Schumacher ski accident, coma and recovery

[Shrieker]

And how the accident happened is relevant because ?

Because those who can't stand him have a reason to say it was purely his own fault. Makes them feel better I guess.

That makes sense but is a very inhumane thing to do...

[WillerZ]

I just watched it on the news, they say he first hit a rock, was thrown into the air -much like a motorcycle highside- and landed head first into another rock Very very unfortunate accident, and it kind of explains his injuries despite the helmet.

Sorry, but I do not believe that story one iota.

The line when he was taken to hospital was that he was with his son and no one else was involved. It's then become apparent that this was an enormous hit from the extent of Schumacher's injuries, stories start circulating about how fast he was going and we then get this thing, hastily concocted, thrown to the media.

Had he fallen at a moderate speed it would have been concerning, but with the destruction of the helmet and the injuries sustained it's become clear this was a high energy hit so they've had to tack on the part about him being thrown into the air.

People who think you can only get seriously injured if you are going fast really ^%$&$% me off. I've had a bunch of accidents in doing a bunch of sports and the only two which resulted in a trip to hospital occurred at extremely low speed and in circumstances which most people refuse to believe could have had those effects.* In fact every high-speed crash I've had I got away unscathed.

I suspect that the initial reports of a high-speed crash were speculations pulled out of someone's arse and it's very unfortunate that the result is that people do not believe what actual eyewitnesses have say.

* While traversing a slope at sub-walking pace on my XC bike I lost the wheels from under me tipping me onto my up-hill side (left) where I unluckily landed on a rock. Result: 2 broken ribs, precautionary checks for punctured lung, enduring back pain.

This one you can laugh at me for… while playing 8-ball pool I had snookered myself on the black which I needed to pot to win: no direct shot and the obvious cushion-shot would be in-off. All I had was a tricky swerve, which I made. I then raised my arms in celebration, smacking myself across the bridge of the nose with the cue. Result: broken nose, A&Es, X-rays, concussion, enduring inability to wear Oakley glasses.

[turbof1]

High speed impacts are the most dangerous when hitting something frontal. You would still probably get hurt when you hit a stone on the ground which is on your 'trajectory', but the movement vector makes that you'll scamp off it.

This looks like a case of low speed where gravity made him fall almost vertically with his full weight on the rock headfirst. The rock had a thin layer of snow on it, indicating it was rather flat and low. With a high speed impact the vector couldn't have been vertical. He would probably avoided skull fracture if it was high speed.

[Tim.Wright]

Fun fact: if you drop something from head height (1.6m) it will be travelling at over 100km/h before it hits the ground. That means merely tripping over at walking pace and hitting a rock will give you a high speed impact to the head.

[WillerZ]

Fun fact: if you drop something from head height (1.6m) it will be travelling at over 100km/h before it hits the ground.

Seriously you're going to post that on a technical forum?

The acceleration due to gravity on earth is close to 9.8m/s^2: in 1 second an initially stationary dropped particle will travel 4.9m and then be travelling at 9.8m/s (about 35 km/h). Something dropped from 1.6m will clearly take (much) less than one second to fall to the ground and therefore have an impact speed of (much) less than 35 km/h.

A dropped object must fall for about 3 seconds to reach "over 100km/h" during which time it must have travelled about 35 metres.

[Holm86]

Fun fact: if you drop something from head height (1.6m) it will be travelling at over 100km/h before it hits the ground. That means merely tripping over at walking pace and hitting a rock will give you a high speed impact to the head.

Of course it won't. The gravitational acceleration is 9.82 m/s^2. 100 km/h = 27,77 m/s. 27,77 m/s / 9.82 m/s^s = 2,83 seconds. Go ahead and drop something from 1.6 meters. It sure wont take almost 3 seconds before it reaches the ground.

Not even 1 second which is 35,4 km/t.

[Holm86]

Willerz you beat me to it.

[tim|away]

Fun fact: if you drop something from head height (1.6m) it will be travelling at over 100km/h before it hits the ground. That means merely tripping over at walking pace and hitting a rock will give you a high speed impact to the head.

v^2 = 2gh
v = (2gh)^1/2
v = (2* 9.81 * 1.6)^1/2
v = 5.6 m/sec = 20.2 km/h (and that's in a vacuum; no friction)

[i70q7m7ghw]

I just watched it on the news, they say he first hit a rock, was thrown into the air -much like a motorcycle highside- and landed head first into another rock Very very unfortunate accident, and it kind of explains his injuries despite the helmet.

Sorry, but I do not believe that story one iota.

The line when he was taken to hospital was that he was with his son and no one else was involved. It's then become apparent that this was an enormous hit from the extent of Schumacher's injuries, stories start circulating about how fast he was going and we then get this thing, hastily concocted, thrown to the media.

Had he fallen at a moderate speed it would have been concerning, but with the destruction of the helmet and the injuries sustained it's become clear this was a high energy hit so they've had to tack on the part about him being thrown into the air.

There's a video doing the rounds that shows there were plenty of other people on the slopes.

