Andrew Luck has some money. He took back his life. More power to him.

"No one else besides the NFL is stupid enough to keep engineering ways to sustain an unsustainable game."

Andrew Luck's description of the cycle of injury, pain and rehab sounds a lot like the current state of cancer-ridden capitalism, except that "rehab" hasn't really occurred. But good for Luck; human rationality is such an elusive thing.

What Andrew Luck Means, by Drew Magary (Deadspin)

.. They want you to enlist. They want you to serve your team for God and country. That is the blueprint. The NFL has always been in love with its war metaphors. So it’s fitting that the league now finds itself existentially lost when trying to deal with the consequences of REAL human wreckage—of players discovering that this sport will kill them, and it will kill them faster the longer they play it. The NFL doesn’t want players like that. They want something beyond mere passion. They want players too obsessed to see the danger, or to feel the pain. They want you, pardon the expression, brain damaged. Andrew Luck knew better than to give his entire life to this league. He won’t be the last. In some critical ways, he is merely the first.

GREEN MOUSE SAYS: Were two city employees injured in a sewage treatment plant accident? If so, let's hope they're recovering speedily.

The Green Mouse has been informed that two employees of New Albany's wastewater department were injured by scalding hot water in an incident two weeks ago at the city's sewage treatment plant.

NA Confidential wishes a speedy recovery to both city workers.

Our wastewater department currently is struggling with the ramifications of a raw sewage spill, which was reported in the local chain newspaper.

Speaking of raw sewage leaks ...

However, these two employee injuries, which in the case of one worker are reported to be sufficiently severe to keep him hospitalized, have not been reported by local media sources.

Let's hope Team Gahan is fulfilling its OSHA responsibilities.

Report a Fatality or Severe Injury

• All employers are required to notify OSHA when an employee is killed on the job or suffers a work-related hospitalization, amputation, or loss of an eye.
• A fatality must be reported within 8 hours.
• An in-patient hospitalization, amputation, or eye loss must be reported within 24 hours.

Forgive the Green Mouse for indulging in pure speculation, but if the mayor even bothered visiting the hospital, just imagine the uneasiness and stammering as he grappled with the implications -- not of the injuries, but his chances of being named in the inevitable lawsuits.

The 2019 primary is eight months away. That's why he's there, if at all.

On Spring Street today by Breakwater, a bicyclist riding in a bike lane was hit by a driver.

A friend just wrote that her husband was riding his bike home from work this afternoon on Spring Street and was hit by a driver, who claimed to be "watching for cars, not bikes" while pulling into Spring from a side street.

It happened right in front of Breakwater.

The bicyclist, who was using the bike lane exactly like he should, suffered two cervical fractures in his neck.

And the driver?

Brain dead, but seriously, there'll probably be no other ramifications because there never are.

It's always an "accident" when a cyclist or walker is hit by a driver, isn't it?

When there's further information, I'll update this.

BREAKING: Two more pedestrians have been struck by a driver at the intersection of Spring and Vincennes.

At around 4:45 p.m., it appears that two pedestrians were struck at the intersection of Spring and Vincennes in New Albany. The driver who hit them was northbound on Vincennes. The passenger side of the front window was shattered, and there was debris in the street. The first ambulance was leaving as I arrived on the scene, with the second following a few minutes behind it.

With upper Spring already truncated owing to construction, the scene was surreal, with drivers diverting through the Walgreen parking lot (and when it was jammed shut) cutting down Division Street behind the Calumet Club. It really makes one wonder whether humans are suited to the times they inhabit.

This is the second such incident since May, and there was another one that wasn't sufficiently serious to report. I'll update this post when there is more to report.

Injuries apparently were minor, but another driver struck another walker yesterday at Spring and Vincennes. Repeat after me: "Water park!"

Yesterday (Wednesday, June 1) just before noon, news of another walker struck at the Spring and Vincennes intersection was reported at the New Albany Indiana Fb page.

Later, the poster provided the Green Mouse with details.

I own a police scanner. At approximately 11:30 a.m. a man was hit at the Spring and Vincennes intersection. A few minutes later the cop came on and stated he suffered non-life-threatening injuries. Other than that I haven't heard anything else.

On Councilman Al Knable's Fb page:

As I was eating lunch today another individual was struck at that intersection ... not 100% certain (of the outcome). The driver made a left turn and struck the pedestrian crossing Vincennes. I did notice the officer observing the signals.

Two sources are enough to publish, but there are no additional details at present. In the meantime, here are two informative links for those wishing to crawl from beneath the wreckage of fetishistic American autocentrism.

2015

Walking is not a crime: Dunman and others on the scourges of jaywalking in auto-erotic America.

2014

REWIND: "Death by Car," and other all-too common occurrences.

"It's Safer to Walk and Bike Where More People Walk and Bike."

Attentive drivers?

