Safety in sports

[srini]

Tragic news of Swiss cyclist Gino Mader passed away following crash.
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/06/16/spor ... index.html

Few months back I brought up the issue of some sports being too risky to be promoted in Olympic sports as their risks far outweigh the health benefits. Some people may argue these athletes died doing what they enjoy the most! But 26 is an age too early to say that even if the person was enjoying at the time of dying. I can understand some what if he died like Stephen Covey (Author of 7 habits of highly effective people) at the age of 80, who also died in bicycle crash. But this guy is so young...such a waste of life.

I am pretty sure if Covey survived that bicycle fall he would have written another book about cycling "The 1 sport to avoid for high chances of survival"

[prasen9]

We need to look at overall statistics of how many people play the sport, how many total hours, what benefits it provides at least physically to the players, mental if possible too and the loss due to injury and death. Then, we can get to a ranking of sorts and shine a light on the more dangerous aspects of different sports and lobby to change them to make them safer, etc. Is there any such effort/website that provides information on the degree of injuries, deaths in sports normalized on a per capita basis or per person-hour basis?

[Kumar]

https://www.npr.org/2023/06/16/11826901 ... rash-death

a

motorcycle camera unit following the race leader clocked speeds of around 100 kph (62 mph

Very sad . Looks like this race was set up to be a thrilling sport.

Every job carries with it the risk without the adequate reward, but sports has the reward beyond one’s dreams. Who are we to stipulate that i cannot let you take risk, as it is too dangerous for you.

Can u please define risky? Is it number of death or quality of life after you retire? Athletes playing at elite level end up with aches and pains thru their life. Football players in america routinely have mental issues due to CTE. if u ban this sports, it ends up going underground with far greater risk and much lesser reward.

[srini]

At no point did i ask for a ban of any sport. But i just hope people are fully aware of the risks they are taking or at least age enough to have the maturity to understand the risks they are undertaking. As you rightly said we can't stipulate some one not to take risk too dangerous in our perception. But i hope people can be dissuaded if we don't glorify things that don't merit glorification and i advocate for continuous research into life saving safety equipment that lets such people involved in dangerous sports get a second chance at life or even better...be able to live the dream by winning in the same sport.

Recently in another thread i posted about a 13 year old boy from Tamilnadu who lost life in a race. It is not any illegal or unofficial race he was participating in. Just curious what age is deemed sufficient to let kids take part in official racing competitions elsewhere in the world. Forget about racing, its no surprise even in normal road driving, teen drivers every where in the world are more prone to fatal crashes because their sense of risk or judgement won't mature fully at that age. I just hope no corners were cut in allowing him to take part in racing. It was sad to note the helmet fell off when he skidded during the race. I just can't help thinking if the helmet stayed intact, so much pain and suffering for his near and dear would have been avoided. My heart goes out to his parents who had such a terrible loss.

[Atithee]

Carrying this argument to extreme—Then why can’t taking PEDs be classified as known risks that people take or choose not to take?

[prasen9]

Your outcome will depend upon whether you are a libertarian or believe that there may be a role for society to regulate things. The libertarian will say let people die and let people do drugs. We have taken the path that we need to have some safeguards to prevent deaths and/or injuries and are willing to restrict total individual liberty for the sake of the good of society. The extreme libertarian would want to revive lion vs human fights with, of course, the stipulation that a human fights only of her or his volition for a huge bounty or reward. We (meaning a lot of us) do not want to see that.

[Kumar]

Sherpas carry heavy luggage and guide people up the Mt.Everest to satisfy the whims of rich athletes who want the summit in their name. They get paid for their effort taking significant risk more than what these athletes do. Are we going to regulate that by shutting off Everest summit and saying that hikers are not allowed or if allowed, they should carry their own luggage and do it without paid guides? Would sherpas even want this considering that they get paid significantly for their effort.

We can put guardrails around the sports, but those guardrails may minimize the risk, but does not eliminate them. American football athletes wear hard shelled helmets as safety measure, but there is a section that believes that players take too much risk because of the safety cocoon that helmet provides. If u put a film depicting the high risk of football before joining the college or professional football league, would this players really pay heed? Can u make the parents of this kids watch a safety video which shows the effects of big hits that caused significant health issues before enrolling in football? I would love that to be something that parents and kids should watch before joining any league. Do you think this will be ever allowed to happen in US? They probably have the waiver that all parents sign releasing the league organizer from liability, but those words mean-nothing and parents hardly read those waivers.if left to me, i would not want any kids under 18 be allowed to play american football or even box. Conservative and african anericans would probably be united in fighting such a draconian law that is against individual freedom.

Everyone knows the risk of the activities that they participate, but the human beings have the fallacy that they believe their individual risk is much lower. We all believe that it won’t happen to us.

[Atithee]

We all believe that it won’t happen to us.

Or that it’s worth the reward given that the probability of happening to “us” is minuscule.

[srini]

Everything that we do carries risk and can't be eliminated fully, humans can't play God. But for all things deemed riskier, as in Teen drivers being more prone to fatal crashes, I think there is no harm making it mandatory for all teens getting their driving license 1st time to take defensive driving classes (at own expense) and be a certified safe driver before being allowed driving. Their mind will open up to the lurking possibilities of real world driving conditions.

I don't believe in blanket bans as that will only increase chances of a risky sport going underground and substance use increase in black market. I think classifying, labeling and health warnings may help because tobacco use has reduced from almost 33% (1 in 3) in 2000 year to 20% (1 in 5) in 2020 due to more governments making laws to have pictorial depiction of hazards in health warnings on tobacco products.

People can continue to take all risks they are willing to take for being paid in return. All we are advocating is people deserve better chance at fully understanding the risks and be prepared to handle them when it occurs or back out if they think the monetary returns/glory doesn't merit the risks they are undertaking!

[Atithee]

^^Agree. Not sure if this supports my oft stated position on legalizing PEDs, but I’m 100% for educating the users of the risk they might take and then let them own that risk.