my camera and uploaded it to YouTube. The quality is kind of crummy after processing but hey! My first YouTube upload ever and over 3,000 clicks and even 1 five-star rating :)
A good Friday at the office: beer and wiffleball on the lawn out front.