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This seems totally unacceptable. We should stop having this sport in the Olympics (implicitly supporting this madness) -- of course athletes are free to do as t

This seems totally unacceptable. We should stop having this sport in the Olympics (implicitly supporting this madness) -- of course athletes are free to do as they chose, but we cannot encourage such pointless self-destruction and misery. An alternative to save the sport is completely redesign it to limit maximum accelerations. Usually injuries follow power laws so I doubt even that much reduction would be necessary (shed maximum accel to 1/3 current and I bet lifetime injuries could become acceptable). Mandatory equipment changes would probably help as well.

matz1 6y ago
>pointless self-destruction and misery. Maybe its pointless for you, fair enough but it can be meaningfull for other people, i myself think it's interesting.
- SenHeng 6y ago
  matz should not be downvoted. Humans do lots of objectively pointless self-destruction like things as a hobby with increasing risks. Things like human powered flight, aerogliding and sky diving, parkour, climbing steep things with and without gear, driving at high speeds around bends, 'explore' the wild, many of which we celebrate, reward and encourage.
  - redis_mlc 6y ago
    You're presenting a false dichotomy. Most people agree that the following should not be allowed in high schools because of the risk of injury: - spearing in American football - heading in American soccer Also: - most of the wingsuit pioneers are already dead - you can carry a transmitter when in the wild to avoid wasting millions of dollars in rescue searches - American NFL players have an average career of only 3 years, so accepting brain damage is absurd.
- racl101 6y ago
  Well said. Depending on people's level of courage, or lackthereof, all sports might seem like pointless self-destruction and misery. Heck, even basketball or ice curling. Heck, I would never in my right-mind try grinding a rail on a skateboard after seeing some kid break his leg on a bad landing. But just cause it looks insane to me doesn't mean it has no value or merit. Not to mention that it makes a fun video game on the PS2.
  - libraryatnight 6y ago
    I recommend the YouTube rabbit hole of Alex Honnold interviews, whenever he talks about risk it's interesting.
    - stefs 6y ago
      honnold may be a special case. his capabilities of dealing with risk and fear are exceptional.
      - freedrock87 6y ago
        Why is he a special case. There are hundreds if not 1000s of people that want to be risk takers for no other reason then the risk its self
        libraryatnight 6y ago
        You're right. Just visit GoPros youtube channel. There's no shortage of adrenaline seekers.
      - TheRealSteel 6y ago
        I'd say it's partly that, but more a case of survivorship bias; we don't hear from other solo free climbers because most of them are dead.
        def_true_false 6y ago
- tgv 6y ago
  But that's no reason to make it an Olympic sport, thus encouraging people to take more risks.
- watwut 6y ago
  When the sport is on Olympic and we encourage people to push themselves to maximum or encourage kids to pick it up, then it is not anymore about individual feeling from risk. It is risk taken to earn.
- sbierwagen 6y ago
  https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/one-mans-two-year-quest-not-to-finish-final-fantasy-vii https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/one-mans... >Many have poured scorn on Curry’s venture, particularly since it doesn’t have a charitable component. “This is the most pathetic waste of man hours that could have been used for good that I’ve seen in a long time,” one typical YouTube comment says. On the forum where he first heard about Dick Tree’s idea, Curry posted a spirited, if nihilistic, rebuttal. “To say that our lives are pointless and our achievements meaningless is to state the obvious,” he wrote. “No matter how grand our achievements or how broad their scope, time turns all to dust and death destroys all memory. But that does not mean we cannot ascribe our own meaning to what we do.”
- pjc50 6y ago
  This argument was had when Jackie Stewart campaigned to make Formula 1 safe. Fortunately he prevailed, but there were plenty of people - even other drivers - arguing that the danger was an intrinsic part of the sport.
  - olyjohn 6y ago
