Ellsworth

I once attended a safety training at a Municipality.

The trainer was a city employee and a VietNam veteran. He started the training by impressing upon the entire group two things, paraphrased below.

1) "The City wants me to train you on how to apply tourniquets. I refuse to do that because you are all too likely to screw it up, and unnecessarily cost someone an arm or a leg."
He did share some statistics and information about tourniquets. (Edited to add: upon further reflection, by the end of that section of his training he had given all the basic info about how to use a tourniquet without screwing up, if a person listened and remembered. Also, I recently looked at recent tourniquet data, the studies and progress over the decades has been amazing.)

2) "Traffic or trees. In an emergency, if possible always steer toward the trees. You are more likely to survive the accident and more likely to sleep well at night if you do survive."
If I recall correctly, he added, "Make your choice ahead of time." During that part of the presentation he explained the physics and shared all the statistics.

By now I have the experience to add... choosing trees ahead of time generally works well in rural areas, but it gets more complicated in urban areas (but fortunately speeds are usually lower in a city).

Edited to add:

The training was not about driving, but rather general safety/first aid.
If it had been about driving, I feel sure the fellow would have explained that holding tight and continuing direction of travel is often the best choice.
4 primary directions to worry about (L, R, front and back), 3 'ordinary' directions of travel to choose between (L, R, or straight... try to avoid up or down).

What he led with, by starting with those two items, was a cup of cold water. Reasons why the attendees should listen. Authenticity / trust builders, so we'd all pay attention to the rest of the training.
It's the kind of technique an effective trainer uses. Bruce Lee would use the 1" punch for the same effect (to the best of my understanding/recollection). I guess one might say my father used the issue of log wall settling (or lack thereof).

I forget the rest of that safety training. I am sure it involved band-aids, elevated feet and ice.
The intro I have never forgotten, and I appreciate it to this day.

Edited to add:
Well it happened again, and it frustrates me.
Similar to a blog post that I made earlier, the one above could seem like a veiled comment upon something that was in the news today.

Originally Posted by article

Seattle police officer Kevin Dave, who hit and killed 23-year-old Jaahnavi Kandula has been fired.

When I wrote today's post I had no idea that incident was going to be in the news today. I noticed it while watching the evening news.
I do recall the original event, and my blog post was not referring to that event or any specific similar event.

My sympathies to the family and friends of Jaahnavi Kandula, my empathy to Former SPD officer Kevin Dave and his family and friends.
There's nothing else I can say about the above case.

General comments:
A firefighter once told me to get "way out of the way" of the long firetrucks that have rear steering.
AFAIK it was all about the accident statistics for that specific style of truck.
And at a guess / insight, it's a problem that can't be trained out of the system, because the system requires a truck that long.
And it's not feasible/realistic to optimize road design to reduce the crash statistics for that one style of extra-long truck. Life's complications/compromises.

I saw a vanity license plate today on a Tesla that read "Simrun."
A first responder is supposed to get it perfect every time, while knowing that it is no simulation run, and that perfection is not possible.