Re: NEVER BUY WALMART'S BATTERIES OR YOU WILL BE SORRY

"Geoff Miller" ...

Oh dear.

Okayyyyyy...

But I'm betting you didn't have cars and other vehicles driving wildly, everywhere you went. Whole new world out there now.

Right with ya on kids not getting out enough.

With bike helmets, you don't necessarily have a high chance of serious injury, but if you're going to protect any part of your body while on a bike, the head is the one to protect. Arm and leg pads are a bit of a joke, however.

I wish I could say the same, but the fact of the matter is that streets are way more dangerous now. Rules have changed.

LOL so that made it okay?

I disagree about restraints and helmets - I've just seen too much good done with them.

Then ride the short bus. :-P

Troo dat, but would you want to be that one in however many thousand, whose head lands juuusst the wrong way?

Not me

Natalie

Oh (diety of your choice). I have to put up with a helmet war in a non-bike newsgroup?

I'll give one of the con side arguments, although I do often commute by bike (15 miles each way) and do wear a helmet.

Folks, because of various factors like coolness and hair styles, do not like wearing helmets so they don't ride a bike. Also, the need to wear a helmet reinforces the idea that biking is dangerous. Therefore, less people bike than would otherwise. Because one of the greatest factors in improving bike safety is to increase the number of cyclists, wearing helmets makes biking less safe.

So be careful of using anecdotal evidence. If more folks were biking and not wearing helmets, you might actually see less split heads over the weekend.

That is true. Folks now drive like anything that prevents them from getting to the next light a split-second sooner is a major problem.

The solution is to stop calling things accidents. If people who are driving when someone is hurt or killed is charged with a serious crime, such as assault or murder, I suspect things might change.

I'm pretty sure that this is a joke, but with a right wing tagline like that, I fear you just might be serious.

People, please get rid of batteries properly. The sulfuric acid might just dilute, but there is a lot of lead in a battery, and we don't need that in our water.

Just as a peice of trivia, I read somewhere that the automobile battery recycling industry in America is one of the most efficient recycling programs in the world as far as the percentage of stock that comes back to the program and how much of that material is turned into saleable products.

While agree that things should be called correctly, e.g., motor vehicle crashes, I don't see that this would change things much. It does help change attitudes that crashes are accident, which implies they can't be prevented or helped.

I don't know what is the appropriate penalty in a crash where people are killed. It depends on the circumstances.

Jeff

About 8 years ago, in one of the counties south of here (Rochester), some drunk bitch got onto route 390 in the wrong direction, slammed into another car and killed both occupants. The district attorney charged her with murder. Logic: After so many years of seeing public service ads about drunk driving, he felt she knew the risks, so when she got in the car, she had intent. The plan sort of worked: The woman ended up bargaining for the worst possible sentence for vehicular manslaughter, whatever it was at the time. She's gone for a LOT of years.

In an interview with the DA later, he said he wanted to be sure she didn't bargain downward from 10 years to 2, or any other number that would be an insult to the justice system. The murder charge began the bargaining with a much higher number. But the jury was apparently OK with the original murder charge.

I'd like to see this happen much more often.

There is a huge difference between driving while impaired and being overly aggressive in traffic.

A drunk driver (repeat offender, hereafter referred to as buttwipe) hit a telephone pole. When the wire crossed (the high-voltage wires (I think around 11,000 V) crossed the low voltage wires (110 V), things didn't go well for two of the houses that were normally fed 110 V lines. The wiring for both houses had to be totally redone. And one of the houses caught fire, resulting in much loss. The buttwipe didn't got little or no jail time. He disrupted the lives of two families, one for many months.

Jeff

True, but in all cases, one of two things is true:

1) Driver knows the risks, but takes them anyway. That's intent. Too bad the law doesn't define it that way. 2) Driver does NOT know or acknowledge the risks, in which case, it never should've gotten a license to drive. That's the government's fault. Unfortunately, 90% of drivers fall into this category. My son, who's been driving for about 2 years, says the number's more like 95%. He's probably right.

That's nothing. Back in the late 1970s, a friend of mine, a highway cop, was writing a ticket and got hit by a drunk driver. Actually hit , then snagged. The cop's belt became entangled somehow on the car's bumper and he was dragged for a couple of miles until a bunch of people with CB radios rounded him up in a parking lot. It was definitely a closed casket funeral. The murderer was sentenced to community service, working in a hospital ER, if I recall.

Although, Even though I don't agree with Geoff's environmental views, I'd have to agree with the bike helmet thing.

I grew up in the first county in America to have a bike helmet law. I could see from my house the place where someone had cut a hole in the fence beside Route 29-a 6 lane limited access highway. Everyone knew that it was a stupid idea to cross 29, and it was rare that anyone did it, but some idiot kid crossed it at dusk and got hit by a car. So his sixth grade friends started lobbying to have a helmet law introduced. The rest of us thought it was silly. He was stupid enough to be out there playing in traffic, and getting hit by a car dong 60 would probably mess up someone badly enough regardless of protective gear. However, the county coudln't say no to a group of little kids asking for a law to save little kids. So, they passed a law that anyone under

16 had to have a helmet on to ride a bike.

Fortunately it wasn't actually enforced. I refused to wear one, and saw cops several times. Never anything mentioned about it. But this was just a few short years after seatbelt fines popped up. I'm sure the cops thought it was silly too. But the damn law spread like wildfire.

