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Real-Life Frogger Ends In Hospital Visit

Posted by samzenpus on from the going-for-the-logs dept.

BigSes writes "A 23-year old man has been hospitalized after police in South Carolina say he was hit by an SUV while playing a real-life version of the video game Frogger. Authorities said the 23-year-old man was taken to a hospital in Anderson after he was struck Monday evening. Before he was hit, police say the man had been discussing the game with his friends. Chief Jimmy Dixon says the man yelled 'go' and darted into oncoming traffic in the four-lane highway. Has it come time to ban some of the classics before someone else goes out and breaks a few bricks with their heads after eating a large mushroom?"

40 of 314 comments (clear)

  1. Stupid is as stupid does. by mmcxii · · Score: 5, Funny

    The hospital was sad to announce that the patient is expected to live, letting yet another idiotic gimp to roam the streets.

    1. Re:Stupid is as stupid does. by dwarfsoft · · Score: 4, Funny

      First thing I thought of was the oblig. xkcd.

      --
      Cheers, Chris
    2. Re:Stupid is as stupid does. by abednegoyulo · · Score: 5, Funny

      Of course he will live. He still has two lives left!

    3. Re:Stupid is as stupid does. by Penguinshit · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Sorry, douchebag. The new rules would ensure he has insurance so we don't pay for him in unpaid emergency room expenses which raise costs for the rest of us.

      --

      I have something in common with Stephen Hawking...

    4. Re:Stupid is as stupid does. by TheDarAve · · Score: 2, Informative

      The money for insurance for those that haven't paid for their own has to come from SOMEWHERE... Guess who gets THAT bill? I'll give you a hint, its not the recipient of the substandard insurance that the government mandates.

    5. Re:Stupid is as stupid does. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Really? You think this assclown deserves sympathy? He's lucky only he got hit, I can see several drivers freaking out and swerving, slamming in to other cars and causing a much larger accident. He better be jailed for this crap, and pay his own damned hospital bills. Insurance premiums for all of us shouldn't have actuarial tables that account for intentional acts of stupid.

    6. Re:Stupid is as stupid does. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      And if he'd not been insured or covered in any way, do you think the hospital would just go "crap" and not pay the doctors, suppliers of medicines, etc, involved in treating this incident?

      No. No they would not. They would just do what they've always done, and jacked up the prices for everyone else, until the hospital was no longer taking a loss.

      Emergency room medical costs of those who can't afford it will always be payed by the rest of society, either explicitly and easily predictably and fairly by government mandate, or implicitly and moderately predictably and less fairly by the costs of everyone else who uses that hospital/ER.

      In one of those scenarios, the overhead of the system is like 2% of the costs of the overall healthcare system (e.g.: Canada). In the other, it's like 25% (e.g.: U.S.).

    7. Re:Stupid is as stupid does. by Penguinshit · · Score: 2

      I am a recipient of that government insurance and the difference between the negotiated rate (similar to private insurance) and the "raw" rate is often up to 50%. And with insurance people can get preventive care which is very much cheaper than ER visits when conditions get severe. Try again?

      --

      I have something in common with Stephen Hawking...

    8. Re:Stupid is as stupid does. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      1) Work hard and pay insurance for dozens of years
      2) Get sick
      3) Stop being able to work because of sickness
      4) Stop paying insurance due to being fired
      5) Get insurance canceled
      6) Stop getting treatment
      7) ???
      8) Die.

    9. Re:Stupid is as stupid does. by SydShamino · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You're attracting flames because you are acting so smug, thinking you're totally in control of your own life. You aren't. Some people figure this out on their own, and then at least respect those that have fallen. Others, perhaps like you, need to be T-boned by a guy with no insurance, then screwed over by your own insurance company, while trying to manage the onset of cystic fibrosis, before they realize that sometimes bad things happen to good people.

      --
      It doesn't hurt to be nice.
    10. Re:Stupid is as stupid does. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhh really? You have no sympathy for another human being whatsoever? I'd rather be missing intelligence than missing empathy and basic human kindness

      i have compassion for a human being who is an innocent victim of someone else's wrong-doing and suffers through no fault of his or her own.

      when it comes to people like this guy, i have compassion for the poor SUV driver and the trauma that person had to endure. i have compassion for the human race when i see there are too many people like him who drive, vote, believe propaganda, call tech support lines and otherwise inflict their idiocy on others.

      mother nature only ever came up with one cure for stupidity. i don't believe mankind is going to one-up mother nature, not this time.

    11. Re:Stupid is as stupid does. by harmonise · · Score: 2

      If this guy has paid, say, $2000 for health insurance, and his little foray racks up $20,000 in hospital expenditures, then we have paid the other $18,000 as the other insurance pool members.