    Just look how much safer racing has become since it's inception. And also at the same time, the sport has become magnitudes faster. There's no reason we can't have faster, more exciting, and safer all at the same time. It's just another challenge to the sport.
- gnramires 6y ago
  If it were meaningful for the athletes, they would not be taking their own lives after clearly struggling in complete misery for years; clearly even endangering lives of loved ones. You can tell most just don't understand what they signed up for. In any case, we're rewarding and glorifying this activity. It's not just there, of course people are free to do as they please. We're making them go through this sacrifice (that clearly leaves great damage) for a reward of glory, fame or just money. If you give gold medals for it, no matter how pointless, unfulfilling and destructive it is, someone will do it. It's our responsibility. When there are really beautiful sports out there, that players really clearly enjoy, and which are reasonably healthy (of course to an extent every activity has risks), there's simply no excuse.
Swizec 6y ago
So funny thing about unacceptable and lateral g-force — this is a big part of why F1 cars aren’t V10 engines anymore. They were getting too fast and the decision was between g-suits and slower cars. FIA chose slower cars (also more fuel efficient, yay). Now it’s a few years later and cars have again advanced to the point that drivers pull more than 5 lateral G in some corners. It’s kinda bonkers. I wonder if something like the HANS device could be useful in sledding. Or those neck protectors motocross riders use. Might keep heads from banging around as much.
- manojlds 6y ago
  Do you have a source on the reason for moving away from V10s being about safety of drivers. It was, I thought, about cost reduction and image (move towards less gas guzzling monsters and then hybrid that we have today)
  - Godel_unicode 6y ago
    https://web.archive.org/web/20070428004836/http://www.formula1.com/insight/rulesandregs/13/995.html https://web.archive.org/web/20070428004836/http://www.formul... "For 2006, engines are reduced in size from the previous 3-litre V10s to 2.4-litre V8s. The aim is to reduce costs and improve safety." You can also tell that it's mostly about performance, given all the other design restrictions (no variable valve timing, no intercoolers, just one spark plug, etc ).
- qserasera 6y ago
  I was told that engines were more stable in multiples of 6's from some weird physics going on in the engine. I guess that guy could have been completely full of shit.
  - lmm 6y ago
    That guy was right that there are 6-cylinder configurations with perfect mechanical balance (and not for other cylinder numbers), but the V6 isn't one of them so that's not the reason here.
  - 6y ago
Godel_unicode 6y ago
> Usually injuries follow power laws That's a pretty outstanding claim, do you have any evidence for this?
- VLM 6y ago
  I'd bet a case of beer that OP did operations analysis in his MBA course... The term to google for is "Duane Power Law" or similar. Duane was the first statistical process improvement researcher in the 60s to graph MTBF stats and discover breakdowns follow a power law. There's a lot to see if you google for that. Of course humans aren't machines... or are we? Pretty weird how wildly different factory floor industrial machinery all follow the same power law. I would be surprised if humans did NOT follow some kind of power law of injuries based on total cumulative energy dissipation in tissue over time or something like that. Humans can heal better than a milling machine or EDM cutter. On the other hand humans take terrible repetitive strain damage, so maybe Duane is right after all.
  - Balgair 6y ago
    > would be surprised if humans did NOT follow some kind of power law of injuries based on total cumulative energy dissipation in tissue over time or something like that. Only if the injury is related to velocity. If it's related to mass, you'd expect linear scaling. KE = 0.5(M(V^2)) Kinetic Energy is linearly related to Mass and is geometrically related to Velocity.
btilly 6y ago
It would not be the first Olympic sport redesigned for safety concerns. The first one that I am aware of is Javelin. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Javelin_throw#Javelin_redesigns https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Javelin_throw#Javelin_redesign... for more.
- pintxo 6y ago
