Re: [Paddlewise] Numbers Crunching

At 09:17 PM 4/23/03 EDT, KiAyker_at_aol.com wrote:
>>>I  just finished reading the 32 page ACA study "CRITICAL JUDGMENT: 


(snip)
>   While Steve may wax poetic about all of the people who are alive today as 
>a result of being saved by their pfd's in a near miss, I would have to 
>believe that if this was in fact the case then the numbers here would lean 
>much more significantly towards the pfd's then they do. I find myself 
>wondering if any, and how many, of the fatalities might have in fact
occurred 
>as the result of a swimmer being unable to reach shore, or even their own 
>boat, as a result of their swimming efforts being impeded by the bulk of 
>their own pfd. Or perhaps they chose not to attempt to make the swim to
shore 
>when that would have been the better option, having been seduced into 
>believing that they were going to be OK since they were wearing their pfd. 
>But of course neither my scenario's or Steve's are really worth any real 
>consideration since they are both little more then groundless speculation.

I read this over this morning and it's been bugging me all day. It strikes
me that a lot of the real question lies buried in areas that just aren't
reported. 
That's pretty obvious, but sort of begs the question -- is it politically
correct to report the real facts?

The point that bugs me concerns auto accidents and seat belts. A little off
topic, perhaps, but bear with me. One of the downsides of my job running a
weekly country newspaper is that I have to go to more personal injury (PI)
accidents than I want to -- I've been to too many over the years. We had a
couple horrific ones late last year, in which, in two separate accidents,
people wearing seat belts were killed. In one case, the seat belt trapped a
young kid in a burning vehicle, bringing a horrible and painful death.
(Thank God I got there way late!) The other was a little more ambiguous,
and I didn't go to that one at all, but the cops and EMTs I talked to off
the record are pretty much of the opinion that the passenger might well
have survived had they not been wearing a seat belt.

But seat belts are good, right? The government tells us so. Why do they
think so?

Two or three times I've discussed similar incidents with the cops that
write the accident report, and the only part on the reporting form that
they have to fill out is whether the victim was wearing a seat belt or not.
Whether it contributed to the fatality isn't a subject on the form -- so
can't be easily pulled out from the reports. You have to dig into the
reports themselves, or go to coroners reports and the like, and often then
you don't get a clearcut figure.

We had, if I recall correctly, 12 fatal auto accidents in this county last
year. I don't know about the other accidents -- they were outside my
coverage area -- but 17% of those deaths might have been prevented by NOT
wearing a seat belt. But you'd face a hell of time trying to sell that
observation against all the lobbyies and whiners and handwringers and
bureaucrats that are convinced that they know what's best for you.

Sure would be interesting to know how many boating/water fatalities could
have been prevented by NOT wearing a PFD.

-- Wes

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