      Yes, that's how all types of insurance work. The point the parent was making was that if this guy does not have insurance, then the hospital has to treat him and, since he's uninsured, the taxpapers foot the bill for 100% of his hospital costs. Under Obamacare he'd be required to purchase his own insurance thereby sparing the taxpayers the burden of paying for his hospital stay.

      --
      Cory Doctorow talking about cloud computing makes as much sense as George W Bush talking about electrical engineering.
    12. Re:Stupid is as stupid does. by joocemann · · Score: 3, Interesting

      You are under what is called the "illusion of meritocracy".

      It's a delusion that many people encounter where they feel they achieved everything of their own merit and pay no recognition to the vast community and social efforts that actually made it all possible.

      Now please explain to me how you would get to work without the roads that WE paid for. You said you pay your own way but I"m pretty sure you didn't pay for all the roads you use. Go ahead and humor me, the truth of the world will give me thousands of examples to embarrass you with.

    13. Re:Stupid is as stupid does. by fishbowl · · Score: 2

      It's all variations on the same theme:

      1. Be born
      2. Live for a finite period
      3. Die

      In the big picture it really doesn't matter what you do. Unless you're part of figuring out how to make the species independent of the Sun sometime in the next 5 billion years, nothing you do is important.

      --
      -fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
    14. Re:Stupid is as stupid does. by protektor · · Score: 2, Interesting

      No they shouldn't. It isn't his fault that they chose a different job that pays or is worth less than what he gets paid to do. Not everything is even or the same. People are not the same. I don't know where this idea came from that somehow everyone has to be made the same. That has never been what America has stood for since the beginning. You are promised life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Nowhere in there does it say you were promised a job, a house,health insurance, a family or any of these other things people somehow think are a right. You can pursue your happiness but the government isn't *REQUIRED* to give you whatever it takes to make you happy. You have to go out and work your ass off to get the things that make you happy. You can start your own company, take all the big risks, and then become rich. That is how it works in America.

      You are not entitled to pull the rich down and steal from them because you think they make too much. They took huge risks that you wouldn't take. So they deserve the reward of those huge risks and hard work. This idea that most rich were given their money is complete crap. There are more millionaires who made their money in their own lifetime than those who were given their money. You want to be rich then figure out a service or widget to sell to the public and start your own company. Yes it's scary because you could completely fail and loose a lot of money, and you may not have insurance at first, and you don't just work 40 hours a week. Yep there is a lot of risk and whole lot of hard work, but there can be a lot of rewards as well if you do it right. Without risk there is no reward.

      We should hold the parents of the kid responsible who decided to have a kid and couldn't afford all the costs of actually having a kid. Just because you decided to have a kid doesn't mean I should have to pay for your kid. It doesn't take a village to raise a kid, it takes parents who are willing to sacrifice for their kids, and who are involved in every aspect of their child's life. I know sacrifice is an evil word these days, and no one wants to do it because it's hard. If you can't be bothered to keep up with everything your kid is doing, then don't have kids. Don't make the rest of us pay because you can't be bothered or because you think it is too hard. If you can't or don't want to deal with kids then don't have kids. It's real simple. Take some personal responsibility people.

      Orphans have insurance or get medical care from private charities and doctors who donate their services to charity run orphanages. This idea that orphans don't get help is a myth. They get more help than you could ever imagine. I have seen it first hand, not something I read somewhere. I know of several charity run orphanages that get huge amounts of money donated to them to keep the running properly, and no they don't get any government money either. These orphanages run just fine and are actually great places for the kids. Many have grown up there and come back and donated because of how they changed their lives for the better. An example of how private sector does just as well if not better than the government does.

      It is not compassion when you steal from me by threat of violence, forcing me to pay for you or your kids when I may or may not want to do that. That is theft by threat of violence by the government. Pay your taxes to deal with these people who don't pay or we will throw you in jail. This government charity has got to stop. People already give more to private charities that do far more for the poor than the government ever does or could. The depth and breath of private charity services is amazing once you start looking at all the different options out there. Not to mention the fact that private charities manage their money far better than the government ever has. The government has never been able to do anything better than what the private sector does. This is even true in charities.

      The moral of the story is that we don't need the government to take care of us. That

    15. Re:Stupid is as stupid does. by Miseph · · Score: 3, Funny

      Protip: if your parents can't afford you, don't get born.

      I can see that one working out pretty well.

      --
      Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
    16. Re:Stupid is as stupid does. by unkiereamus · · Score: 2

      More like people who have insurance are more likely to go to their family practitioner. People who don't have insurance are more likely to go to the hospital emergency room because the hospitals are prohibited from turning anyone away for anything.