You'd be surprised how much more often one takes notice of inattentive drivers while walking. In New Albany, the one-way arterial street grid encourages driver inattentiveness.

It needs changing, as soon as possible. We'll take care of that, beginning January 1.

Why It's Safer to Walk and Bike Where More People Walk and Bike: Drivers pay more attention, by Eric Jaffe (City Lab)

 ... In other words, he concluded, cars are less likely to strike walkers and cyclists where there are more walkers and cyclists. That’s not to say fewer total people get injured in these places; on the contrary, the data suggested that a place where walking or cycling doubled would result in a third more pedestrian or rider injuries. But the risk of injury in these same places would fall 34 percent. And the flip side holds true, too. If the number of walkers and cyclists halved, fewer total injuries occur, but the risk of injury goes up 52 percent.

Jacobsen calls the result “unexpected.” His analysis can’t explain for sure why there’s safety in numbers, but he offers a theory: drivers become more attentive when there’s a lot of bikes and pedestrians around. (The same expectation of driver caution guides the “shared streets” movement.)

How many people will be tripped by this pipe before the city quits making excuses and fixes it?

On July 19, 2014, these three images were published at NA Confidential under this heading: File under: Attention to detail.

Then and now, the metal pipe collar pictured above, located in the center of the sidewalk between Regalo and Bella Roma, protrudes an inch or so from the paving stones. It's plenty enough to be a trip hazard for a walker, a fact readily grasped by someone's decision last year to temporarily cover the collar with an orange pylon.

Unfortunately, this isn't be any stretch the only such booby trap hereabouts.

For instance, at the southeast corner of 10th and Elm, roughly two inches of an old, sheared-off signpost protrudes above the level of the sidewalk -- just a block away from S. Ellen Jones School, where until recently flashing red lights had been burned out for months, and immediately adjacent to a busy intersection on a one-way arterial street, with one faded crosswalk to delineate four potential crossing points.

10th and Elm: Another failure-by-design for walkability.

Such is New Albany's stellar daily commitment to walkability. Attention to detail -- you know, the small things -- isn't what you get when the people in charge never actually walk, or ride a bicycle, or take seriously the preconditions for a plan like Jeff Speck's.

Back to the metal collar sticking out of the sidewalk between Bella Roma and Regalo.

My reason for posting the photos on July 19, 2014, was because someone had tripped, fallen down, and been injured. According to a friend of a friend, there were two replies when this was brought to the attention of city officials:

"There's nothing we can do" and "notify the storefront."

But the city owns the sidewalks, right?

These answers from last summer curiously echo the Bored of Works' yawning dismissal of new downtown handicapped parking spots as utterly impossible and absolutely unprecedented in spite of dozens of them already scattered throughout the city.

"It's not an option," ruled the bored political appointees, in what might henceforth be known as the Gahan Cop-Out Doctrine.

It's been almost a year, and yesterday Al Knable had something interesting to say at his Fb campaign page. Uncanny similarities, wouldn't you say?

I wonder what degree of injury and prowess of attorney will be required to fix something so very small, yet so hugely metaphorical?

Take it away, Al.

---

Sometimes it's the small things:

I had a great breakfast downtown with a couple of the kids this morning. Afterwards I ran into the owner of one of New Albany's many nice restaurants. Small talk for a minute and then I asked if there was anything the City could do to help make his life easier.

An interesting discussion followed.

It turns out that he shares many of the same opinions and concerns I hear repeatedly.
Two we expounded upon: 1) New Albany needs to be cleaner and 2) its citizens deserve more approachable, and responsive local government.
Case in point:

Our restaurateur shared with me his odyssey concerning the below pictured utility pipe/cap that sticks out about 1/2" above the surrounding sidewalk. A pedestrian hazard for sure, a personal injury attorney's dream perhaps.

He told me he's brought this to the attention of city officials numerous times- both before and after an elderly patron recently tripped on it bloodying her knees.

Months have passed. Yet it remains.

He has been told it is simply a cap to a non-functioning pipe. It remains.

He reported it again recently (after he, himself tripped over it) this time with another local business owner in tow. It's still there.

He has been told by three different officials that it is someone else's responsibility. No explanation for why it cannot be removed has been given.

Where does the buck stop? (Where does it start around these parts?)

It would take less than an hour's work to fix. The pipe abides.

It's a small thing- until someone falls and breaks their teeth off- but important. It's representative of one way that I believe life in New Albany can be improved via more responsive and responsible government.

As for overall cleanliness- harder to resolve. We need to instill a sense of pride back into our community. We need to each do our part but the tone has to be set by our local officials.

More on this general issue as the campaign continues but I'll leave you with two additional photographs.

Please study the images of downtown Columbus, IN and our New Albany below.

Where would you rather open your business? Shop? Live?

We can do better.

Working together we will!

Clean Columbus, IN sidewalks. Yes! That is a downtown, two-way street in the background running by City Hall.

A recent view across the street from our City-County Building. The weeds seem to be winning.