  That case though was about safety of the audience, says the article.
  - lhoff 6y ago
    True, but nevertheless it shows that it can be done. Formula 1 and motor racing in general is a prime example for that as well. Formula 1 has a strict set of rules that makes sure the speed and cornering speeds aren't going through the roof because of deadly accidents in the past. The same could be done for sledding. Reduce speed by limiting what is technically allowed and improve protection of the athletes. From reading the article i could imagine that a headrest with a dampening foam is added to the sledge and prevent the helmet from touching the ice. Or add role bars to the sledge that protects the athletes from injuries during a crash. Or a emergency brake that stops the sledge from sliding all the way to the end after a crash. There are many more things that i can imagine. If it all makes sense has to be evaluated. But first the political will to change something has to be there. And i think that's the difference between formula 1 and sledding. In one sport there was instant death of the athletes and in the other the athletes deteriorated over time.
    - mhb 6y ago
      Instead of or in addition to all that, wouldn't you just make the course less steep?
      - lhoff 6y ago
        Sure that would work as well. But i imagine that to be much more expensive then adding some requirements to the sledge that increases drag or increases the sliding friction
usgroup 6y ago
I think the Olympics is just generally physically bad for the athletes. Runners, weightlifters, wrestlers, boxers, rowers, etc all these folks end up working so close o the edge of sustainable human tolerance and capacity that’s it’s unlikely they are not constantly going over it.
- secondcoming 6y ago
  Isn't that the whole point of the Olympics though? To push humans to the limit.
  - Balgair 6y ago
    Nit: To have humans push themselves to the limit.
- Invictus0 6y ago
  I don't understand this comment; what is physically bad about running? I'll accept that you may have a higher rate of injuries but surely we can agree that pulling a muscle and giving yourself Parkinson's are not remotely in the same ballpark of injuries.
  - VLM 6y ago
    Knee implants, significant negative hormonal changes for men over 50 miles/wk. Repetitive stress injuries are no joke. OP is probably not aware that the Olympics does not have ultra-marathon type events which are generally very unhealthy for participants, only a 10K and a marathon (and shorter sprints of course)
    - Invictus0 6y ago
      WRT knee damage, I found a Harvard report saying that running helps protect your knees against arthritis [0]. You'll have to source your own hormonal claim because it was too vague for me to find much, but what I did find did not seem negative [1][2]. [0] https://www.health.harvard.edu/healthbeat/will-continuing-to-run-make-my-knees-wear-out-faster https://www.health.harvard.edu/healthbeat/will-continuing-to... [1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19046725/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19046725/ [2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18208421/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18208421/
trianglem 6y ago
No, sport is dangerous and we must accept this. Otherwise this is a slippery slope and will result in banning sinple things like a slide in soccer or something.
- onion2k 6y ago
  That's nonsense. We can assess risks and determine the probability of injuries and the severity of them, and issue bans accordingly. "If we ban X then W, Y and Z are next" is just fearmongering. There's no reason why we can't ban something without banning other things that are much less dangerous. Most "slippery slope" arguments are so obviously fallacious I'm surprised people still try to use them.
  - jbverschoor 6y ago
    Horseback riding Is super dangerous
    - onion2k 6y ago
      Lots of activities are dangerous. The main problem is that danger is a function of probability (eg how likely are you to get hurt doing that thing), and people are terrible at estimating probability. While horse riding is dangerous in the sense that when you get hurt it's likely to be severe, it's not that dangerous because the probability of being hurt is quite low. Among the millions of people who go horse riding each year very few get badly hurt. What the article is suggesting is for the relatively small number of people who participate in bobsledding a significant number are getting brain injuries.
