Not designed for hitting trees, either

[[email protected]]

On Jan 7, 11:00 pm, [email protected] wrote:
> On Mon, 7 Jan 2008 09:24:05 -0800 (PST), [email protected] wrote:
>
> >Actually, it's possible the kid and/or the parents thought "Trees? No
> >problem. He's got a helmet!"
>
> Dear Frank,
>
> Could be.
>
> Or maybe he'd just seen too many tv shows, movies, and videos filled
> with wildly reckless driving, skiing, flying, bicycling, and
> everything else. You know, the shows where the heroes miraculously
> escape crashes, injuries, and death while always missing innocent
> bystanders.
>
> I sometimes wonder whether the increasing death toll on the ski slopes
> is just a matter of far more people skiing or if it's a sign of how
> many people confuse carefully staged television stunts with real life.

I understand your point. ISTM that western society (or at least
American society) has a severely schizophrenic attitude toward risk.
On the one hand, we sell and advocate explosive padding on every
possible interior surface of our cars; we promote helmets for any
other wheeled device, except perhaps wheelchairs; we convince new
parents to pad the corner of every hard object and lock the
refrigerator (http://www.childsafetystore.com/.sc/ms/dd/ee/233/Fridge
%20Guard%20by%20Parent%20Unit);...


.... and we advertise our cars by showing them speeding and sliding, we
promote movies where 40 cars crash during a car chase scene, we sell
18-year-olds motorcycles capable of 180 mph, we promote sports
involving inverted aerobatics.

It is literally a crazy society.

- Frank Krygowski

 

[[email protected]]

On Tue, 08 Jan 2008 05:41:18 -0500, John Forrest Tomlinson
<[email protected]> wrote:

>On Mon, 07 Jan 2008 21:00:56 -0700, [email protected] wrote:
>
>>I sometimes wonder whether the increasing death toll on the ski slopes
>>is just a matter of far more people skiing
>
>Perhaps I missed the information, but is there really an increasing
>death toll skiing? And is the rate of death per hour skied increasing?

Dear John,

Good point--I'm not sure.

As I wander toward senility, the good old days become ever rosier.

But I don't remember people crashing into trees and being killed on
Colorado ski slopes in the 1960s and 1970s. Broken legs and ankles
were news back then.

I think that with better bindings, the leg injury rates dropped, but I
could be wrong about that.

My impression that skiers crashing into trees and killing themselves
is a recent phenomenon might be only an illusion. If the rate of such
accidents is say only 1 per 10 million skier-days, there would
probably be no accidents to notice back in a ten-year period in the
early days of Colorado skiing when there were only 500,000 skier-days
per year.

Thirty years later, with far more resorts, snow-making, and people
wealthy enough to spend time sliding down mountains, the same 1 fatal
tree-hit per 10 million skier-days might yield half a dozen deaths per
year.

So far, I can't find any figures going back to the 1960s and 1970s.

This pdf is interesting. The long-winded legal point seems to be that
one skier was going so fast and so recklessly that he was airborne
when his skis hit another skier in the head and killed him, but the
court didn't think that this reckless:

"The decision below acknowledged that the Defendant-Respondent
(“Hall”) was skiing recklessly, too fast for conditions, on an a slope
open to the public, and that Hall’s speed was so great as to inflict
on the victim (“Cobb”) fatal injuries, as if Cobb had suffered a high
speed car accident. The record below contained testimony from which a
jury could conclude that Hall was skiing recklessly, at a high speed,
sitting back, directly down the fall line, bouncing off of moguls,
becoming airborne, and colliding into Cobb, probably with Hall’s skis
striking Cobb in the side of the head, killing him."

The decison:

"The Court does not find that a person of ordinary prudence and
caution would infer, in the absence of other evidence and under the
circumstances of this case, a substantial risk of death in the event
of collision, from the fact that Defendant was skiing too fast for
conditions and out of control. (Order Affirming County Court Judgment,
1/13/99)

http://fl1.findlaw.com/news.findlaw.com/hdocs/docs/nathanhall/amicusskibrief.pdf

If you don't like the way I ski, don't let my skis hit you in the
head!

The ski industry was protesting that not holding the killer
responsible was bad for skiing.

I'll keep looking, but so far I can't even find a reference to a
Colorado skier killing himself by hitting a tree in the 1960s and
1970s. Again, there may just not have been enough skiers for this to
happen.

Cheers,

Carl Fogel

 

[[email protected]]

On Tue, 8 Jan 2008 06:48:12 -0800 (PST), [email protected] wrote:

>On Jan 7, 9:04 pm, [email protected] wrote:
>> On Mon, 7 Jan 2008 13:34:29 -0800 (PST), [email protected] wrote:
>> >If a death sentence were 'what you get' for reckless skiing, there
>> >would be thousands of deaths each year at Breckenridge alone. This kid
>> >was out of control but also, I think it's safe to say, horribly
>> >unlucky. People also hit trees all the time and come away with minor
>> >injury or none at all. Would you say they are not getting what they
>> >deserve, which is death?
>>
>> >And didn't you spend your Colorado youth riding dirtbikes?
>>
>> >Robert
>>
>> Dear Robert,
>>
>> I'd say that "tearing down the slope too fast" and skiing headfirst
>> into a tree isn't unlucky--it's reckless, dangerous, and likely to
>> kill you.
>
>You're assuming, with your relentless 'those damn kids' attitude

Dear Robert,

Keep fighting with your imagination.

