<story><title>John Nash Has Died</title><url>http://www.nj.com/middlesex/index.ssf/2015/05/famed_a_beautiful_mind_mathematician_wife_killed_in_taxi_crash_police_say.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>po</author><text>Here&amp;#x27;s a fun fact: the yellow school busses most North Americans get trucked to school in usually don&amp;#x27;t have seatbelts. The reason is that they follow a different school of thought regarding safety.&lt;p&gt;The basic idea is that instead of giving everyone seatbelts that unruly kids won&amp;#x27;t adjust properly and will use to whack each other&amp;#x27;s teeth out, you make really high padded seats so that in the case of an accident the passengers go flying into the seat in front of them, but its a relatively short distance and a soft, sturdy landing. The theory is called &amp;#x27;compartmentalization&amp;#x27; if you&amp;#x27;re looking for a google search term. Here&amp;#x27;s one:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;canadasafetycouncil.org&amp;#x2F;child-safety&amp;#x2F;there-need-seat-belts-school-buses&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;canadasafetycouncil.org&amp;#x2F;child-safety&amp;#x2F;there-need-seat...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>tyfon</author><text>I _always_ buckle up, even in bus.
I&amp;#x27;ve gotten looks from taxi drives in south Europe for this, they treat it as an insult. I feel it&amp;#x27;s better to insult than be dead.
Afaik since you get fined quite severely in Norway where I live (and most of Europe) if you don&amp;#x27;t wear a seat belt, the rate of use is much higher than the US.&lt;p&gt;He will be missed. Hopefully it can put focus on such a simple thing to save lives.</text></item><item><author>po</author><text>Such a tragic loss.&lt;p&gt;Like many people, I never wore a seatbelt while riding in a taxi. I&amp;#x27;m not really sure why, it just seemed somehow to be the social norm and I went along with it. Then one day, my co-worker and his girlfriend were both severely injured while in an accident crossing the east river in manhattan.&lt;p&gt;Ever since then, I&amp;#x27;ve gotten in the habit of using my seatbelt while in a taxi, car, bus, or whatever. Sometimes I get weird looks from it. Sometimes I find that the seatbelt is buried in the seat because seemingly nobody has used it for months. I do the same thing here in Tokyo and I believe its still rare for passengers to care but at least the cars are cleaner and the belts are better maintained.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s a bit odd that we (New Yorkers in this case) allow the TLC to push back on those regulations and win.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>delinka</author><text>We have a local school bus that took a head-on collision at speed (bus traveling 45mph, oncoming pickup at 60mph) and treated the occupants very well. The bus was full of high schoolers, the pickup was driven by another high schooler. The bus driver took a break near the ankle and none of the students sustained anything more than bumps and bruises.&lt;p&gt;Now, a lot comes into play here - the bus outweighs the pickup by several times, so it has the momentum to absorb the oncoming momentum and keep moving. But it&amp;#x27;s certainly not like hitting a flying bug. All that energy from the truck headed the opposite direction has to go somewhere, and it slows the bus dramatically in an instant. And these are high schoolers - no matter how many times the driver reminds them to sit down, sit correctly, they just won&amp;#x27;t. And even after all that, with no one besides the driver in a seatbelt, the students were all OK.  (To satisfy curiosity: the driver of the pickup took serious injuries of which none were life-threatening; he spent two days in the hospital. He&amp;#x27;d gotten impatient driving behind a tractor&amp;#x2F;trailer and decided to pass immediately after a curve without checking the lane first. This was a two-lane state &amp;quot;highway&amp;quot; and he was indeed in a zone that allowed passing.)&lt;p&gt;Then there&amp;#x27;s the Really Bad Accidents where the bus ends up on its side or upside down. Seatbelts are designed the hold under stress-- the button becomes near-impossible to operate and release. Smaller children will require the assistance of an adult. And there&amp;#x27;s ONE on the bus. With 50 kids. They make a safe belt cutter that a driver can carry, but now the driver has to visit every seat with multiple belts, cutting kids free, supporting them so they don&amp;#x27;t fall. This is not a scenario I&amp;#x27;d care to have enter reality.</text></comment>
<story><title>John Nash Has Died</title><url>http://www.nj.com/middlesex/index.ssf/2015/05/famed_a_beautiful_mind_mathematician_wife_killed_in_taxi_crash_police_say.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>po</author><text>Here&amp;#x27;s a fun fact: the yellow school busses most North Americans get trucked to school in usually don&amp;#x27;t have seatbelts. The reason is that they follow a different school of thought regarding safety.&lt;p&gt;The basic idea is that instead of giving everyone seatbelts that unruly kids won&amp;#x27;t adjust properly and will use to whack each other&amp;#x27;s teeth out, you make really high padded seats so that in the case of an accident the passengers go flying into the seat in front of them, but its a relatively short distance and a soft, sturdy landing. The theory is called &amp;#x27;compartmentalization&amp;#x27; if you&amp;#x27;re looking for a google search term. Here&amp;#x27;s one:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;canadasafetycouncil.org&amp;#x2F;child-safety&amp;#x2F;there-need-seat-belts-school-buses&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;canadasafetycouncil.org&amp;#x2F;child-safety&amp;#x2F;there-need-seat...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>tyfon</author><text>I _always_ buckle up, even in bus.
I&amp;#x27;ve gotten looks from taxi drives in south Europe for this, they treat it as an insult. I feel it&amp;#x27;s better to insult than be dead.
Afaik since you get fined quite severely in Norway where I live (and most of Europe) if you don&amp;#x27;t wear a seat belt, the rate of use is much higher than the US.&lt;p&gt;He will be missed. Hopefully it can put focus on such a simple thing to save lives.</text></item><item><author>po</author><text>Such a tragic loss.&lt;p&gt;Like many people, I never wore a seatbelt while riding in a taxi. I&amp;#x27;m not really sure why, it just seemed somehow to be the social norm and I went along with it. Then one day, my co-worker and his girlfriend were both severely injured while in an accident crossing the east river in manhattan.&lt;p&gt;Ever since then, I&amp;#x27;ve gotten in the habit of using my seatbelt while in a taxi, car, bus, or whatever. Sometimes I get weird looks from it. Sometimes I find that the seatbelt is buried in the seat because seemingly nobody has used it for months. I do the same thing here in Tokyo and I believe its still rare for passengers to care but at least the cars are cleaner and the belts are better maintained.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s a bit odd that we (New Yorkers in this case) allow the TLC to push back on those regulations and win.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>goodcanadian</author><text>The trouble with the theory is that the seats on the buses I rode on were neither particularly high nor particularly soft. On the bus I rode regularly, the back of the seat in front did not have exposed metal, but many in my town did. Frankly, the fabric covered ones were not much better as you could feel the metal bar beneath the fabric. Even as a kid, I knew I was likely to get seriously injured in the event of an accident. Thankfully, accidents are rare. Perhaps, newer buses are somewhat better, but I imagine most of the old ones are still in service.</text></comment>