Ah, Sweet Irony

[Jeff]

I saw this at another site and couldn't help but post it here too...

http://www.journalstar.com/articles/2005/01/04/local/doc41db350078259784029686.txt


Here's the edited version...

I-80 crash claims UNL student's life
BY BUTCH MABIN / Lincoln Journal Star

Derek Kieper was a smart, funny, intense young man who relished a good debate and would do anything for his friends. 

Kieper, a 21-year-old senior at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, died early Tuesday morning when the Ford Explorer he was a passenger in travelled off an icy section of Interstate 80 and rolled several times in a ditch. Kieper, who was riding in the back seat of the Explorer, was ejected from the vehicle.

Two others in the vehicle, including the driver, Luke Havermann of Ogallala, and the front-seat passenger, Nick Uphoff of Randolph Air Force Base in Texas, sustained non-life threatening injuries. Havermann and Uphoff, both 21, were being treated at BryanLGH Medical Center West.  The three men, members of the same UNL fraternity, were returning to Lincoln from San Antonio, Texas at the time of the accident, reported to authorities by a truck driver around 3 a.m.

Capt. Joe Lefler of the Lancaster County Sheriff's Office said Havermann was driving the Explorer east on the interstate near Northwest 48th Street when the vehicle went out of control on the ice-covered road. He said the vehicle travelled into the south ditch and rolled several times.  A truck driver headed in the same direction witnessed the accident and called 911, Lefler said. He said alcohol did not play a role in the accident, but he declined to discuss how fast the Explorer was travelling.

Derek, who was thrown from the vehicle, was not wearing a seat belt, Lefler said. He said Havermann and Uphoff were wearing seat belts at the time. 

In a column written for the Daily Nebraskan in September, Derek attacked seat belt laws as intrusions on individual liberties and expensive to enforce:

"It is my choice what type of safety precautions I take," he wrote. 

"There seems to be a die-hard group of non-wearers out there who simply do not wish to buckle up no matter what the government does. I belong to this group."

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His Anti-Seat Belt Law tirade can be found here:
http://www.dailynebraskan.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2004/09/17/414a5a030e91d?in_archive=1


Dumbass.   

Always buckle up kids. 

Sure, maybe you think the government is intruding on your rights, blah blah blah, but better to suck it up and buckle up and live to protest another day.   

Jeff

[Ben]

Seat belt laws an invasion of privacy?

Man, this kid was ACLU material. Good thing too bad he's dead.

Guess he paid the price for having his head up his ass.

[Morgbug]

Ouch.

We had a similar guy locally, but he's still kicking.  Way back when the seat belt laws were coming in he was protesting seriously.  Had some interesting data and in rare instances, seat belts actually do take lives.  But that's in about one millionth of the cases, so odds are you're better off wearing one.  Way better off.  Case in point, thanks Jeff.

[SilverZ]

Way to take a stand on an important issue, Keiper.

I wonder if he had a chance to soak in the irony of it all as he flew out of the vehicle. Dumbass.

[Brian]

There has been quite a bit on the local news stations here in Lincoln about this student.  Obviously bad that he was involved in a deadly accident, but it is quite ironic to be sure.

[Scott]

I somewhat agree with his stand on the Government mandating seat belt use.  It really is your choice in the end and you shouldn't be fined for being an idiot, IMO.  

[Morgbug]

I somewhat agree with his stand on the Government mandating seat belt use.  It really is your choice in the end and you shouldn't be fined for being an idiot, IMO.  

The same arguments are often made here as well.  Whether it's seatbelts, motorcycle helmets, bicycle helmets or most recently, they tried to mandate hockey helmets.  The argument is a freedom of choice issue.  There are some discrepancies in some of the mentioned protective gear in terms of their effectiveness - bicycle helmets being the worst.  Great if you land on the top third of your head, useless or worse if you don't.  Motorcycle helmets can suffer the same argument, unless you mandate full face helmets (after being hit in the visor by a bumblebee, I question not that wisdom).  Helmets on skating rinks - hmmm, I disagree, but it might be easier up here due to a relative lack of civil lawsuits versus the US.

[C]

I somewhat agree with his stand on the Government mandating seat belt use.  It really is your choice in the end and you shouldn't be fined for being an idiot, IMO.  

i agree to a certain point - but a good majority of fatalities occur in accidents where a person who is unbuckled flies into another passenger and kills them from the impact. your body flies all around the car, whether you're in the front seat or not. there's some in-the-car wreck video floating around (probably on ebaum's) of some guy who isn't buckled in and he flies from the driver's seat all the way to the rear of the car. freaky.

so in this case, it's not just your own life that you take into your hands by not wearing a belt, but also your passengers as well, whether they're wearing seatbelts or not.

i guess that's something to think about.

[Diddly]

It's always bad when someone dies, but he deserved it for being stupid, IMO.

[Vator]

A fan of Natural Selection, Mr.Squat?

[CorranHorn]

Way to take a stand on an important issue, Keiper.

I wonder if he had a chance to soak in the irony of it all as he flew out of the vehicle. Dumbass.

Hah! Hopefully he did have the chance, probably was wanting for forgiveness.

While I don't think any government should enforce most of the laws mentioned here, it's ******* common sense to wear a seatbelt in a car. And oh the surprise he was riding in a Ford Explorer, a member of a line of SUV's well known for their high ratings in rollovers. Oh well natural selection did it's work here...

[Darth Paul]

Sounds like a sure-thing Darwin Award winner to me!

[BigDumbWookiee]

It's a shame he died; I'd have loved to hear his anti-seatbelt sentiment as he sat paralyzed in a wheelchair.

[SilverZ]

It really is your choice in the end and you shouldn't be fined for being an idiot, IMO.  

See, this is where we differ. I believe we should all have the right to shoot people on sight for being an idiot. 

[Jeff]

Not quite as ironic, but still pretty unusual...

Amish Teen Electrocuted in Ohio

CHARDON, Ohio (AP)

A 17-year-old Amish boy was electrocuted trying to remove a power line that got tangled in his horse-drawn buggy's wheels, authorities said.  The boy drove over a power line Tuesday that had sagged down within a foot of the road after separating from a pole, authorities said.

The line got stuck in the wheels and stopped the buggy. The boy got out and grabbed the 4,800-volt line in an attempt to remove it from the wheels, the Geauga County Sheriff's office said. He died at the scene.  The boy's name was not released because his family had not all been notified, officials said.

The Amish are a deeply religious group who shun modern conveniences such as electricity, telephones and car ownership. About 40,000 Amish live in Ohio, the most of any state.

The boy was traveling south on a road near Geauga-Trumbull County line in northeast Ohio, about 25 miles east of Cleveland.   The horse pulling the buggy was not injured.

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