The child or the beer? Decisions.. Decisions..

Discussion in 'Free Thoughts' started by Bells, May 13, 2008.

  1. Bells Staff Member

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    Imagine you have a carton of beer and a 5 year old child in the car. Which would you put the seatbelt on?

    You'd think the answer would be obvious, but no. Not for this brainless individual:

    Now, if this story could not get any more pathetic, it actually does... Yes, there's always more. Not only was the beer given priority for the seatbelt over the child. It also had priority in seating arrangements. You see, the child was left to sit on the rise on the floor behind the two front seats. Well the beer has to have a comfy seat...

    At least the beer would have a higher chance of surviving a crash..

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  3. Asguard Kiss my dark side Valued Senior Member

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    bells what sort of beer was it?

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    He is an idiot, the beer would have been safer tucked under someones legs and it goes with out saying that the kid should have been belted up. That being said what do you expect from someone living in alice springs?
     
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  5. Bells Staff Member

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    Don't know. Even the police were shocked enough by this particular case. As they said, they've removed beer from cars entering restricted areas before, but this is the first time they know of the beer being restrained and the child left to sit on the floor. The article stated there were 4 adults in the car and the fine detailed in the article deals with the child being unrestrained and not the adults. I guess they want to make sure they are safe enough to enjoy that beer when they arrive at their destination. Priorities and all that..

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    Then again, both of my kids have their car seats not just in the car, but also on planes on the occasions where we have had to fly somewhere. I mean who in the hell belts in the beer and leaves the child sitting on the floor of the car.

    Lets say the driver was an idiot. What about the other 3 adults in the car? None of them recognised the stupidity of the situation?
     
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  7. Asguard Kiss my dark side Valued Senior Member

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    i do agree, though to be honest i have sat on the floor of a van because we had 9 people we needed to move in a 8 seater car.
     
  8. Zakariya04 and it was Valued Senior Member

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    hi

    is this like an ozzy thing??
     
  9. francois Schwat? Registered Senior Member

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    That guy is such an idiot. He could have SOLD the baby and bought TONS more beer. Seriously, what are these people thinking?
     
  10. Anti-Flag Pun intended Registered Senior Member

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    I read about this earlier, and somehow even before I'd got to the part about it's location, I just knew it was an ozzy.
    Protecting beer better than children is something of a national tradition really.

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  11. Roman Banned Banned

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    Well, a child has its own internal balancing mechanism. A case of beer does not. A child also can squeeze into tight spaces. A case of beer cannot.
     
  12. Bells Staff Member

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    A child's brain can also go splat as it goes through the windscreen. A case of beer does not have a brain, so it going through said windscreen would not result in death to said beer.

    Having said that however, we had the unfortunate experience of having to call an ambulance when our 1 year old suffered an adverse reaction to anti-biotics he had been prescribed and just taken for the first time 15 minutes beforehand. I was surprised when the rushed trip to the hospital in said ambulance had me lying on the gurney and strapped in securely, with my son placed in my lap and the paramedic telling me to simply "hang on" and to try to keep his mask on and keep him calm.

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    So there I was, strapped to the gurney, and my 1 year old, lying on top of me with me trying to hold on to him as the paramedic drove with lights and sirens blaring and going fast.. scaring the crap out of my child (and me).. trying to keep his mask on and calm him down. 5 hours later, he was allowed to go home and I gladly strapped him into his car seat for the drive home. I hate to imagine how he would have fared if we had crashed in that ambulance and whether I would have been able to hold onto him in such an event.:bawl:
     
  13. Asguard Kiss my dark side Valued Senior Member

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    bells i do have to agree with you on the safty of ambulances. We watched some crash tests of them at uni and basically your fucked and so is the ambo sitting next to you. Unfortunatly they havent designed a restraint that works properly for someone lying down so about the only thing that will save you is the fact that your weight will slide UP the bed (not much good if you have the head down and the feet up). Also the beds have a tendancy to roll over which is why the ambo next to you will probably die as well. Its great isnt it *sarcasium*
     
  14. Bells Staff Member

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    Good to know. Next time just go by car.:bugeye:

    At least this time I was strapped in. When I pregnant and had severe complications and had to be rushed to hospital, they didn't even belt me on the damn bed. There I was, heavily pregnant trying to hold on as the ambulance swung here and there on the turns.

    Meh.. ironic really that the police officer was appalled at the child not being belted in while the beer was. But the reality is if he had been in an ambulance, the child may not have been belted in there either.
     
  15. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    In 64 years of extensive observation of the inhabitants of this planet, I think I can say with some certitude that idiots flock together.