      - VLM 6y ago
        With google its quite trivial to get actual data rather than estimates. It doesn't seem controversial that per IIHS stats motorcycles have about 30 times more fatalities per 100K miles than cars. Likewise I have no reason to disagree with an online Br J Sp Med journal article from '91 that horse riders experience significant accidents once every 350 hours whereas motorcyclists have a serious accident every 7000 hours, or about 20 times more risky, based on ER reports. So multiplying risk, it seems horse riding is about 600 times more dangerous than passenger car driving. Another interesting anecdote is "everyone knows" that most accidents happen to noobs because they're distracted so much by learning and not knowing their limitations. So what you're really measuring is the fraction of low time noobs who will be injured by the sport before they escape noob status. That hypothesis would predict that essentially all horse riders will be injured in some way before they escape noob status, a noticeable fraction of motorcycle riders will be injured as noobs although the vast majority will not be injured, and its actually VERY rare for a noob car driver to be injured while learning to drive. In summary, this seems to be a situation where perceived risk matches actual risk. It would seem as a civilization we do an adequate job preparing teen car drivers as the vast majority of drivers survive their teen driver years, but as a civilization we do a completely inadequate job training horse riders. Or at least based on British data from the 80s as reported thirty years ago; I'm old enough to remember nobody wore bicycle helmets before the 90s; perhaps modern horse rider trainees wear better safety equipment in 2020 than in 1990. Strange start up tech idea: Smart helmet with GPS and machine vision for horse riders with AI and machine learning to yell in their ear when they're doing something dumb. If essentially all horse riders are injured while learning, they would likely be very motivated to drop some money on your smart AI safety helmet. On the other hand actual risk data indicates a similar product for teen drivers simply wouldn't sell, not having the proposed theoretical magic helm already has a very low accident rate making the helm appear less useful. Edited to note: that's the entire point of my risk rant, do a startup on fixing a problem virtually all of the customers have, not a startup on a problem essentially none of the customers have.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
briefcomment 6y ago
I feel like we should demonetize competitive sports. Sports are wonderful, but money (and maybe fame) incentivizes you past the point where you stop based on how your body feels. Maybe we miss out on records and storylines, but I think there are much healthier ways of spending our time.
- low_common 6y ago
  None of these guys were getting paid to be bobsledders. I suppose they get endorsements and such, but they didn't become millionaires based on a salary alone.
- hannasanarion 6y ago
  US olympians earn an average of $16,000/year, mostly from part-time jobs that give them extra time to train. If they win gold, they get $40,000 per medal (meaning teams have to split it). Olympians are definitely not in it for the money.
erfgh 6y ago
How about we let people decide on their won what they want to do with their lives?
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
  Generally I'd agree, but there is some rationality to the idea that we should not encourage and promote certain activities because of their inherent dangers. Smoking, for instance.
  - fermienrico 6y ago
    There is a distinction here that needs to be emphasized. We should absolutely allow people to smoke: what we should limit is the amount of money that goes into marketing, promotion, the big Philip Morris, government lobbying, and a whole bunch of backend work that goes into getting people addicted to Tobacco. Simply restricting people from smoking is a blanket encroachment of personal liberty and should not be IMO entertained. As far as it doesn't damage others (like Guns), we should allow it. I think warning labels on Cigarette boxes is an excellent idea - it informs the consumer of facts of consuming the product, whether they choose to do it or not is up to them.
alex_duf 6y ago
_any_ sport at a high enough level will be bad for your body.

