Art effectiveness

[Steve]

You are over reacting, all they need to do is put a seatbelt on! if you can save the life of one child even by just wearing a seatbelt surely it's worth it?

http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Wo...nnesota_School_Bus_Crash_Four_Children_Killed

Tez, it's about the actual cost and actual need. As I said before, on the surface of it, I initially felt as you do. Why not install seat belts? If it keeps one kid safe, more's the better. Right?

Well, then I started looking into it. I'm confident that, if you are at all open on the subject, you'll come to the same conclusions with a little reading and research. Seriously.

 

[Tez3]

Tez, it's about the actual cost and actual need. As I said before, on the surface of it, I initially felt as you do. Why not install seat belts? If it keeps one kid safe, more's the better. Right?

Well, then I started looking into it. I'm confident that, if you are at all open on the subject, you'll come to the same conclusions with a little reading and research. Seriously.

No I won't. I have scraped the remains of a small child up off the road after he went through the windscreen of his family car, he wasn't wearing a seatbelt. I have seen adults after crashing their vehicles and not wearing seat belts, not nice.
Simple lap seatbelts cost relatively little to install on buses and coaches. Why wouldn't you want to make sure children have a seatbelt on?
I don't understand what you mean by 'mores better', all I'm suggesting is that children wear seat belts in whatever vehicle they travel in.

 

[Daniel Sullivan]

I will say only this: the only conceivable reason fhat there are no seatbelts in a schoolbus yet required in passenger cars and trucks to be worn by school age kids is that the belts cost money.

The government is happy to make the rest of us pay for and wear safety equipment, but far be it from them to require the same of those vehicles charged with taking children in the same age range to have them. That costs them money that our government would rather line their own pockets with.

I am required to have a child buckle up for very good reason. Laws of physics are not suspended just because the vehicle gets a bright yellow paint job.

Just my thoughts. Agree or disagree.

I will go back to my lurking.

Daniel

 

[Steve]

No I won't. I have scraped the remains of a small child up off the road after he went through the windscreen of his family car, he wasn't wearing a seatbelt. I have seen adults after crashing their vehicles and not wearing seat belts, not nice.
Simple lap seatbelts cost relatively little to install on buses and coaches. Why wouldn't you want to make sure children have a seatbelt on?
I don't understand what you mean by 'mores better', all I'm suggesting is that children wear seat belts in whatever vehicle they travel in.

Yeah, okay, Tez. Frankly, I'm tired of you're trying to frame the conversation in a way that paints me as a guy who doesn't care about the safety of children. Nothing could be further from the truth. So, let me just say this. When money falls from the skies and we can afford to paint the light poles with gold flecks and pixie dust, I'm all for strapping the kids into a bus. However, if there is a fixed amount of public money available for improvements that will prevent juvenile death (and there is in my community, if not yours), I'd prefer that the money is spent preventing as many juvenile deaths as possible. Dropping a few hundred grand to save, maybe, 1 kid over the 20 year or so life of a fleet of school busses is asinine when that money could fund programs that actually address some real, physical hazard to childrens' safety.

Daniel, once again, as with Tez, your position seems reasonable. If you look at the statistics, they just don't bear that out. In most school bus related deaths, the injury or death occurs either before or after the kid is on the bus. even when a bus is involved in an accident, there are rarely even serious injuries. They do happen, but just not very often. If you consider how many kids ride busses daily to and from school, it's about the safest thing they do each day.

As for the government, I am all for public funding of programs that help people. What I can't stand is the idea of public funding for a program that just makes people feel good about themselves... playacting and pretend. We have plenty of programs that don't actually make things better for people; rather, they make politicians feel good about themselves.

 

[Makalakumu]

Yeah, okay, Tez. Frankly, I'm tired of you're trying to frame the conversation in a way that paints me as a guy who doesn't care about the safety of children. Nothing could be further from the truth. So, let me just say this. When money falls from the skies and we can afford to paint the light poles with gold flecks and pixie dust, I'm all for strapping the kids into a bus. However, if there is a fixed amount of public money available for improvements that will prevent juvenile death (and there is in my community, if not yours), I'd prefer that the money is spent preventing as many juvenile deaths as possible. Dropping a few hundred grand to save, maybe, 1 kid over the 20 year or so life of a fleet of school busses is asinine when that money could fund programs that actually address some real, physical hazard to childrens' safety.

Daniel, once again, as with Tez, your position seems reasonable. If you look at the statistics, they just don't bear that out. In most school bus related deaths, the injury or death occurs either before or after the kid is on the bus. even when a bus is involved in an accident, there are rarely even serious injuries. They do happen, but just not very often. If you consider how many kids ride busses daily to and from school, it's about the safest thing they do each day.

As for the government, I am all for public funding of programs that help people. What I can't stand is the idea of public funding for a program that just makes people feel good about themselves... playacting and pretend. We have plenty of programs that don't actually make things better for people; rather, they make politicians feel good about themselves.

As much as I'd love to live in a world where we can do everything we can to save a life, there is this awful gritty reality that we have to deal with. I think the key is to hold the ideal in one hand and the reality in the other. We need to understand that both are important so that we can move on with our lives when the two are provably different. In the same vein, little by little we can grow closer to that ideal.

