(OT) Cornell footabll player killed in car accident

[Kristen 00]

More sad news from Athletics:

http://cornellbigred.collegesports.com/sports/m-footbl/spec-rel/051404aaa.html
 
Freshman Athlete Jaime McManamon Dies After Car Accident
He was a member of the football and track and field teams


May 14, 2004


• Leave thoughts, prayers, remembrances

ITHACA, N.Y. - James H. "Jaime" McManamon, 19, a freshman at Cornell University and a defensive lineman on the varsity football team and shot-putter on the men's track and field team, was killed in a car accident May 13 on Interstate 86 in Chautauqua County, N.Y.

McManamon was traveling with his mother, Kerry McManamon, 41, and Kelly Smith, 41, to his home in Westlake, Ohio. His 2000 Chevrolet Suburban left the road and rolled over several times. He was airlifted to the Hamot Medical Center in Erie, Pa., and pronounced dead upon arrival, according to police. Kerry McManamon, who was in the rear seat, was ejected from the vehicle and suffered a broken leg. Kelly Smith, in the front passenger seat, suffered minor injuries.

A 2003 graduate of St. Edward High School in Lakewood, Ohio, Jaime McManamon was a major in applied economics and management in Cornell's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.
   
"The Cornell community is heartbroken at the news of Jaime's death," said Andy Noel, director of athletics and physical education. "I initially met him during a recruiting visit to campus last spring and he was fine young man and player this past year. He will be missed very much by his teammates and friends here at Cornell."

Jim Knowles '87, head football coach, also mourned McManamon's death. "Jaime was a very positive person who always had a smile on his face," Knowles said. "He was the strongest player on the team as a freshman, and we were expecting him to play for us in the fall on the defensive line. He was a good player, worked hard, was outgoing and easy to like. He was everything you wanted in a player."

In high school, McManamon played on both the offensive and defensive lines as a junior and senior football player. A three-year letter winner, he was the team's co-captain as a senior. He was also a member of the St. Edward's track team and was a four-year letter winner. He was the team's most valuable player as a senior and he qualified twice in regional and district shot put competition. He also set a school record in the shot put.

In addition to his mother, he is survived by his father, James McManamon, two younger brothers and a younger sister.

[David Harding]

Another traumatic loss.
Coverage in the Ithac Journal.
http://www.theithacajournal.com/news/stories/20040515/localsports/427511.html

[Rob NH]

Simply horrible.  :`(

[jeh25]

[Q]Kristen 00 Wrote:


McManamon was traveling with his mother, Kerry McManamon, 41, and Kelly Smith, 41, to his home in Westlake, Ohio. His 2000 Chevrolet Suburban left the road and rolled over several times.

[/q]

Sadly, Detroit still hasn't gotten the message.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/08/business/08safety.html

[KeithK]

[q]Sadly, Detroit still hasn't gotten the message.[/q]Maybe I'm just a cynical capitalist at heart, but why change anything when people keep buying SUV's?  When there's enough clamor about it and it affects sales they'll make design changes.

[billhoward]

The single greatest factor in surviving a crash is whether you wear a seat belt. That SUVs are top-heavy is a given. If they go off the road, especially onto the shoulder or a sloped run-off area, they're more prone to tip.

I'm not a fan of SUVs, our block is over-run by them, I think most people would be better off driving minivans (incredible space efficiency), but there's also a lot of sense-of-self in the vehicles we buy. A lot of non-working moms on our block who drove their kids to sports events in Dodge Caravans five years ago realized this made them soccer moms, so they bought Yukons and Expeditions and now, at least in their minds, they're no longer soccer moms.

A starting point wouldn't be punitive legislation against SUVs. Just take away the advantages they have, such as not having to meet the passenger vehicle mileage requirements and safety standards. And if they didn't have the business-user tax exemptions accruing to vehicles > 6000 pounds gross weight. All these were meant to exempt farm and commercial vehicles and got lost in the past 20 years in the truck craze. Trucks -- pickups, SUVs, minivans -- now account for a slight majority of all vehicles sold.

[Added] This is written without knowing the particulars of McManamon's accident. It's easier to write about traffic statistics in general when you're not talking about what one person and his car did or didn't do.