matz1 6y ago

>pointless self-destruction and misery. Maybe its pointless for you, fair enough but it can be meaningfull for other people, i myself think it's interesting.

SenHeng 6y ago
matz should not be downvoted. Humans do lots of objectively pointless self-destruction like things as a hobby with increasing risks. Things like human powered flight, aerogliding and sky diving, parkour, climbing steep things with and without gear, driving at high speeds around bends, 'explore' the wild, many of which we celebrate, reward and encourage.
- redis_mlc 6y ago
  You're presenting a false dichotomy. Most people agree that the following should not be allowed in high schools because of the risk of injury: - spearing in American football - heading in American soccer Also: - most of the wingsuit pioneers are already dead - you can carry a transmitter when in the wild to avoid wasting millions of dollars in rescue searches - American NFL players have an average career of only 3 years, so accepting brain damage is absurd.
racl101 6y ago
Well said. Depending on people's level of courage, or lackthereof, all sports might seem like pointless self-destruction and misery. Heck, even basketball or ice curling. Heck, I would never in my right-mind try grinding a rail on a skateboard after seeing some kid break his leg on a bad landing. But just cause it looks insane to me doesn't mean it has no value or merit. Not to mention that it makes a fun video game on the PS2.
- libraryatnight 6y ago
  I recommend the YouTube rabbit hole of Alex Honnold interviews, whenever he talks about risk it's interesting.
  - stefs 6y ago
    honnold may be a special case. his capabilities of dealing with risk and fear are exceptional.
    - freedrock87 6y ago
      Why is he a special case. There are hundreds if not 1000s of people that want to be risk takers for no other reason then the risk its self
      - libraryatnight 6y ago
        You're right. Just visit GoPros youtube channel. There's no shortage of adrenaline seekers.
    - TheRealSteel 6y ago
      I'd say it's partly that, but more a case of survivorship bias; we don't hear from other solo free climbers because most of them are dead.
      - def_true_false 6y ago
tgv 6y ago
But that's no reason to make it an Olympic sport, thus encouraging people to take more risks.
watwut 6y ago
When the sport is on Olympic and we encourage people to push themselves to maximum or encourage kids to pick it up, then it is not anymore about individual feeling from risk. It is risk taken to earn.
sbierwagen 6y ago
https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/one-mans-two-year-quest-not-to-finish-final-fantasy-vii https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/one-mans... >Many have poured scorn on Curry’s venture, particularly since it doesn’t have a charitable component. “This is the most pathetic waste of man hours that could have been used for good that I’ve seen in a long time,” one typical YouTube comment says. On the forum where he first heard about Dick Tree’s idea, Curry posted a spirited, if nihilistic, rebuttal. “To say that our lives are pointless and our achievements meaningless is to state the obvious,” he wrote. “No matter how grand our achievements or how broad their scope, time turns all to dust and death destroys all memory. But that does not mean we cannot ascribe our own meaning to what we do.”
pjc50 6y ago
This argument was had when Jackie Stewart campaigned to make Formula 1 safe. Fortunately he prevailed, but there were plenty of people - even other drivers - arguing that the danger was an intrinsic part of the sport.
- olyjohn 6y ago
  Just look how much safer racing has become since it's inception. And also at the same time, the sport has become magnitudes faster. There's no reason we can't have faster, more exciting, and safer all at the same time. It's just another challenge to the sport.
gnramires 6y ago
If it were meaningful for the athletes, they would not be taking their own lives after clearly struggling in complete misery for years; clearly even endangering lives of loved ones. You can tell most just don't understand what they signed up for. In any case, we're rewarding and glorifying this activity. It's not just there, of course people are free to do as they please. We're making them go through this sacrifice (that clearly leaves great damage) for a reward of glory, fame or just money. If you give gold medals for it, no matter how pointless, unfulfilling and destructive it is, someone will do it. It's our responsibility. When there are really beautiful sports out there, that players really clearly enjoy, and which are reasonably healthy (of course to an extent every activity has risks), there's simply no excuse.

Swizec 6y ago

So funny thing about unacceptable and lateral g-force — this is a big part of why F1 cars aren’t V10 engines anymore. They were getting too fast and the decision was between g-suits and slower cars. FIA chose slower cars (also more fuel efficient, yay). Now it’s a few years later and cars have again advanced to the point that drivers pull more than 5 lateral G in some corners. It’s kinda bonkers. I wonder if something like the HANS device could be useful in sledding. Or those neck protectors motocross riders use. Might keep heads from banging around as much.

manojlds 6y ago
Do you have a source on the reason for moving away from V10s being about safety of drivers. It was, I thought, about cost reduction and image (move towards less gas guzzling monsters and then hybrid that we have today)
- Godel_unicode 6y ago
  https://web.archive.org/web/20070428004836/http://www.formula1.com/insight/rulesandregs/13/995.html https://web.archive.org/web/20070428004836/http://www.formul... "For 2006, engines are reduced in size from the previous 3-litre V10s to 2.4-litre V8s. The aim is to reduce costs and improve safety." You can also tell that it's mostly about performance, given all the other design restrictions (no variable valve timing, no intercoolers, just one spark plug, etc ).
qserasera 6y ago
I was told that engines were more stable in multiples of 6's from some weird physics going on in the engine. I guess that guy could have been completely full of shit.
- lmm 6y ago
  That guy was right that there are 6-cylinder configurations with perfect mechanical balance (and not for other cylinder numbers), but the V6 isn't one of them so that's not the reason here.
- 6y ago

Godel_unicode 6y ago

> Usually injuries follow power laws That's a pretty outstanding claim, do you have any evidence for this?