The same philosophy works in your MA training. In the studio, we create a vision of reality that is affected by all sorts of circumstances and it may be close or very far from what is reality. When we lose site of what is happening in either hand, that is when the delusions form and bad things start to happen. With martial arts the results are often the same, if you train too hard you'll get busted up and not be able to defend yourself. If you don't train hard enough, you'll get busted up and not be able to defend yourself.

 

[Tez3]

Yeah, okay, Tez. Frankly, I'm tired of you're trying to frame the conversation in a way that paints me as a guy who doesn't care about the safety of children. Nothing could be further from the truth. So, let me just say this. When money falls from the skies and we can afford to paint the light poles with gold flecks and pixie dust, I'm all for strapping the kids into a bus. However, if there is a fixed amount of public money available for improvements that will prevent juvenile death (and there is in my community, if not yours), I'd prefer that the money is spent preventing as many juvenile deaths as possible. Dropping a few hundred grand to save, maybe, 1 kid over the 20 year or so life of a fleet of school busses is asinine when that money could fund programs that actually address some real, physical hazard to childrens' safety.

Daniel, once again, as with Tez, your position seems reasonable. If you look at the statistics, they just don't bear that out. In most school bus related deaths, the injury or death occurs either before or after the kid is on the bus. even when a bus is involved in an accident, there are rarely even serious injuries. They do happen, but just not very often. If you consider how many kids ride busses daily to and from school, it's about the safest thing they do each day.

As for the government, I am all for public funding of programs that help people. What I can't stand is the idea of public funding for a program that just makes people feel good about themselves... playacting and pretend. We have plenty of programs that don't actually make things better for people; rather, they make politicians feel good about themselves.

Well I'm so sorry you are tired of my comments, I suggest you use the ignore button then.
I can't understand why you are making so much fuss over what is actually a small thing. I am commenting from my point of view,from what I know nothing else. Here we don't have special school buses, the children here use normal public transport or in country areas coaches are put on for them, normal coaches which have seatbelts on, the children are required to fasten them, adults are recommended. the children that are put on coaches to go to school are country children, we have narrow roads, winding lanes and a high accident rate.
Thats it , nothing else no bubble wrap or political rubbish. I don't see what the big deal is.
We have had several bus/coach crashes involving children and yes they've died. so look through all the policital crap and just see what it is for itself, a small safety measure we use and we find reasonable. And my suggesting it isn't some sort of liberal conspiracy.

this is a coach, normal transport for country children




and a bus, transport for city kids which has no seat belts.

 

[Daniel Sullivan]

Daniel, once again, as with Tez, your position seems reasonable. If you look at the statistics, they just don't bear that out. In most school bus related deaths, the injury or death occurs either before or after the kid is on the bus. even when a bus is involved in an accident, there are rarely even serious injuries. They do happen, but just not very often. If you consider how many kids ride busses daily to and from school, it's about the safest thing they do each day.

Absolutely true. While I am aware of the statistics, I see it as...

a double standard: If my eight year old is riding in the back of my Hummer (I do not own a Hummer, nor do I have any desire to) without a seatbelt, I will get ticketed for it. And seeing the very low caliber of Montgomery county school bus drivers (a guy I knew who could not park his Cavalier without hitting something somehow managed to get a job as a bus driver, not to mention the countless instances of school bus operator stupidity that I have witnessed first hand, including hitting a kid), I certainly feel that the same standard should be applied to school busses.

and an example of typical government stupidity: the government will flush billions of dollars down the toilet in order to please a special interest group but not put seatbelts in school busses. Some of the lame, useless, and downright stupid things that our government does with money make far less sense.

My thing with seatbelts in the bus is that yes, the statisics are such that the government can cheap out. But if that bus rolls over (unlikely though it may be), those kids will drop on their heads from a much greater height than they will in my Pontiac G5.

No, I do not see you as unconcerned with kids safety. You and Tez have different perspectives and will have to agree to disagree.

Also, I see this as kind of off topic and unrelated to the OP. It is a potentially interesting discussion, but rather unrelated to martial arts.

Daniel

 

[Steve]

Okay, I had a post written, but it's probably just as well that the internet ate it. Suffice to say, Dan, that it's not a double standard if it's not an apples to apples comparison. Once again, a child is MUCH safer in a school bus than in a car going to and from school, particularly if that car is being driven by a sibling.

It's about real fears and phantom fears. Being struck by lightning, while possible is a phantom fear. Some real concerns for child safety are addressing the safety of the kids while they wait for the bus at the bus stop and when they cross the streets after they get off the bus. Once again, the danger for the kids isn't riding on the bus. It's getting off the bus and walking home, particularly as they cross the street.

Or how about gun safety. We lose somewhere between 2k and 5k kids every year to gun related deaths. Check out the Centers For Disease Control National Center for Injury Prevention & Control website to find out how people ACTUALLY die each year in the USA and then let's start with the biggest number and work down. If someone is really, truly concerned about a child's safety, that seems to me to be the only way to go.

Thanks, Dan. As you point out, it's off topic, but this is my last comment on the subject anyway. I don't think I can make myself any more clear and at this point, we'll just have to accept that we won't agree on the subject.

 

[Tez3]

Steve and I are arguing from different perspectives, your buses are safe, ours aren't. We don't have special school buses, our cars are smaller as are our roads which are also more crowded.