That might be the most appropriate song in the world when falling 70 feet to your death in a car.
70 degree angle, maybe 50 feet down to the road. I may have lived but it wouldn’t have been pretty. If I’d hit the side of the overpass bridge, or the highway sign held up by girders, or the truck - it’s probably death for all 3 - given I wasn’t wearing a seatbelt and these were pre-airbag days. A matter of falling asleep a half second earlier or half second later.
For the record - I did deliberately shut my eyes “just for a second”. I kind of forgot about that until now, as I generally leave that off of the story. So bad. I was the dumbest 16-year-old alive.
Well, one of the dumbest still alive.
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I did this when I was 19, on a poker bender at the Soaring Eagle Casino in Mt. Pleasant, MI, driving back to Ann Arbor despite pleading with the other two, who were, like me, tired, but unlike me, still kinda drunk, that we should just sleep it off because one of the idiots had a test in his Japanese class.
I cranked the music up, asked the other guys to stay awake, tried to do it, fell asleep on the snow and ice in Ingham County, crossed two lanes of traffic, ended up in a snow embankment. Everything basically fine but I’m shook and the car was stuck.
Cop comes by a half hour later, gives me a ticket for driving too fast for the conditions. I protest that how could he know, he said something to me about tire tracks, I was like lol yeah you’re an expert in tire tracks.
I took it to court before a magistrate. Magistrate asked me what happened, I said it doesn’t matter what happened, this dude can’t just come and give me a ticket for something he doesn’t know I did. I asked the magistrate if he could imagine any reasonable ways to end up off the road that didn’t involve driving too fast for the conditions.
He didn’t answer. Instead he cited a 19th century Michigan Supreme Court case involving a horse-and-buggy. I lost although I could have taken it to court–risking having to pay expenses if I lost, another crock. If I take it to court I probably have a chance of winning? No idea, maybe not. I still don’t see how they can ticket you for something they don’t actually know occurred, but some magistrate armed with a court case that he fires off to impress stupid people sure thought so.
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I feel like I should clarify I’m just making a stupid joke here and not calling you dumb then or now. I think I have a bad habit of making my stupid jokes a bit too ambiguous.
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its been tried
This made me remember I had a couple terrible ways to deal with driving tired. Long straight stretch of highway I would say ok rest your eyes and count to 10. Scared myself a few to many times doing that so I switched and would just rest one eye at a time. I cringe thinking about this.
My best friend died after (we assume) falling asleep driving home.
He had been the sober driver after a long day and longer evening. Complained about being tired as he dropped the last drunk guy home.
Don’t drive tired.
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Yeah that’s the thing, you’re not close to thinking logically in that situation. Numerous times I’ve had it where a part of my brain is telling the rest of it “dude just sleep for like five seconds it’ll be cool” and it sounds like a great idea.
I am def in the need to take anything the CDC says w suspicion right now. I would say it’s been stages.
The white lie about masks set the tone. The past few weeks have been something completely different.
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Coworkers are spewing this 6% bullshit. It’s 9 am and I already had to throw on my XM4s to drown it out.
On the 6% business, from Steven Millman:
August 30th COVID Fact Check - Are only 6% of COVID-19 deaths actually from COVID-19?
OBVIOUSLY this is not true.
Thankfully, this is a pretty quick one to debunk. I’m sure the media outlets will get on it relatively quickly, but this is simply one more egregious misstatement of fact related to how the CDC does it’s normal course of reporting.
The simple answer is that it’s actually quite common for there to be multiple conditions on a death certificate. The way death certificates are filled out is that a series of conditions are listed in order as to how they led to the death in Part I. For example, the death certificate for a suicide by gunshot would likely have the cause of death as a gunshot of course, but depression as well. You wouldn’t say that the person didn’t die of the gunshot wound because depression was also on the death certificate. Depression was a contributing cause to the firearm injury. Diseases are treated the same way. COVID-19 will rarely be the only contributor to the cause of death. Commonly, COVID-19 causes acute respiratory acidosis which leads to death. There is also a Part II of the death certificate, in which any potentially related co-morbidity that may have made the deceased more likely die of the conditions in Part I. For example, someone with diabetes, asthma, COPD, etc is more likely to die from COVID-19 if they contract it. This doesn’t mean COVID-19 didn’t kill them.
As an example, a 40 year old individual with asthma might have lived for decades had they not contracted the virus, but the asthma will still appear in Part II as an underlying condition that MIGHT have contributed to the severity of the COVID-19 which led to the acute respiratory acidosis from which the man actually died. It’s pretty rare for a death certificate resulting from disease to have just the disease on the paperwork.
Bottom line: Having there be 6% of COVID-19 death certificates in which “Covid-19 was the only cause mentioned” per the CDC is NOT the same thing as saying that only 6% of COVID-19 deaths are from COVID-19. In ALL of those deaths, COVID-19 was a specific contributor to the chain of events that led to death. Without that infection, it would not be expected that the individual would have died at that time.
If you want a much longer treatment of this, please see my August 8th update on the subject: https://www.facebook.com/steven.millman/posts/10157238376976821
EDIT - Appears this one is sourced from Qanon and Twitter has already taken it down.
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I think this is a perfect time for the old BBV4L saying, LDO.
I’m a cynical guy and this seems so painfully obvious that I can’t believe idiots are running with it. I already had almost no respect for humans, we are a shitty species but Jesus christ man
our school system, our kids are still doing virtual but apparently they are moving back to full 5 days a week instead of 2 for half the kids and then a cleaning day and then 2 more for the other half for the kids that are doing in person but I’m not 100% on that.
Superintendent Dr. Lewis Brooks posted a letter for parents Monday that said as a result of the low percentage of cases they are able to offer “Back Together”, but continue to implement mitigation strategies to the extent possible.
Masks will still be required, but Dr. Lewis said schools can’t ensure social distancing once all students are back on campus.
Lol cleaning day. Performative hygiene ftmfw.
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yea my wife confirmed that they are just saying that the current plan was going so well that they are going to go back to normal school pretty much…
edit: except for masks
Our school system was initially gonna do that same plan, then got rid of the pretense of the cleaning day and instead were just gonna alternate Wednesdays between the two groups.
Then they announced that our HS didn’t meet air circulation standards mandated by NJ so the first month is entirely virtual. I won’t be surprised at all if this keeps getting extended until at least xmas break.