VLM 6y ago
I'd bet a case of beer that OP did operations analysis in his MBA course... The term to google for is "Duane Power Law" or similar. Duane was the first statistical process improvement researcher in the 60s to graph MTBF stats and discover breakdowns follow a power law. There's a lot to see if you google for that. Of course humans aren't machines... or are we? Pretty weird how wildly different factory floor industrial machinery all follow the same power law. I would be surprised if humans did NOT follow some kind of power law of injuries based on total cumulative energy dissipation in tissue over time or something like that. Humans can heal better than a milling machine or EDM cutter. On the other hand humans take terrible repetitive strain damage, so maybe Duane is right after all.
- Balgair 6y ago
  > would be surprised if humans did NOT follow some kind of power law of injuries based on total cumulative energy dissipation in tissue over time or something like that. Only if the injury is related to velocity. If it's related to mass, you'd expect linear scaling. KE = 0.5(M(V^2)) Kinetic Energy is linearly related to Mass and is geometrically related to Velocity.

btilly 6y ago

It would not be the first Olympic sport redesigned for safety concerns. The first one that I am aware of is Javelin. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Javelin_throw#Javelin_redesigns https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Javelin_throw#Javelin_redesign... for more.

pintxo 6y ago
That case though was about safety of the audience, says the article.
- lhoff 6y ago
  True, but nevertheless it shows that it can be done. Formula 1 and motor racing in general is a prime example for that as well. Formula 1 has a strict set of rules that makes sure the speed and cornering speeds aren't going through the roof because of deadly accidents in the past. The same could be done for sledding. Reduce speed by limiting what is technically allowed and improve protection of the athletes. From reading the article i could imagine that a headrest with a dampening foam is added to the sledge and prevent the helmet from touching the ice. Or add role bars to the sledge that protects the athletes from injuries during a crash. Or a emergency brake that stops the sledge from sliding all the way to the end after a crash. There are many more things that i can imagine. If it all makes sense has to be evaluated. But first the political will to change something has to be there. And i think that's the difference between formula 1 and sledding. In one sport there was instant death of the athletes and in the other the athletes deteriorated over time.
  - mhb 6y ago
    Instead of or in addition to all that, wouldn't you just make the course less steep?
    - lhoff 6y ago
      Sure that would work as well. But i imagine that to be much more expensive then adding some requirements to the sledge that increases drag or increases the sliding friction

usgroup 6y ago

I think the Olympics is just generally physically bad for the athletes. Runners, weightlifters, wrestlers, boxers, rowers, etc all these folks end up working so close o the edge of sustainable human tolerance and capacity that’s it’s unlikely they are not constantly going over it.

secondcoming 6y ago
Isn't that the whole point of the Olympics though? To push humans to the limit.
- Balgair 6y ago
  Nit: To have humans push themselves to the limit.
Invictus0 6y ago
I don't understand this comment; what is physically bad about running? I'll accept that you may have a higher rate of injuries but surely we can agree that pulling a muscle and giving yourself Parkinson's are not remotely in the same ballpark of injuries.
- VLM 6y ago
  Knee implants, significant negative hormonal changes for men over 50 miles/wk. Repetitive stress injuries are no joke. OP is probably not aware that the Olympics does not have ultra-marathon type events which are generally very unhealthy for participants, only a 10K and a marathon (and shorter sprints of course)
  - Invictus0 6y ago
    WRT knee damage, I found a Harvard report saying that running helps protect your knees against arthritis [0]. You'll have to source your own hormonal claim because it was too vague for me to find much, but what I did find did not seem negative [1][2]. [0] https://www.health.harvard.edu/healthbeat/will-continuing-to-run-make-my-knees-wear-out-faster https://www.health.harvard.edu/healthbeat/will-continuing-to... [1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19046725/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19046725/ [2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18208421/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18208421/

trianglem 6y ago

No, sport is dangerous and we must accept this. Otherwise this is a slippery slope and will result in banning sinple things like a slide in soccer or something.

