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Shaman wrote:I am aware of most of those, as I work in Pubic Health.

beemerphile wrote:Interesting ebay auction on now...

http://cgi.ebay.com/Ben-Roethlisberger- ... dZViewItem

Capt. Blackadder wrote:

Shaman wrote:I am aware of most of those, as I work in Pubic Health.

Now... how did you end up in that line of work?

coyofmo wrote:that's the incompetant and probably blind old folks that are still driving and turned in front of him. Now it might be PC incorrect of me to pick on the elderly or blind, but I know a bit about this issue as I've work in ophthalmology now for 20 years.

sjbmw wrote:cmon, it's ebay. you don't sue anyone to get paid.

'I'm fortunate to be alive,' Roethlisberger says
Steelers QB says he'll wear helmet if he ever rides motorcycles again
The Associated Press


Updated: 12:11 a.m. ET June 16, 2006
PITTSBURGH - A contrite Ben Roethlisberger pledged to wear a helmet if he rides a motorcycle again.

The Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback is also eager to get back on the field and start winning games once he recovers from facial injuries suffered in a scary wreck earlier this week.

In his first comments since crashing his motorcycle and undergoing seven hours of surgery, Roethlisberger released a statement through the team Thursday in which he apologized to the Steelers, fans and his family, and said he was lucky to have survived.

“In the past few days, I’ve gained a new perspective on life,” the Super Bowl-winning quarterback said in a statement released just hours after he was discharged from a hospital. “By the grace of God, I’m fortunate to be alive ... “

The 24-year-old Roethlisberger wrecked his bike and cracked his head on a car windshield Monday. He was discharged from Mercy Hospital late Wednesday night.

The youngest quarterback to win a Super Bowl was not wearing a helmet when he crashed into a car that was turning left in front of his motorcycle. Pennsylvania’s mandatory helmet law was repealed in 2003.

But Roethlisberger said in the statement that if he ever rides a motorcycle again “it certainly will be with a helmet.”

Doctors have said two rounds of tests showed no brain injuries, although there was a mild concussion. Doctors used small titanium plates and screws to reassemble Roethlisberger’s broken jaws and repaired other broken facial bones. He also lost two teeth and chipped several others, doctors said.


In the statement, Roethlisberger said he realizes he has a responsibility to safeguard his health in the offseason so he can continue to lead the team.

The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, citing confidentiality laws, has refused to confirm media reports that Roethlisberger does not have a valid Pennsylvania motorcycle license.

Roethlisberger appeared to address those reports in his statement.


“I never meant any harm to others nor to break any laws,” Roethlisberger said. “I was confident in my ability to ride a motorcycle and simply believed such an accident would not happen to me.”

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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13279232/

Free and Easy Riders

By JOHN TIERNEY
Published: June 17, 2006
NY Times Op/ED

Until his head collided with a windshield, Ben Roethlisberger savored the liberty of riding a motorcycle without a helmet. Now the Pittsburgh Steelers' quarterback says he has "a new perspective on life."


"If I ever ride again, it certainly will be with a helmet," he announced on Thursday, the day after leaving the hospital.

There's a lesson here for libertarians — and don't worry, it's not that we must pass laws mandating helmets for everyone. There's a better way to protect riders: libertarian paternalism, which is not as oxymoronic as it sounds.

The term was coined by a law professor and an economist at the University of Chicago, Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler. They want to preserve your liberty to make choices, but they'd also like to improve your odds of choosing what you really want.

If Roethlisberger had done a sober cost-benefit analysis, he never would have gotten on a motorcycle. Even a minor accident — a spill that shattered his elbow — could have ended his career and cost him tens of millions of dollars.

Now he's got a new perspective, and so do the many motorcyclists who will be wearing new helmets this weekend after the publicity about his accident. But their new perspective isn't entirely rational, either. Their odds haven't changed just because of one accident. Why should they start wearing helmets now?

Because they're making decisions the way most humans do — haphazardly. We're guided more by one recent horror story than by reams of statistics. Unless pressed, we tend to avoid thinking about unlikely events, like traffic accidents, or problems in the distant future, like how we'll finance our retirement.