      That's not actually quite true. The EMTALA (Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act) mandates that any patient presenting to an ER that receives Medicare reimbursement must be evaluated, and receive any treatment necessary to stabilize them sufficiently that they are no longer in danger of losing life or limb (roughly, the actual language is denser, but that give you an idea.)

      There are a few other laws which chime in about making ERs see patients, but EMTALA is the big one. What this means, then is that if you come in with a sniffle, or any other "trivial" problem, the ER is obligated to evaluate you, but then they can punt you back to the street once they're done with that, if you're not going to croak.

      Now, here's where it get's a bit tricky, people who work in emergency medicine, by and large, believe whole heartedly that every patient deserves the best care...they're sick, we're here to make them better. Everything else is administration's problem. Combine that with the fact that triage and the MD's eval are usually the largest part of the expenses for a "trivial emergency", and we wind up treating pretty much anything that walks through the door.

      Sorry, that was perhaps a trifle pedantic.

      --
      I needed a sig so people would know who I am, but I was too drunk to make something witty, so you get this instead.
    17. Re:Stupid is as stupid does. by dangitman · · Score: 4, Insightful

      No they shouldn't. It isn't his fault that they chose a different job that pays or is worth less than what he gets paid to do.

      They chose? People at the bottom of the socio-economic scale don't have a lot of choice in jobs. And in fact, it might be partly his fault for people's lack of job opportunities depending on how he votes, etc.

      Not everything is even or the same. People are not the same. I don't know where this idea came from that somehow everyone has to be made the same.

      I never suggested everybody needs to be made the same. Just that we shouldn't be so cruel as to let people die in the street if they can't afford insurance. I'm not sure where you are getting this idea that I think people should be "made the same" from.

      You are not entitled to pull the rich down and steal from them because you think they make too much. They took huge risks that you wouldn't take.

      Bullshit. Many rich people have never taken a risk in their lives. Did Paris Hilton work really hard and take risks to get all of her money? Also, it's generally the poorer workers who help make the rich people's fortune.

      We should hold the parents of the kid responsible who decided to have a kid and couldn't afford all the costs of actually having a kid.

      So what do we do when the parent is dead or otherwise can't take responsibility? Pointing fingers and blaming people isn't going to save the problem.

      Orphans have insurance or get medical care from private charities and doctors who donate their services to charity run orphanages.

      So, that's going to solve all the problem, private charities? It doesn't appear to be working very well.

      It is not compassion when you steal from me by threat of violence, forcing me to pay for you or your kids when I may or may not want to do that.

      Oh, threat of violence. That's funny. You live quite comfortably isolated from the actual threat of violence, while the poor deal with it as a daily threat. By "threat of violence" you actually mean "a few dollars of my taxes."

      The government has never been able to do anything better than what the private sector does.

      Except for the roads, the fire departments, health services, etc? Do you know what happened when fire departments were privately-run? They went around starting fires to get business. Public health services seem to do quite well outside the US, lowering costs for everybody.

      We can take care of ourselves and each other, if the government would just get out of the way.

      So, how is government stopping people from doing that now? It's pretty clear that people don't always take care of themselves or others. How is eliminating government services going to magically change that?

      Instead the government wants to inject itself in to every aspect of our lives. We have allowed a giant nanny state to develop.

      I never said anything about supporting a giant nanny state, or government in all aspects of our lives. I just suggested that we shouldn't let people die in the street, or deny them care when in desperate need. Hardly a radical Statist proposition.

      We absolutely can take care of ourselves and do it far better than the government ever possibly could. We don't need the government to do charity or tell us to do charity

      There's your problem - the government is supposed to be of the people and for the people. It is supposed to be a part of the "we" you are referring to. But people have become so distanced from the ideas of governance that they have allowed it to become an alien entity.

      Ultimately, you're just being selfish and whining about money. But even that is counter-productive, because it would cost a lot more if we did let society fall apart and people die in the streets. Wouldn't you rather pay a lower amount in preventative action to avoid the collapse of society? It's going to be hard to run that business when there's death, disease and looting in the streets.

      --
      ... and then they built the supercollider.
    18. Re:Stupid is as stupid does. by dangitman · · Score: 2

      He does pay his way because the people who make the roads have set an amount that he should contribute each year in the form of taxes and he pays that in order to use the roads. So he is paying exactly what the road makers tell him he should pay.

      So, why is that OK for roads, but not for hospitals and health care?

      --
      ... and then they built the supercollider.
    19. Re:Stupid is as stupid does. by Penguinshit · · Score: 2

      I have a sporadic debilitating disease. I had a small house, car, etc. I had no debt outside of mortgage. I had a healthy savings account. I continued to work until physically incapable.