Street safety? Since Jeff Gahan is supine and inert, here's "What to Do When You're Hit By a Car."

Every picture tells a story -- don't it?

Nice new yellow paint for the cars.

Diddly squat for the walkers.

Do crosswalks ever get any attention?

What to Do When You're Hit By a Car, by Laura Bliss (City Lab)

One Sunday morning in March, as I was walking through a crosswalk on the way to buy groceries, a car turned left into me. I screamed as it knocked my hip, hard, and thrust me to the pavement. The driver stopped short and leaped out of the vehicle, shouting what seemed like nonsensical apologies as I cried and swore on the ground: I’m so sorry, I just didn’t see you.

Luckily, my injuries weren’t life-threatening: just a nasty bruise that smeared my hip for about a month and some very real PTSD.

The aftermath disturbed me the most. I wasn’t prepared for the game I had to play in order to ensure justice for myself.

Here’s what I mean: In the event of a collision, there are crucial steps pedestrians and cyclists must take to protect themselves, medically, financially, and legally. I took some of these steps, and failed to take others because I didn’t know that I should. There were real consequences to not knowing the right strategy.

So, reader, if you are ever hit by a car as a pedestrian or cyclist—or if you witness an accident of this kind—here’s what you need to do.

Ware's place as a cog in the NCAA money machine.

I understand not many hoops junkie readers will want to think about this, but it doesn't mean you should ignore it.

Will Ware be stuck with the bill?, by David Sirota (Salon)

Louisville sophomore Kevin Ware’s injury today in the Midwest Regional finals of the NCAA tournament will likely be remembered alongside Joe Theismann’s career-ender as one of the most tragically gruesome in sports history. But that’s not the only tragic and gruesome part of this episode, because unlike Theismann, who was working under a guaranteed contract, Ware was an NCAA athlete helping to generate millions of dollars for the NCAA, but not automatically guaranteed a four-year education scholarship. As in so many other similar cases, that means his injury in service to the NCAA’s multimillion-dollar machine could spell the end of his financial aid and massive healthcare bills to boot.

"I think she was on her back when it happened but I was not paying attention because we were rolling around."

Australia grasps the obvious: It's a motel room, mate.

Woman injured while having sex on overnight work trip can sue employer; Australian court rules that woman, who was hurt when light fitting fell on her during sex in a motel, is entitled to compensation, by Alison Rourke in Sydney (Guardian)

 ... "This is not the 1920s, after all," (lawyer Leo) Grey told the court. Grey argued that sex was "an ordinary incident of life" commonly undertaken in a motel room at night, like sleeping or showering.

Lawyers for ComCare, the insurer of the woman's workplace, argued that while people needed to sleep, eat and attend to their personal hygiene, they did not "need to have sex".

Cars are bad enough. Walk it across, for safety's sake.

At 6:00 p.m. in winter on a Yum Center event night, a bicyclist riding on the sidewalk of an overcrowded bridge -- the only way for non-motorized vehicles to get across the Ohio short of using a dinghy -- hits a pedestrian, knocking him into traffic, and prompting the Jeffersonville police spokesman to utter the nonsensical admonition that cyclists should be on an expanse of asphalt which is entirely and absolutely unpatrolled in the best of times, and where cyclists previously have been killed and their killers not prosecuted by the cowardly local enforcement and justice arms.

I generally defend cyclists, and the one biking in this instance was right to use the sidewalk lest he be killed himself by distracted drivers (the only sidewalk exception I'm willing to tolerate owing to the danger of the area), but he was in the wrong when it came to the way he chose to use the sidewalk. One should only be cycling in saddle at full speed on that accursed bridge when visibility is perfect. Many is the time I've walked my bike across it in deference to pedestrians, because it is their sidewalk, not mine. Ultimately, all of it owes to the near comical shortsightedness of autocentric metro officials and political ciphers, but we already knew that, didn't we?

Pedestrian in critical condition after Clark bridge accident, by Harold J. Adams (Courier-Journal)

No tears, but a tear to ring in the new year.

The MRI is back, and the images indicate a two-inch tear of the vastus medialis (one of the quadriceps muscles) above the knee, as resulted from my slip on the ice two weeks ago.

The spilled blood from the tear has worked its way down my leg to the calf and foot, where it looks nasty and causes discomfort, but should resolve itself in time.

Ironically, my sawbones suggests that my leg muscles, strengthened by an al-time record 6,000 kilometers of bicycling during 2010, might have contributed to the prospects for such an injury. I interpret this to mean that there should have been more stretching exercises, but no matter. The short term prognosis involves good news (no surgery necessary) and bad: The 2011 biking season is postponed until mid-February at the earliest.

Beer drinking continues to be somewhat curtailed while taking prescription meds. This too shall pass.


It's a fitting end to my least favorite of years, perhaps ever. Gimme 2011 - fast.



Is it 2011 yet?