We'll choose something simply because we think it's what most other people would do. Our decision often hinges not on the facts but on how the facts are presented: if told there's a 10 percent chance of dying from a medical procedure, we're less likely to go ahead with it than if we're told there's a 90 percent chance of living.

Given all these foibles, Sunstein and Thaler argue, it's naïve to assume that people are making fully informed choices. Since people's choices often depend on how the options are presented, authorities should practice a mild form of paternalism: point people toward what experts think is best for them, but don't force them to go there.

This might mean simply providing the public with information and advice. Or it could mean changing the options available, as was done in experiments with 401(k) plans. Instead of giving workers the traditional option to enroll in the plans, employers automatically enrolled everyone and gave them the option to withdraw. As a result, far more workers set aside money for retirement.

How would you apply this libertarian paternalism to motorcycle helmets? I consulted Sunstein and Thaler, as well as Edward Glaeser, a Harvard economist who's more skeptical about this approach. He worries that bureaucrats and politicians are prone to making their own bad decisions when they turn paternalistic. They've made it their business to stigmatize certain behaviors, like homosexuality, and they've deluged people with dubious guidance, like the changing edicts on what Americans should eat and how much they should weigh.

But Glaeser does see a role for paternalism when dealing with a problem as clear-cut and serious as motorcycle fatalities. He, Sunstein and Thaler like the idea of encouraging cyclists to wear helmets by changing the options they face. Instead of telling them that a helmet is optional — the default situation in most states — tell them a standard license comes with the requirement to wear a helmet.

If a libertarian cyclist objected, he could apply for a special license to ride without a helmet (along with a decal for the motorcycle so the police wouldn't stop him). He'd have to provide proof that he carried enough insurance to cover the costs of an accident so that taxpayers wouldn't get stuck with the bill. And he'd have to learn about the risks, perhaps by attending a short class or watching a video of it on his home computer.

The class shouldn't be an exercise in fear-mongering. It could include testimonials from intelligent motorcyclists who've weighed the risks and still want the joy of the wind on their faces. But before anyone gets this license, he ought to see a good analysis of the injury statistics and hear about the benefits of helmets — including that new perspective from the Steelers' quarterback.

Study: Motorcycle fatalities soar after helmet law repeal

MELBOURNE, Fla. (AP) -- Motorcycle fatalities involving riders without helmets have soared in the nearly six years since Gov. Jeb Bush repealed the state's mandatory helmet law, a newspaper reported Sunday.

A Florida Today analysis of federal motorcycle crash statistics found "unhelmeted" deaths in Florida rose from 22 deaths in 1998 and 1999, the years before the helmet law repeal, to 250 deaths in 2004, the most recent data available.

By comparison, Florida logged 270 deaths of riders without helmets during the 1990s, when riding without a helmet was illegal, according to National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reports.

Total motorcycle deaths in the state have increased 67 percent from 259 in 2000 to 432 in 2004, statistics show.

Records also show a corresponding rise in the popularity of motorcycles in the Sunshine State. Motorcycle registrations have increased 87 percent in Florida since Bush signed the helmet law repeal on July 1, 2000.

The debate over motorcycle helmet safety resurfaced last week when Pittsburgh Steelers Quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, an advocate of helmet-free riding, broke his jaw, nose and several teeth in an accident. He underwent seven hours of surgery.

Merritt Island motorcyclist and helmet law opponent Dave Carroll said the helmet law debate is misguided.

"The media spent way too much time harping on the helmet issue and not enough on the cause of the accident," Carroll said. "What causes most of the crashes is cars. Usually, it's the car driver turning left at an intersection and causing an accident because they didn't see us coming."

Physicians and insurance companies say helmets are crucial safety gear.

"We used to call (helmetless riders) 'organ donors,' because they break their head and not their body," said Dr. David Harbour, who works in the emergency room at Wuesthoff Medical Center in Rockledge. "You can actually fix a broken bone. But if you hit your head and hurt your brain, there's little we can do to fix that."

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Information from: Florida Today, http://www.floridatoday.com