      And two years later all of that is gone and I am reduced to begging on the internet while my family drains their resources too.

      It is easy to talk tough when you have no experience or understanding.

      --

      I have something in common with Stephen Hawking...

  2. Anything can be the inspiration for stupidity by autocracy · · Score: 4, Funny

    Violent video games claim another victim. Maybe now they'll put that NC-17 rating on that I've been saying for years Frogger needs. Jack Thompson will be vindicated, and Rockstar games will pay for their GTA series.

    Maybe when this is all over, we can achieve our ultimate goal of putting a warning label on Tetris.

    --
    SIG: HUP
  3. Survival of the fittest... by Nialin · · Score: 2

    He'll get his Darwin award soon enough, and the world will be stronger for it.

    1. Re:Survival of the fittest... by Fluffeh · · Score: 2, Funny

      He'll get his Darwin award soon enough, and the world will be stronger for it.

      Yup. Evolution at work right there. Almost took him out of the running so to speak. Maybe next time. I am sure there will be a next time :)

      *sips coffee*

      --
      Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
    2. Re:Survival of the fittest... by digitig · · Score: 2

      You don't know what evolution is, do you?

      --
      Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
    3. Re:Survival of the fittest... by aristotle-dude · · Score: 2

      You don't know what evolution is, do you?

      Neither do you apparently. Given the size of the human population, an early death has little effect on the overall gene pool and who is to say that they have not already contributed to the gene pool?

      --
      Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
  4. Sorry... by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You may be more than 18 years of age, and in possession of a y chromosome; but there is No. Fucking. Way. that you have yet graduated to the status of "man" if you are actually playing in traffic because of the influence of Frogger.

    Honestly, I can't think of a stupidity-related term that is strong enough and doesn't end up insulting the garden-variety mentally handicapped by putting them in the same basket as this pathetic man-child-thing...

    We can only hope that he is sold for parts before he comes up with any other brilliant plans.

    1. Re:Sorry... by magarity · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Actually, I'd say that it IS proof of his manhood; after all, do you ever hear of women doing these stupid stunts?

      I bet this first time is the last time he ever does it. Yet there are shelters all over the country full of battered women who voluntarily and repeatedly go back for more to abusive boyfriends/husbands.

  5. Darwin Award nominee by Iphtashu+Fitz · · Score: 3, Informative

    This nutjob is apparently already in the running for a Darwin Award...

    http://www.darwinawards.com/slush/new/pending20101229-052307.html

    1. Re:Darwin Award nominee by mysidia · · Score: 2

      This nutjob is apparently already in the running for a Darwin Award...

      But as he is still alive, it did not kill him, thus, he won't be eligible for a darwin award unless he was injured so badly he cannot reproduce, or he winds up dying.

      At best he might get an honorable mention.

  6. Re:He deserves an award by Iphtashu+Fitz · · Score: 2

    You might want to check their slush pile:

    http://www.darwinawards.com/slush/new/pending20101229-052307.html

  7. Re:Fist by roger6106 · · Score: 2

    Mario breaks bricks with his fist.

    Exactly. Mario has put his fist up when jumping ever since Super Mario Bros, and he continues to do so.

  8. Re:George Costanza? by dkleinsc · · Score: 2

    You have the wrong clip, there, mate. What you're actually looking for is this.

    --
    I am officially gone from /. Long live http://www.soylentnews.com/
  9. It was funny when George did this on seinfeld by Joe+The+Dragon · · Score: 2

    It was funny when George did this on seinfeld

    1. Re:It was funny when George did this on seinfeld by Mr.+Maestro · · Score: 2

      Holes! I need holes!

  10. You know the saying by Punto · · Score: 2

    If you die in real life, you die in the game.

    --

    --
    Stay tuned for some shock and awe coming right up after this messages!

  11. Real-Life Doom Ends In Cemetery Visit by theodp · · Score: 4, Funny

    Good thing he stuck with Frogger!

  12. Pac-Man by Tablizer · · Score: 4, Funny

    I pulled a Pac-Man and went around the party eating everyone's pizza while trying to avoid the bouncer. I had a tummy-ache for 3 days. Ban the Pac!

    --
    Table-ized A.I.
    1. Re:Pac-Man by VortexCortex · · Score: 2

      Reminds me of this Live action Pac-Man stunt.

  13. Re:What a ridiculous summary. by digitig · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Can we pass a law that will make it MANDATORY to either execute or sterilize anyone who reacts to this by suggesting that we ban something?

    You've just been caught under your own law. Well done.

    --
    Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
  14. Evolution in action! by kawabago · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This is how the gene pool cleans itself.