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The luge. Should they shut it down?
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Anonymous
| PP, I totally agree. I saw it played twice last night on NBC news (even with a brief warning from Brian Williams). The first thing I thought of was children seeing that. I don't know if i have ever witnessed a fatal accident like that - twice in 30 seconds. It was horrible, and I too wish the stations would stop playing it. |
Anonymous
| I am calling the stations. There could have been children awake from the opening ceremonies....awful. Just awful. Totally unacceptable. While it was not gory, it was very upsetting to watch. |
Anonymous
| The crash did not look so bad because it happened so fast. But not the part where they show someone attending to him and you can see blood. |
Anonymous
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DID NOT LOOK SO BAD? What do you need? Body parts flying off??? Jesus Christ, he was going what? 60 mph???
IT WAS GOD AWFUL. He hit that thing full force, it was as bad as anything gory I have seen. |
Anonymous
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Holy shit. Thank GOD I don't watch network news. Hearing that the networks are showing a DEATH on their programs makes me want to throw my television in the anacostia (I wouldn't litter - but mentally I would!). Please do contact the stations. I want nothing short of a major apology. And WTF is the FCC thinking? It wigs out because Janet Jackson showed a nip but it is okay to show a real life death with no warning?
Man, way to make a tragedy even more depressing. Any links to stories criticizing the networks for this? We can't be the only ones appalled. |
Anonymous
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It should be better now. They made some changes to a few of the toughest curves and they moved the men's start to the women's starting point. That is taking about 7.5 mph off the top speeds and that means the G forces are more manageable. I think that was a smart move.
http://www.nbcolympics.com/news-features/news/newsid=412058.html#rogge+very+day |
Anonymous
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You can't really shut down anything that may have killed before.
We all still drive cars and we call still ride the metro. I saw the crash on Hulu, it looked awful!!! I feel very sorry for this family, but his family is very active in the sport from what I heard and they all sure know about the risks. It's their free will to go down the luge, and I'm sure they all know it's faster and most likely more dangerous than before. It's sad to see the olympics start like this!! |
Anonymous
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I wish I was surprised they showed the crash, but I'm not. I'm just glad that my kid who is old enough to understand what happened wasn't watching.
I'm also surprised they have unpadded steel beams next to a track edge so low that someone coming off the luge can fly over it. And finally, to basically blame the dead guy for not being experienced enough, WTF? 42nd or 44th or whatever it was in the world isn't good enough? Are there only 45 people total who do luge? |
Anonymous
I was surprised by this too. Is that how luge tracks are usually constructed? I feel horrible for that poor kid and his parents. Here he was, a few hours away from Opening Ceremonies. He must have been so excited. And his parents must have been so proud their son made the Olympics and were looking forward to see him walk in the Opening Ceremonies. Then to have this happen. Ugh. |
Anonymous
When you're going as fast as they go, padding/no padding it doesn't make a difference. |
Anonymous
| I think it pretty crappy that the IOC is blaming the accident on human error and not the fact that the course was horribly dangerous and Canada refused to allow international competitors to practice as frequently as the Canadians. |
Anonymous
Yes, it's all about your kids. Millions of kids-- myself included-- saw the Space Shuttle Challenger explode. We were sitting in our classrooms all together. Half of the teachers in America had arranged for their children to see the first teacher in space. Boom. All dead, all in front of us. Horrible things happen. They happen when bleachers collapse at high school football games. They happen when some idiot climbs over the fence in the tiger enclosure at the zoo. They happen during what's supposed to be an educational program like the first teacher in space. It is extremely upsetting to watch but the network doesn't need to shut it down for your kids. They're going to see life happen whether you are angry or not. |
Anonymous
That's really not an apt comparison. We take calculated risks in driving cars & we try to make them as safe as possible. We don't drive cars that would be considered unreasonably dangerous, like ones with that go 200 mph and have no seatbelts. The issue isn't whether luge is a dangerous sport - we can all agree that it is. If you decide to compete in the luge, of course you assume some risk of injury and even death. But there is a point where the balance tips, the risk is not acceptable, and the course is just too unsafe to be used. So the issue is whether this particular course is so poorly designed as to put the athletes at an unreasonable risk of harm, e.g., are the speeds in excess of what these athletes normally experience on any other Olympic-caliber luge courses, are there safety features common to other courses that were not put in place on this course, were there enough accidents/incidents during the training runs that officials should have realized there was a real problem with this course, etc. |
Anonymous
| I have no problem with my kids knowing about this. It helps when I tell them that something is dangerous, sometimes they need a little dose of reality. |
Anonymous
| The Challenger explosion happened while we were all watching live, we didn't know about it in advance. NBC (and the other networks) KNEW that this guy died and they still elected to show the footage in prime time. They had a choice, and they showed the whole freaking thing. It's not all about the kids, it's also about how disrespectful it is to show, over and over, in slow motion, this poor guy's last few seconds. |