    How many idiots do you hang out with? On the rare occasions when you do, do you allow one of them to be the driver?

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    Life constantly presents us with situations in which we have to perform risk analysis and management. We've all had to handle awkward situations in vehicles with less-than-optimum choices, and we do our best. I rode a motorcycle as my primary transportation for almost twenty years, for a total of about 250,000 miles; I made a conscious decision that the increased pleasure was a fair trade-off for the increased risk, but at least I always wore my helmet and was legendary as the most conservative rider anyone had ever met.
    Asguard will be the last person on SciForums to catch a spelling error, but it's written "Aussie" despite the way it's pronounced. Ozzy is a rock star and abuser of bats.

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    Again, this is simply a matter of risk analysis and management, of doing the best you can in a less-than-ideal situation.

    An ambulance doesn't just have to transport patients, it has to transport them lying down, which is one of the worst profiles for crash safety, and it has to make them accessible to the EMTs, requiring freedom of movement and body orientation that also works at cross-purposes to crash safety. In addition time is of the essence so strapping everyone into a foam-padded, liquid-suspended high-tech bubble chamber will delay arrival at the hospital, not to mention making the vehicle so big that its routes will be limited.

    Even if all this were technically feasible, the building and outfitting of ambulances is one component in the sharply rising cost of emergency medical care, which in turn is one component of the spiraling out-of-control cost of health care in general, which in turn, depending on your country, is one reason either for the increasing unaffordability of health insurance or for tax rates rising to confiscatory levels. (Or both in the U.S.)

    The traditional way to mitigate the risk is to make sure EMTs are highly skilled drivers and to outfit their vehicles with flashing lights and sirens, minimizing the probability of crashes. I don't think I've heard of more than two serious ambulance crashes in the U.S. in my whole life. I'm sure there were more but as a specialist in risk analysis and management I'd say we've struck the right balance between caution, expediency and cost.
     
  16. shorty_37 Go! Canada Go! Registered Senior Member

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    In Canada you are supposed to put any alchohol in the trunk. Again some ppl just really shouldn't be allowed to have children.
     
  17. Bells Staff Member

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    True.

    Once. I was 19 and on a date with this guy. Everything was going well until we were driving home and he decided to test his new car by doing 180 on the freeway. He slowed down when I advised him that if he crashed and he somehow managed to survive, that my father would track him down and tear his limbs off. I had him drop me off at the nearest 7/11.. only thing left open at that time of the night back then.. and I called a taxi to take me home. Never saw him again after that.

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  18. EmmZ It's an animal thing Registered Senior Member

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    How utterly naive. Has he never met an alcoholic parent? Yes they have children but it certainly isn't their priority.
     
  19. Orleander OH JOY!!!! Valued Senior Member

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    yeah, here we have parents who go into the bar and leave their kids in the car, even if it the middle of winter.
    Or parents too drunk to drive home, so they have their 8 yr old try it.
     
  20. draqon Banned Banned

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    hahhaa....that is a sad story...
     
  21. Asguard Kiss my dark side Valued Senior Member

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    FR every year at least one abulance is writen off in SA and they are involved in ALOT of serious crashes every year (sorry cant rember the exact number). Of course when you concider the amount of ambulances and the amount of hours they spend on the road this is quite low but work safe wouldnt care how many there are, only the damage caused when they ARE involved in a crash.

    Bells i wouldnt want you to think ambulances arnt safe, infact they are quite safe for pts as ambo's are quite skilled. However they ARE excempt from he trafict act, including seatbelt laws. Actually the person most at risk in an ambulance is the ambo in the back. I have been thrown around the back while trying to treat because of the other idiots on the road cutting us off ect. Mostly we are given a heads up by the driver when we are going to change speed but other idiots dont always make this posable. Put it this way, is the risk of a crash greater or lesser than the risk of NOT having treatment at that time? If your child needed O2 then i would sugest that the risk of driving him would have been higher as would the risk to you and your child if you had tried to drive to the hospital rather than being transported while in a risky labor
     
  22. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    Depending on the setup, the child may have been safer not belted in.

    Most five year olds are better off not belted in with a regular seat belt -they are too small, and their spines/necks too weak. The belt kills them. They are better off bouncing around in the back seat or on the floor.

    And an unbelted case of beer would of course be a serious hazard to the child especially, flying around in the passenger compartment.

    Not to defend drunks and their priorities, but the kid was probably safer the way they had it set up.
     
  23. visceral_instinct Monkey see, monkey denigrate Valued Senior Member

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    Fucking Christ.

    That piece of waste should not have been allowed to have children.
     

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