Oh for sure, we need to work toward banning professional American Football as it exists today.
Apparently brain injury is a huge thing in sledding sports.
Is it also dangerous to ride too many roller coasters?
I’ve thought a lot about wooden rollercoasters that jerk you around sharply, and yeahhhh. Subconcussive trauma has a lot to do with sudden acceleration of the head, and in particular rotational acceleration. Tossing you around side-to-side is basically the worst thing you can do for brain health.
The thing is, how often do you ride a rollercoaster? CTE really emerges because of frequent continuous microtrauma, not occasional one-offs. So yeah you’re probably hurting your brain, but most people do not ride rollercoasters enough for that to matter.
There are people who make a hobby out of it, though. I wonder if those people show symptoms?
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Racing drivers out in huge workouts to make their necks strong enough to take the lateral G forces and stop their heads shaking around. I’m sure if someone did similar training, they could minimize the damage from rollercoaster riding.
In fact, I saw one video where the driver of the VW ID pikes peak car said that the limiting factor on some of their lap times and hill climb runs isn’t the car, but how much the driver’s neck can take.
Edit: Could have been the Porsche 919 car.
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Never thought about this - do we know if the acceleration or jerk matters more?
I rode the wooden coster in San Diego once, and it was fucking terrible. Gave me an instant headache and I’m never riding a wooden coaster again. Steel are great, I just really can’t take the shaking. I can imagine that it would be really bad for you long term.
I honestly don’t recall now, I was looking into the science heavily around 2016/2017, but my ultimate conclusion was “it’s impossible to make my stupid sport with clubs and steel helmets safe, so I have some soul-searching to do” and left it at that.
I loooove wooden coasters. I used to ride The Comet up in Lake George, NY, with some frequency as a teen. I love the jostle and the rough ride, it feels exciting. But looking back now, I think there’s no way it was good for me.
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I know I’ve told the story on this forum before about riding, in order, the Cyclone then the Sourin’ Eagle at Coney Island. The headache was pretty bad, and my neck was crocked for a week!
Cyclone was fun, but unlike every other coaster I’ve ridden, if you asked me “want another go?” right after, my answer would be an emphatic “no”. The Soarin’ Eagle makes the list of Top 10 Worst Roller Coasters on Earth, purely for how uncomfortable it is on your neck. Human heads aren’t meant to be self-supporting at that angle AT ALL, let alone with lateral G forces.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxSCNto21mU
I remember one of those “Racing Game drivers vs Racing drivers” things that happened, I think it was actually a Top Gear magazine bit, they grabbed this Finnish chappy, Greger Huttu, who was the best iRacing driver…on the planet, and stuck him in a Formula Mazda car on Road Atlanta to see how he’d do.
So, they give him a shakedown lap, get him acclimated, and then turn him loose. His times are dropping, he’s going blazing fast, faster than anyone thought he would, he’s just three seconds off the times of experienced drivers doing good laps, because he knows the course, he knows the car, he knows what he should do, and puts it into action.
Unfortunately, while he was well-trained skills-wise and mentally, he was absolutely untrained physically, so on lap five doing a buck ten down the back straight, he just starts uncontrollably vomiting in his helmet. After he’s emptied out, he (rather soggily) drives back to the pits, they get him out, clean him up, sort him with a new helmet and suit, feed him a bunch of Dramamine, and finally coax him back into the car.
After those five laps, and a long break(getting cleaned up and such), he then only makes another ten laps before he’s completely physically exhausted to the point he can’t control the car. He wants to drive more, but he’s just a physical wreck, barely able to lift his arms or walk, can barely hold his head up, just from dealing with the physical demands of driving a car real fast. He’s mentally alert - after all, he’s run virtual races that ran into the hundreds of laps - but his body was just fucking wrecked.
This reminds me of a birthday outing a few years ago with my girlfriend. I booked a 45 minute karting session. Juliane lasted about 8 minutes. I got up to about 15. I vomited in the trash can outside. We didn’t go out for dinner as planned.
That wasn’t so much a physical training thing though. A combination of motion sickness plus fumes from being in an indoor track complex.
Unsure whether to put this here or in the Cannabis thread, since it’s suitable for both.
Fuck. And I mean holy fuck.
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Wait, they were doing what now?
What the fuck?
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Last night, in the Jets/Habs game, another egregious hit. This time a player left on a stretcher.
It was a clear intent to harm. While the incident in a recent Rangers game was arguably more egregious in terms of the rules violation, this one was more horrifying in the outcome.
After the Rangers incident, the league didn’t take significant action. So the players took it into their own hands in the next game. The league even penalized the Rangers for publicly speaking out.
The league should have made an example of Tom Wilson and expelled him from play permanently. I don’t care if it isn’t “fair”: at some point they need to make an example of someone and change this dynamic.
I fully expect they will take no substantial action now against Mark Scheifele, and the cycle will just continue. I hope against hope they use this opportunity to make an example, but I know they won’t.
Hockey is far better than American Football on this front, but it falls so far short of what should be reasonable. Hockey needs to be reformed significantly. I don’t know if Football can be reformed enough to warrant continuing it as a sport though. I can point to specific rules changes that have and could make hockey significantly safer without fundamentally changing the game in a negative way.
Football, I still think, is largely unsalvageable.
Also, it seems the president of the team is walking back that image/news, so who knows how real it is or not. But what a cheesy way to float a trial balloon. “3 finalists of these 8…”
Racism in the NFL, you don’t say! Also a cash, quid pro quo offer to lose games!