Hacker News Reader

Comment by xattt | Hacker News Reader

I completed a clinical rotation at a suburban hospital emergency department built in the boom of the 1950s. There was an apocryphal story circulating at the time about how things used to be, given the department was undergoing planning for replacement in the next half-decade.

In earlier years, there used to be 3 neurosurgeons kept on staff. Once seatbelt laws came into effect in the 1970s, that number went down to 1.

View on HN

Friend of mine's mom was an ICE nurse at Good Samaritans Hospital. She said patient load dropped a lot once they put in the barriers on hwy 17. And dropped some more when the helmet laws came into effect.

Every time I drive on highway 17 I always notice how many black bumper swipe marks are on the median barriers. I think: every single one of those marks prevented someone from heading straight into the oncoming traffic lanes!

Wow, how many lives were saved!

I’m actually surprised they didn’t go up with helmet laws. Dead people need very little healthcare.

I didn't add but she said a typical pre helmet law motorcycle patient was really being kept alive for organ donation.

When EMTs in my area see a motorcycle screaming by at 85 mph with an unhelmeted rider they call it a "donorcycle."

An emergency room physician once told me, they used to call the first sunny days of spring "Nierenwetter" ("kidney weather").

I would guess there is some kind of normal distribution, it’s not like people dies or were fine, there were lots somewhere inbetween that took healthcare to save. The safety measures save people from dying, but also save the people who would have been only mostly dead.

Same friend was in a motorcycle accident where he hit his head on something so hard he broke his helmet. Had a mild concussion. Only other real injury was he broke a bone in his hand.

Depends on when they are declared dead.

One of the only two times I have seen a flaming car wreck was on highway 17. Not sure what happened, but that car was completely engulfed in flames when I passed by at night.

The strange things is why there was never any helmet law passed for cars and truck drivers.

Cars and trucks have seatbelts to keep your head from smashing into the steering wheel/windshield/dashboard, and seatbelt laws exist.

Yeah, that and, you know, air bags. There is a TON of vehicle safety regulations for cars and trucks....

These came much later though.

They have not always existed and seatbelts alone were not enough to protect the head, especially on 70's/80's cars were the direction column would often be pushed straight in the direction of the driver when the cars smashed something.

Even the motorcycle helmet laws didn’t start to to into effect until the 80s/90s. that was about when airbags started getting added to cars so they were roughly parallel efforts along slightly different lines.

Essentially the car becomes the helmet and does a more complete job on the whole body than just the helmet on the motorcyclist.

> Once seatbelt laws came into effect in the 1970s, that number went down to 1.

I'm surprised the number went down, I'd have thought there would be far more car crash survivors with traumatic brain injuries once people stopped being killed outright so often.

Without imaging technologies that are taken for granted for granted today, I think the role of the neurosurgeon was essentially to drill burr holes for suspected hemorrhages.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com