Cheers,

Carl Fogel

 

[John Forrest Tomlinson]

On Tue, 8 Jan 2008 06:48:12 -0800 (PST), [email protected] wrote:

>
>You're assuming, with your relentless 'those damn kids' attitude, that
>this particular kid was skiing in a deliberately reckless fashion,
>which may have been the case. He may also have been 'tearing down the
>slope too fast' because he was a beginner skier who got a little over
>his head and lost control. It happens all the time, in skiing and
>other pursuits in which part of the purpose, even for many highly
>experienced experts, is to ride near the edge of control.
>
>It occurred to me when reading this thread that something similar
>happened to me when I was about this kid's age. I hit a tree while
>cross-country skiing down a moderate hill. It happened because I had
>no idea what I was doing, and controlling oneself on cross country
>skies is difficult. Lucky for me that justice did not prevail that day
>and I escaped without injury.

Interestingly I hit a tree and cut myself severely the first time I
went cross country skiing, also down a pretty moderate hill.

Recently one of the cross country skiing magazines had an article
about rollerskiing (similar to inline skating with ski poles). The
writer was saying that anytime one does that they are moving fast past
immovable objects and should wear a helmet. I was tempted to ask if
the writer does that when moving on snow past trees, but then realized
that that is probably coming some day. Sigh.

 

[[email protected]]

On Jan 8, 4:57 pm, John Forrest Tomlinson <[email protected]>
wrote:
> On Tue, 8 Jan 2008 06:48:12 -0800 (PST), [email protected] wrote:
>
> >You're assuming, with your relentless 'those damn kids' attitude, that
> >this particular kid was skiing in a deliberately reckless fashion,
> >which may have been the case. He may also have been 'tearing down the
> >slope too fast' because he was a beginner skier who got a little over
> >his head and lost control. It happens all the time, in skiing and
> >other pursuits in which part of the purpose, even for many highly
> >experienced experts, is to ride near the edge of control.
>
> >It occurred to me when reading this thread that something similar
> >happened to me when I was about this kid's age. I hit a tree while
> >cross-country skiing down a moderate hill. It happened because I had
> >no idea what I was doing, and controlling oneself on cross country
> >skies is difficult. Lucky for me that justice did not prevail that day
> >and I escaped without injury.
>
> Interestingly I hit a tree and cut myself severely the first time I
> went cross country skiing, also down a pretty moderate hill.

You deserved it. Just kidding.

I have also hit trees a few times while mtn biking over the years just
beyond the edge of control. I didn't go beyond my ability exactly on
purpose, it's just that this is something which sometimes happens (to
lesser individuals) when we're out riding trails, pushing our limits
and having fun. One encounter about 15 years ago took a nice divit out
of my scalp (yes I was in fact wearing a bicycle helmet, the typical
examples of which, it sometimes becomes painfully obvious, have holes
in them) and another encounter this summer, with a horizontal tree,
totalled a reliable old frame but thankfully left me unscathed. I
definitely got off lucky on that one. Unlike some 11-year-old kid, I
certainly knew better.

I also collided with a moto once on a blind curve of a Colorado
singletrack. It was so windy that I couldn't hear him on the other
side of the mountain. It wasn't Carl though. Carl has never been out
of control while riding his motorcycle.

Robert

 

[Tom Sherman]

[email protected] aka Robert ??? wrote:
> ...
> I also collided with a moto once on a blind curve of a Colorado
> singletrack. It was so windy that I couldn't hear him on the other
> side of the mountain. It wasn't Carl though. Carl has never been out
> of control while riding his motorcycle.

"Dear Carl" never makes an error.

--
Tom Sherman - Holstein-Friesland Bovinia
"And never forget, life ultimately makes failures of all people." A. Derleth

 

[[email protected]]

On Jan 8, 9:51 pm, Tom Sherman <[email protected]>
wrote:
> [email protected] aka Robert ??? wrote:
>
> Carl has never been out
> > of control while riding his motorcycle.
>
> "Dear Carl" never makes an error.

Y'know, guys, I hate to point this out, but some people really are
better at the things they do.

- Frank Krygowski

 

[Tom Sherman]

[email protected] aka Frank Krygowski wrote:
> On Jan 8, 9:51 pm, Tom Sherman <[email protected]>
> wrote:
>> [email protected] aka Robert ??? wrote:
>>
>> Carl has never been out
>>> of control while riding his motorcycle.
>> "Dear Carl" never makes an error.
>
> Y'know, guys, I hate to point this out, but some people really are
> better at the things they do.

Being insufferable on Usenet when they drop their false veneer?

--
Tom Sherman - Holstein-Friesland Bovinia
"And never forget, life ultimately makes failures of all people." A. Derleth

 

[[email protected]]

On Jan 8, 8:52 pm, [email protected] wrote:

> Y'know, guys, I hate to point this out, but some people really are
> better at the things they do.

And some are actually born with perfect motorcycle trials abilities
already installed.