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by u801e 3042 days ago
> I'd take anything at all to slow down my body/brain from coming to a complete stop.

Except that in this case, the belt just comes off its anchor points and doesn't slow you down at all. Just like a bridge rated for a 10,000 lbs load will collapse when a fully loaded 80,000 lbs tractor trailer drives over it.

If something is going to work, then it had to be designed and tested for it. You can't simply believe it's going to work in situations that it wasn't designed and/or tested for.

1 comments

Let's say you're on the 10th story of a burning building and the fire department is below telling you to jump. They have one of those cartoon sheets to catch you but it's only rated to catch people falling from the 5th story. If you jump you'll hit the sheet at 40 mph but break through it and hit the ground at 10 mph. Do you shout at them to take the sheet away because you want to hit the ground at the full 40 mph because the sheet won't do enough good?

Edit: and just to address this specifically

> Except that in this case, the belt just comes off its anchor points and doesn't slow you down at all.

This is not true because the energy that went into breaking that anchor point is energy your body is no longer carrying. The belt did slow you down and even in breaking could still have saved your life.