[Pup]

...but with the destruction of the helmet and the injuries sustained...

Ski helmets are designed to protect from a fall onto hard packed snow. They're also tested for puncture resistance, to protect somewhat from ski poles, branches and such. In a collision with a hard object like a rock or tree at a typical speed, say 25+mph, don't count on the helmet saving you. They're more like beefed up bicycle helmets than anything else.

[ScottB]

You can do horrendous damage to yourself skiing even at moderate speeds, random chance plays a huge part. My brother and another guy were skiing in Italy a few years ago, both hit some rocks that had been covered by snow, the friend fell, dusted himself off and got up, my brother broke two bones in his leg, got concussion and nearly cracked his helmet open.

Schumi's injuries are entirely possible to have occurred in the situation described for me.

[Pup]

Not to spoil the surprise, but to paraphrase the conclusion of the study below: when traveling 18.6 mph on skis, do not hit a fence post. Helmet or no.

An insight as to why this study found a difference in patterns of death as a function of helmet utilization can be found in the following study. A simulation using a 50th percentile male anthropometric device (Scher, Richards and Carhart, 2005) was done of a snowboarder going 30 kph, catching an edge and falling headfirst onto soft snow, icy snow and a fixed object (a 28-cm upright wooden post). This simulation was done to assess the effect of wearing a helmet or not under the three different impact conditions. The helmet in question met the requirements of ASTM F2040. The g-loads to the head-form were measured and the associated Head Injury Criterion (HIC) values were computed. HIC is a time-weighted acceleration measure used widely in the automotive industry to measure impact severity as it relates to head injury. This study found that if the impact is onto a soft-snow surface, both the measured g-loads (under 100 g) and the computed HIC values (less than 220) are well within acceptable limits regardless of whether or not a helmet is used. When the impact was onto simulated hard, icy snow, the helmet reduced the average measured g-load from 329 to 162, and the HIC value from 2,235 to 965. When the impact was against the fixed object, the helmet reduced the values from 696 to 333, and the HIC from 12,185 to 3,299.

The study concluded that under the circumstances of impact with soft snow, the use or non-use of the helmet had no significant effect. In the matter of the impact with a solid fixed object resembling a tree, while the use of a helmet was associated with a significant reduction in both the g-load and the HIC, the likely outcome remained that of a fatal injury— with or without the use of a helmet. With an impact on icy snow, the use of a helmet could be the difference between a significant head injury (possibly life-threatening) and a minor head injury.

We believe that the kinetic energy in many death scenarios may be so massive as to overwhelm the degree of protection that any helmet could offer. Many fatalities appear to occur under circumstances that are likely to exceed the protective capacity of current helmets designed for recreational snowsports. While helmets can reduce the impact to the head, it’s inherently possible to overwhelm that degree of protection. It seems that in some snowsports fatalities, helmets are capable of preventing fatal head injuries, but still not lower the overall likelihood of death because most of the fatalities involve significant multitrauma events and thus other fatal injuries are also likely to occur.

Data indicate no decline in fatality incidence (or serious head injury incidence, for that matter, but this is less clear and we are still working on that point) even though helmet utilization within the high-risk group of skilled/ experienced young adult participants is more than 40 per cent and growing. What is clear is that the pattern of death is different as a function of helmet utilization.

Helmets will probably never have a serious impact on mitigating death due to head injury since the typical fatal scenario has so much kinetic energy that it will overwhelm the protective elements of the helmet. But the good news is that fatal injuries in snowsports are quite rare—less than one in 1.5 million days of activity.

Full article: https://web.archive.org/web/20100822083 ... 46556.html

I was also interested to read that the majority of ski deaths occur on blue groomers. That's a stat I'll need to regularly remind myself of.

[siskue2005]

These are skiing pictures from few years back




look at the helmet it is nothing compared to f1 helmet.

[Manoah2u]

that's a good helmet, i've been skiing for 12 years. Fell a couple of times, never hit a rock tho, even though i've went off the borders regularly. I can imagine hitting objects hard when coming to a fall.

still i think it's weird a helmet cracks into 3 pieces. let's be happy he was wearing a helmet, but i think the helmet should have violent damage to the side hitting the rock, but cracking into 3 pieces? well his head's still intact so it took the force.

any updates on his situation? last thing i read was he's in critical state but stable. lots of stories on how he might suffer permanent damage, but then there were cruel stories on how he was already dead, too. can't believe people actually do that,
even less that news articles provided as such. I'm glad he's still breathing, hope he'll be ok.

[Tim.Wright]

Fun fact: if you drop something from head height (1.6m) it will be travelling at over 100km/h before it hits the ground. That means merely tripping over at walking pace and hitting a rock will give you a high speed impact to the head.

v^2 = 2gh
v = (2gh)^1/2
v = (2* 9.81 * 1.6)^1/2
v = 5.6 m/sec = 20.2 km/h (and that's in a vacuum; no friction)

Yep, forgot the square root I did, sorry guys