[Ben Rocky '04]

The starting point to improved safety is not to tax SUVs, that will never get passed.  Instead it is to do more seatbelt checks with higher fines, give out more speeding, road rage and aggressive driving tickets, and lastly to add a large federal gas tax to keep gas prices high.  There is nothing more dangerous on the road then a person speeding in a top heavy vehicle with a sense of invincibility.

[CowbellGuy]

No, nothing is more dangerous than AMERICANS speeding in a top heavy vehicle with a sense of invincibility. First of all, Americans don't know how to drive. Start by actually requiring a pulse and a clue to get a license. If people were better drivers, there would be less accidents. Case closed. The second problem is that very sense of invincibility. You pack up these soccer moms in SUVs with seat belts, 20 air bags, crumple zones,  rear-view cameras, beeping thingies if you get too close when parking, etc. etc. So now that they feel impervious, they can concentrate on the important things: phones, the kids, the paper, DVDs, and whatever God-all-else they're doing. Anything but driving. I'm vehemently opposed to seatbelt and helmet laws, not because I don't think you should wear seatbelts or helmets, but because it shouldn't be a government's decision. Maybe if people drove around without seat belts, they'd pay more attention. I dunno. Take those seatbelt checkpoints and make sure everyone's registered, inspected, and insured, instead.

[KeithK]

I've got to (mostly) agree with Age here.  It's the cell phones, drinks, drive through meals and DVD players that are the most dangerous things about driving.  I should have a right to drive without a seat belt - if I want to be stupid I should have a right to since I'm only hurting myself.  Don't give me the argument about health costs either, because if you accept that you can use it to outlaw virtually any kind of potentially dangerous activity.

I do agree that the exemptions for SUVs (considering them light trucks) are pretty ridiculous.  But that's what you get with government rules - people find and exploit the loopholes.  Maybe we should change the standards, but calling for "punitive legislation" to change people's driving habits rubs me the wrong way.  It's not right to "punish" people for

[Jacob 03]

well, keith, the health costs argument is specifically the one that allows the government to pass laws like the seat belt ones.  and there's nothing requiring that same government to pass restrictions on all potentionally dangerous activity as soon as it regulates one.  that's the fun part of being a decision-maker, you get to pick and choose things.  

so while seat belt usage is obviously amongst those regulations our government is allowed to (and even encouraged to) make, it's also important to point out it's one of the easiest to enforce (when we actually choose to enforce it).  cell phones might be comparable, but intoxication and distracting children are gonna be pretty touch on cops.  

there are obviously better laws to make instead of seat belt regulation, but they're politically dangerous.  this really is the best "practical" option.  it seems to me we elect the lesser of two evils every fours years for president with far less complaint.  

[Ben Rocky '04]

Well, logically, we shouldn't ban the sale to cigarettes to minors either, because if they want to do stupid things, its their right to.  People are going to do stupid things that defy all reasonable logic, and the number of people in hurt or killed in auto accidents is going to climb like hell if we don't do everything in our power to make them use seat belts.  

Parents who don't wear seatbelts don't set a good example for children.  Do you propose that we let parents make decisions and set examples for their innocent 10 year olds as to whether or not they should wear a belt in the car?  Are child belt laws a good idea as they protect children who can't make proper decisions from parents that make bad ones?  Or should we not force parents to make the good decision to belt their children in the back and let the them ride unprocted in the front?

Another point: airbags could be used with much more effectivness at preventing injuires if it could be counted on that the passangers in the front were wearing seat belts.  Instead, they have to be designed to deploy to catch idiots who don't wear seat belts from going through the windshield and also protect the person wearing the belt.

Age- In New York State, seat belt checks also check registrations and inspections too.  They're very useful things.

[billhoward]

Drivers have the right to drive without seat belts, and bikers have the right to ride without helmets and leathers, if they're willing to pay a separate insurance rate reflecting cavalier regard for the leading cause of death in people under 30. (Don't confuse the heat and passion generated by AIDS and breast cancer and teen suicide-prevention advocates with their being the leading causes of death for Americans as a whole. Not that you shouldn't care, either, and not that it isn't tragic when it happens to a friend or loved one.)

It would be better if we did a better job enforcing laws than passing new ones such as doubling fines in alleged safety enforcement zones; one wonders if it wouldn't be better to have the same fines and twice as many tickets written, or half-fines and four times as many tickets written, in alleged safety zones.