Now don't get me wrong. I think that seatbelt laws are necessary, and I wear mine religiously.(Especially since I definitely wouldn't be here without one.) I think that motorcycle helmet laws might be going a little far as far as encroaching on freedom, but I don't really have a problem with them since I think it is stupid to ride without one. Especially given that laying down a motorcycle is more a matter of when than if. However, I think that the risk of serious head injury on a bike is low as long as you are defensive and alert. I've rode literally thousands of miles as a kid, a college student, and an adult. I've rode in traffic on all sorts of roads, and have never been hit or been in an accident where I said, whoa that was close, maybe I should wear a helmet. I make my intentions clear to cars by where I place my bike on the road and how I move. The only time I wear one is when I go mountain biking, just because there can be some pretty bad obstacles to hit, and with funky terrain the odds of falling are much higher. I'd liken the paranoia behind major head trauma while biking to that of an extremely obsessive compulsive person who won't touch anything for fear of contracting an illness, and resultingly stinks up their workplace with continuous applications of purell and lysol.(Not that I've ever experienced such a neurotic screwball.)

I think that kids need to have an exposure to danger. It helps them develop a sense of cause and effect, and a sense of responsibility. The person who grows up in a society where accidents are almost impossible because someone has legislated out all possible causes is not going to do very well outside of that society. But more importantly, they don't learn to take responsibility for their actions. If they do get hurt, they are quick to assume that it was because someone else didn't do their job correctly, or somehow wrongly put them in harm's way, or that an owner should have predicted that it was possible for a freak accident to happen, and invested loads of money to prevent it. It's absurd. Nowadays, people are sooner to point the finger at someone else than to reflect on their own actions.

And as for today's world being a more dangerous place, I don't think that that really is the case. There are child abductions. But there were child abductions in the 30s. People do drive like maniacs now, but if my fathers stories of how he and his friends used to drive are any indication, I'd think that there used to be maniacs on the roads in the 60s also. In fact, I'd say that the number of cars that I see weaving in and out of traffic at thirty miles over what the flow of traffic is significantly lower today than 10 or 15 years ago. But then again, maybe I just have the wrong sample. Different areas of the country have different driving habits.

I love the allusion to the Christmas Story made by Geoff. Very nice.

Have a good day, Bill

Bicycle helmet save lives. I think the laws are a good idea, and I think bicycle helmets should be mandatory for all people riding bicycles under the age of 110.

Yet the cars are controlled by drivers. Are the drivers noticing you? Are they distracted by kids, music, cell phones? Are you sure they can see you and your signals? Is the sun glaring in their eyes? Do they even know what the signals mean?

The data clearly show that bike helmets prevent serious injury and death.

As a physician, I have taken care of kids who been killed in motor vehicle crashes and kids who died from other causes.

I strongly feel that all people should be wearing bike helmets whenever they ride. I do.

Jeff

I am a bleeding heart liberal, but I agree with you on this subject. I have done R&D on Driver distraction for the past 10 years and have reached the same conclusion for car crashes. Each year in the US there are approx 43,000 deaths and about 3,000,000 reported crashes. M'gawd the sky is falling and we must do something about this overwhelming problem!!!

But let's take a look at the HUGH total of miles driven or hours on the road for ALL the drivers. The % is something like 1 crash /10000 hours of driving or .00001%. Every driver considers him/herself a superior driver, and probably should, because they have VERY few crashes over their lifetime of driving. No matter how much we improve the safety of the car ($) or the roads ($$$) or the infrastructure ($$$$$$) there will always be a very small percentage of crashes due to distraction or drinking or mere wrong place, wrong time circumstances.

Yes, when there are crashes they are horrendous, the victims are in need of emergency help, and it makes the evening news, but consider the vast majority that are home safely and watching the evening news.

I do think that repeat traffic offenders that have much higher than average crashes should be denied any access to drivable cars, however.

Chip

My suggestion is ... whether in a car, or on a bike, or motorcycle,or even walking.. to wear a custom helmet made from a walmart battery. Simply cut open the top of the battery with your exacto knife or shrub trimmer and dump the contents and top out. Attach a strap to the bottom box shell, and place on head. Always wear your helmet!

"dgk" .

That is without a doubt the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen regarding this subject.

Biking IS more dangerous, but not due to the activity itself, but the actions of others. Fact is, if a car hits you on the bike/motorcycle, you are more likely to have fatal injuries than the person driving the car.

Statistics back me up, so your argument does not stand.

Natalie

Some are accidents, but there is the charge of vehicular homicide.

Natalie

Thanks, Jeff - you're absolutely right, but those who are determined to ditch helmets will never be convinced.

The actor Gary Busy nearly had his brain totally scrambled, said he would wear a helmet from then on, but still didn't believe helmets should be required.

You know what? If they want to scramble their brains, they have that right, but MY insurance rates are affected by their stupidity.

Ditto seat belts.

Natalie

I guess my biggest point is, that if you DO have the accident, your chances of survival/less injury is way better with helmets and seatbelts.

Natalie

"M78Ultra" ...

LOL

Natalie

I still use a helmet. But, there was a study done in England which showed that motorists gave more room to bikers who were NOT wearing helmets. Dumb, but true.