March 07, 2006
Get A Load Of This
Apparently, the NTSB has determined that a primary reason that water taxi flipped in Baltimore Harbor last year during a sudden squall was that it was loaded down with fat boys:
The National Transportation Safety Board said the water taxi tipped over because excessive passenger weight made the boat too unstable to withstand a sudden gust of wind.The NTSB said the Coast Guard underestimated the "tippiness" of the 36-foot Lady D pontoon boat because it used the results of a stability test designed for a different type of vessel.
The Coast Guard also assumed the average weight per passenger was 140 pounds, a standard that hasn't changed since 1942, the safety board said.
"It's the issue of what this thing can carry," said NTSB Chairman Mark Rosenker.
The average weight among the Lady D's 25 passengers when the accident happened was 168 pounds, making it 700 pounds overweight, investigators said.
Great. Apparently, this is not the first accident in recent history attributable to the "I'm not fat, I'm big boned!" crowd:
Too much passenger weight was an issue in several other deadly accidents: the 2003 crash of a small plane in Charlotte, N.C., in which 21 people were killed on takeoff; and the sinking of the Ethan Allen tour boat on Lake George in New York last fall, which killed 20 elderly people.
I happen to remember that Charlotte crash in particular because I was fool enough to read the cockpit voice transcript - as the plane went down, a small girl's voice could be heard yelling, "Daddy!" If you don't have children of your own, you have no idea what kind of ganglia something like this jangles in your brain. I tell you truly that I teared up when I read this.
Am I damning fat people? Well, not exactly. But if the NTSB statements are to be believed, then the fact that an increasingly obese population is encountering difficulties with an infrastructure designed for a less heavy-set group is simply a matter of physics and is something that needs to be dealt with. The question then becomes whether we rejig our planes, trains and automobiles to accept a new baseline population weightiness, or whether we focus more energy on fighting the evident obesity epidemic.
YIPS from Steve: (insert Beavis and Butthead giggle here).....uhhhhhhhh...hhheeeehehe....he said "load."
Seriously, though, this is an issue which requires a truly American response: it's time for our Sarcorhamphus papa trial lawyeris to descend and thoroughly maul the carcasses of those great health criminals of our time: I am, of course, talking about Ben n' Jerry.
UPDATE: The perils of writing late at night. This came out a bit harsher than I meant it to. My underlying point was that I've never thought of population size in terms of actually breaking things and killing people before. And as several commenters point out, a boost in average population weight is more complex than simply an issue of too many Big Macs. Still, though, the simple physics can't be ignored.
Posted by Robert at March 7, 2006 11:13 PM | TrackBackHow about telling them to stop putting donuts in their freaking mouths??? Sorry, but I'm sick and freaking tired of this. There is simply ZERO excuase for being so FAT that you cause an airplane to crash or ferry to sink. STOP EATING. I read a few months ago two things I found particularly disturbing - 1. Asses in this country are literally SO fat that needles need to be made longer. That's right, the current "regulation" needles are not able to penetrate the fat of the average American's ass to actually get the drug into the bloodstream, 2. hospital toilets are having to be "retro-fitted" because the average fat American is causing them to come unhinged from the wall. That's right folks. You're so fat that you've broken the hospital toilets!
Posted by: bobgirrl at March 8, 2006 02:49 AMYou know, there are some people who are overweight because of biological issues, not, as bobgirrl so gently stated it, from "putting donuts in their freaking mouths." For example, with the number of hormones that are pumped into the majority of our foods for preservation or tenderness or what have you - you know all the usual justifications for it - the problem among girls is going to just get worse. We're already seeing girls hitting puberty younger and younger because of the additional hormones from their foods, but what we're seeing but isn't being reported is that this is also throwing off the chemical balances of natural hormones in their bodies - and you know what the #1 result of too much estrogen is? Fat. And you know what fat produces more of? Estrogen. Once you get locked into that cycle, no matter how little or what you eat, chances are incredibly high that you're going to have an amazingly hard, if not impossible, time losing weight. Because the weight isn't simply that you eat crap and sit on your butt. And that's only one of the multitude of problems that result.
Whether we retool the airlines and boats or simply retool our attitudes to allow the benefit of the doubt for people who suffer from obesity (whether they brought it on themselves or not -- seriously, if you saw someone who was missing a foot, would you immediately assume that it was because they blew it off with a shotgun while drunk?), something does need to be done.
Of course, people average out to be TALLER today than they did in the 1940's: Something you might want to think about, since I'm sure that has something to do with the increased average weight.
Posted by: Hucbald at March 8, 2006 08:07 AMLet's bring back the Dust Bowl and Great Depression. That'll cut back on the amount of food to where it was in the decade before 1942. For good measure we can have a global war that necessitates food rationing too.
BTW, I'm 5'9", do martial arts 3x week and am 150 lbs. I think I'm on the thin side, but then I don't eat Krispy Kremes anymore
They don't really need to retool the boats, just change the maximum number of people allowed on to fit the new reality. If average weight has gone up, change it. They should look at these standards more than once every 60 years, dontcha think?
Posted by: Rachel at March 8, 2006 09:27 AMAs a part time volunteer EMT, I'll make the following observations (and I am not making this up)
a) the ambulance stretcher (commonly called the 'cot') has a hydraulic support mechanism and is rated for 650 pounds.
b) when the size of the patient exceeds the reasonable strength of the responding EMTs (at least two and possibly four) the Fire Department is called for 'lifting assistance'.
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