Behind the nation's road toll are the injured

[hunch]

No assumptions at lights - had a somewhat new one the other week.

Turning left with a red arrow with a mini bus behind, doing same, waiting for a pedestrian to cross, arrow goes out, but she's still on the roadway and I take off to go behind. Some bright spark with green Ps turning right into the same road from the opposite direction somehow came to the conclusion (judging by some garbled effing out the window later) he had a right of way and tried to beat us both

Was driving a Golf with DSG and fartbox, which might explain it.....seems to be the modern yobs VN Commodore nowadays.

[zebee]

"Results suggest that aggressiveness and inattentiveness of drivers increased significantly after the outbreak of COVID-19, leading to a higher likelihood of severe crashes."

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9042805/

This is American data and a certain amount of statistical heavy lifting, but they seem to have thought of most confounding factors within the data they have.

[g-boaf]

Was driving a Golf with DSG and fartbox, which might explain it.....seems to be the modern yobs VN Commodore nowadays.

Yes, Golf GTI and Golf R especially. Also Audi S3...

BMW 2 series for the ones with more money as well.

[zebee]

"Results suggest that aggressiveness and inattentiveness of drivers increased significantly after the outbreak of COVID-19, leading to a higher likelihood of severe crashes."

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9042805/

And another one, this time from Nature.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-024-01576-9. "Blood–brain barrier disruption and sustained systemic inflammation in individuals with long COVID-associated cognitive impairment"

Seems that COVID makes blood get real sticky in the brain and instead of going back after dropping off oxygen, glucose and cholesterol, post-covid blood hangs out and gets in the way, causing inflammation in the brain, making the brain less efficient.

They studied long covid but no reason to believe it is not happening to people who haven't got it bad enough to be classed as such. Just not as good as they were before. Probably doesn't need to be all that sticky to cause problems especially in people inclined to be a bit stupid on the road anyway.

[Anrai]

Young bloke has a bit of a crash while riding his pushbike to Uni. He had to brake and swerve suddenly to avoid a car that didn’t give way

He thinks he’s OK apart from a few scratches, but at Uni lectures he notices that his wrist is getting awfully sore as the day progresses.

So he catches a bus to the big hospital ED which is not far from Uni.
After a few hours he has been seen and has had a scan done.
He waits bit longer for the scan result .
The report says something like “suspected undisplaced fracture of the Scaphoid bone In wrist, recommend further investigation with MRI scan within 72 hours”

The Emergency Department junior doctor looks at report and says something like “sugar, that’s not something that I can organise from here tonight - go and see your GP in the morning”

So Uni student tries to book appointment online to see GP. But there are no appointments available for 3 weeks.
So he rings up the health advisory number and is advised that he will have to return to the ED for further management.
So that he does, and if he managed to see the same young doc from the night before, perhaps the doc will have learned that it is probable a dumb thing to tell patients to “go and see your GP in the morning”

Thought I might chime in as I'm recovering from a suspected scaphoid fracture at the moment myself. (Thankfully no vehicles involved, I'm just a little rusty and stupid.)

Hobart Royal Hospital's procedure was to stick a (plaster) cast on it anyway, and request a second X-ray in a week.
Calling my GP clinic got me an appointment on that schedule (otherwise 3 weeks is the non-emergency wait,) GP gave me radiology referral for X-ray and CT because they didn't think a second X-ray was gonna show it anyway. Told me to wait a couple days and call for results.
Radiology tech said trying to x-ray with plaster on was basically worthless so I got both scans on the spot.
Then my GP got sick and I never (2 weeks) got called back. Thankfully when I went in to ask about it in person I was able to get an appointment in 2 days.

[Mr Purple]

Six years in ED here, standard ED response to a suspected fractured scaphoid is to cast it and re x-ray in 7-10 days.

In general practice land we'll often CT it. MRI is better but only funded for people under 18.

Personally if I was attending in the first case in emergency I would have written the form for a private CT/MRI (which any ED doctor can do) and copy a result to the GP. Means you'll probably have to follow-up the result later but that's no huge drama.

[Anrai]

Wound up being an undisplaced Trapezium fracture.
I'm not a doctor but from reading up it sounds like because both it's more common and I fell (on my side!) they went to Scaphoid, despite telling them the injury was an impact of my hand against my handlebar. (Gripping bar = thumb abduction which I'm reading as one of the factors that leads specifically to Trapezium fractures.)

[Mr Purple]

Wound up being an undisplaced Trapezium fracture.
I'm not a doctor but from reading up it sounds like because both it's more common and I fell (on my side!) they went to Scaphoid, despite telling them the injury was an impact of my hand against my handlebar. (Gripping bar = thumb abduction which I'm reading as one of the factors that leads specifically to Trapezium fractures.)

Yeah, you don't see trapezium fractures very often. Well done of them to pick it.

The few I've seen were discovered incidentally when we were suspecting a scaphoid fracture. They present much the same way.

[vanderdudlezz]

Wow, sounds like quite the ordeal! It's impressive they caught that trapezium fracture despite it being rare. Accidents happen, but it's reassuring when professionals spot the unexpected. Speaking of which, incidents like these really emphasize the importance of cyclist insurance, don't they?