onion2k 6y ago
That's nonsense. We can assess risks and determine the probability of injuries and the severity of them, and issue bans accordingly. "If we ban X then W, Y and Z are next" is just fearmongering. There's no reason why we can't ban something without banning other things that are much less dangerous. Most "slippery slope" arguments are so obviously fallacious I'm surprised people still try to use them.
- jbverschoor 6y ago
  Horseback riding Is super dangerous
  - onion2k 6y ago
    Lots of activities are dangerous. The main problem is that danger is a function of probability (eg how likely are you to get hurt doing that thing), and people are terrible at estimating probability. While horse riding is dangerous in the sense that when you get hurt it's likely to be severe, it's not that dangerous because the probability of being hurt is quite low. Among the millions of people who go horse riding each year very few get badly hurt. What the article is suggesting is for the relatively small number of people who participate in bobsledding a significant number are getting brain injuries.
    - VLM 6y ago
      With google its quite trivial to get actual data rather than estimates. It doesn't seem controversial that per IIHS stats motorcycles have about 30 times more fatalities per 100K miles than cars. Likewise I have no reason to disagree with an online Br J Sp Med journal article from '91 that horse riders experience significant accidents once every 350 hours whereas motorcyclists have a serious accident every 7000 hours, or about 20 times more risky, based on ER reports. So multiplying risk, it seems horse riding is about 600 times more dangerous than passenger car driving. Another interesting anecdote is "everyone knows" that most accidents happen to noobs because they're distracted so much by learning and not knowing their limitations. So what you're really measuring is the fraction of low time noobs who will be injured by the sport before they escape noob status. That hypothesis would predict that essentially all horse riders will be injured in some way before they escape noob status, a noticeable fraction of motorcycle riders will be injured as noobs although the vast majority will not be injured, and its actually VERY rare for a noob car driver to be injured while learning to drive. In summary, this seems to be a situation where perceived risk matches actual risk. It would seem as a civilization we do an adequate job preparing teen car drivers as the vast majority of drivers survive their teen driver years, but as a civilization we do a completely inadequate job training horse riders. Or at least based on British data from the 80s as reported thirty years ago; I'm old enough to remember nobody wore bicycle helmets before the 90s; perhaps modern horse rider trainees wear better safety equipment in 2020 than in 1990. Strange start up tech idea: Smart helmet with GPS and machine vision for horse riders with AI and machine learning to yell in their ear when they're doing something dumb. If essentially all horse riders are injured while learning, they would likely be very motivated to drop some money on your smart AI safety helmet. On the other hand actual risk data indicates a similar product for teen drivers simply wouldn't sell, not having the proposed theoretical magic helm already has a very low accident rate making the helm appear less useful. Edited to note: that's the entire point of my risk rant, do a startup on fixing a problem virtually all of the customers have, not a startup on a problem essentially none of the customers have.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

briefcomment 6y ago

I feel like we should demonetize competitive sports. Sports are wonderful, but money (and maybe fame) incentivizes you past the point where you stop based on how your body feels. Maybe we miss out on records and storylines, but I think there are much healthier ways of spending our time.

low_common 6y ago
None of these guys were getting paid to be bobsledders. I suppose they get endorsements and such, but they didn't become millionaires based on a salary alone.
hannasanarion 6y ago
US olympians earn an average of $16,000/year, mostly from part-time jobs that give them extra time to train. If they win gold, they get $40,000 per medal (meaning teams have to split it). Olympians are definitely not in it for the money.

erfgh 6y ago

How about we let people decide on their won what they want to do with their lives?

AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
Generally I'd agree, but there is some rationality to the idea that we should not encourage and promote certain activities because of their inherent dangers. Smoking, for instance.
- fermienrico 6y ago
  There is a distinction here that needs to be emphasized. We should absolutely allow people to smoke: what we should limit is the amount of money that goes into marketing, promotion, the big Philip Morris, government lobbying, and a whole bunch of backend work that goes into getting people addicted to Tobacco. Simply restricting people from smoking is a blanket encroachment of personal liberty and should not be IMO entertained. As far as it doesn't damage others (like Guns), we should allow it. I think warning labels on Cigarette boxes is an excellent idea - it informs the consumer of facts of consuming the product, whether they choose to do it or not is up to them.

alex_duf 6y ago

_any_ sport at a high enough level will be bad for your body.