Should freestyle motocross racing be banned because of safety issues?

No

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by Barbara Peterson

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There is danger inherent in every human activity, from getting up in the morning (most accidents in the home happen in the bathroom, with those pesky slippery floors or bathtubs) to going to bed at night. Humans thrive on danger.

If people like to do freestyle motocross racing they shouldn't be stopped. It's a free country. However, what is imperative is that the people who do this, or any kind of hazardous activity, fully realize that they are choosing to expose themselves to danger, and should they have an accident that incapacitates them for the rest of their lives, it is their fault, and not the fault of the venue or the people who own the venue.

It's time people started accepting responsibility for their own actions again.

Rather than banning these activities, perhaps it is time for the media, in particular Hollywood, to start showing "the consequences" of people's actions. I can't remember the name of the movie, the trailer of which I just saw, in which a rather simple-minded young adult wants to be a stuntman. The trailer shows at least four incidents of the guy falling off a ramp, running full tilt into a car, etc., and each time the intelligent among the audience know that had this happened in real life, that individual would now be dead or a paraplegic. But obviously in this movie he just gets up smiling and continues on, learning nothing from his experiences.

I think kids who used to watch the violent cartoons of my childhood - the Coyote getting crushed and squished and blown up every time he tried to get the Road Runner - were fully aware that that was just a cartoon and had no relationship to real life. But when they see "real" people going through the same stuff, and also not getting hurt, that's when the stupid among those children and teens are going to start experimenting on their own and hurting or killing themselves.

But there again, responsibility where it's due. If the kids are stupid enough to believe that they can fall off a 20 foot ramp and not break every bone in their body, if they're stupid enough to dive headfirst into the shallow end of a pool...there's no hope for them anyway.

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