Other civilized (er, developed) countries have lower auto fatality rates, including Germany with its unlimited speed (other than traffic density) Autobahns. But that's not a fair comparison unless you factor in traffic density. It's harder to kill yourself in Rhode Island than in Montana / Wyoming because in the latter states so much driving is on rural two-lane roads. Anyway, the best measure of traffic safety is deaths per 100 million miles driven. That factors in more miles being driven as the economy expands and the population grows. And the curve for that over time is irrevocably down. (But yes, stricter licensing especially in Europe creates better drivers.)

BTW if you plot traffic fatalities over time, you'll see the death rate fall *before* the government imposed gasoline rationing in 1974. Turns out Americans responded to higher gas prices not rationing.

Also BTW, if you're concerned about the environment, there's way more to be gained by getting old cars off the road than further reducing emissions by new cars. Some estimates have it that 50% of the pollution is caused by 10% of the cars. There are non-invasive ways to monitor including roadside infrared (?) sensors that can roughly but quickly identify gross polluters and have them flagged and pulled over. One downside is the worst polluters tend to be driven by society's least affluent. Pollution would also be eased if we drove more diesel cars, but the way the current regs are written, it's hard for diesels to meet every part of the emissions laws, even with lower-sulfur fuel coming circa 2006, even if the net benefit is better for the environment. Diesels today start easily, don't clatter, don't smoke, and go like a bat out of hell if it's a Mercedes or BMW turbo-diesel you're talking about. Too bad most of them are in Europe.

[CowbellGuy]

[q]the number of people in hurt or killed in auto accidents is going to climb like hell if we don't do everything in our power to make them use seat belts.[/q]

Where's your proof? People drive without seatbelts for decades. Now, if we don't require them to wear them, the number's going to skyrocket? But that was hardly my point. I'm not advocating driving without a seatbelt, I'm just saying it should be your decision.

[q]Do you propose that we let parents make decisions and set examples for their innocent 10 year olds as to whether or not they should wear a belt in the car?[/q]

Umm, isn't it a parent's job to set examples for their kids? Maybe we should just take away children at birth and let the government raise them.

[q]Age- In New York State, seat belt checks also check registrations and inspections too.  They're very useful things.[/q]

You ever looked around at the rolling shit in Ithaca? You have to pay more attention to mufflers, doors, and other assorted garbage falling off other peoples' cars than to actual driving. Clearly, the inspection process is not working. Why can't a cop ever get off his lazy ass and pull over that beater with no working headlights? And most of those cars probably aren't insured, to boot. The two that ran into my car IN MY DRIVEWAY certainly weren't. My point is there are far more important things that should be dealt with than whether or not someone is wearing a seatbelt.

Bill, if you're saying it's the leading cause of death, then you can't use the health care argument. They're dead :-P

Also, Germany, Austria, and a good chunk of Europe is higher than the US in deaths per vehicle distance driven.



But not by a large margin, despite the aforementioned Autobahn. Why? Because they know how to drive. Driving in Italy is like an amusement park ride. Cops don't care what you do. You can drive 140 k's on the sidewalk between two old ladies in a school zone, and a lot of them do. The difference is they don't hit anything, because they're much better drivers. If we forced people to be better drivers, we wouldn't have to waste money on superfluous legislation. Case closed.

Here are three good commentaries related to this subject by one of my favorite motorsport media guys, Dave Despain:

http://speedtv.com/commentary/11133/
http://speedtv.com/commentary/11131/
http://speedtv.com/commentary/6400/

[Shorts]

Although this seems to be getting quite far off the title topic:
[Q]Clearly, the inspection process is not working.[/Q]As a Connecticut resident, I'd have to say that the NY inspection process works infinitely better than the CT inspection process.  Which is to say, we don't have one right now.

[jeh25]

[Q]Shorts Wrote:

 Although this seems to be getting quite far off the title topic:
[Q2]Clearly, the inspection process is not working.[/Q]
As a Connecticut resident, I'd have to say that the NY inspection process works infinitely better than the CT inspection process.  Which is to say, we don't have one right now.[/q]

Actually, I was gonna make the same point. Having lived in Cali, NY & now CT, I can say that in my experience, NY inspections are by far the best at keeping junkers off the road, all jokes about "ithacars" notwithstanding. Not having had the pleasure of living out of state, Age doesn't know how good he has it.