After Google engineer takes a branch to the head, New Yorkers reflect on everyday risks

A four-inch-thick tree branch struck a Google engineer in the head on Wednesday while he was taking a stroll through Central Park, leaving him in a coma with a partially collapsed lung, damaged vertebrae and a nasty cut, The New York Times reports.

While the 33-year-old engineer, Sasha J. Blair-Goldensohn, is showing some early signs of improvement, responding to simple verbal commands, doctors are monitoring his situation closely and though they are optimistic he will make a full recovery, they still consider his injuries life-threatening.

In the meantime, the Times took the opportunity to ask some "regular people" passing through the park what they thought of this particular incident, and accidents in general. From a cautious New York personal injury lawyer's perspective - a unique position, to be sure - the responses were remarkably calm.

"I'd probably be more concerned about a pigeon doing something to me," Katrina Zachmanoglow told the Times.

"I'm more afraid of manholes," said another interviewee, Sarah Crocker.

It is true that one need not look very far to find greater dangers in New York City than falling tree branches and, frankly, the article's exhibition of so much proper perspective was refreshing. The Central Park Conservancy spends some $637,000 a year caring for the 26,000 trees under its stewardship and by nearly all accounts does a very thorough job. In fact, the day after the accident the Conservancy initiated some extra pruning "in what a park department official confirmed was an abundance of caution."

In other words, the danger posed by trees, and trees in Central Park in particular, is deservedly near the bottom of most people's lists of concerns. While certainly a terrible accident for Mr. Blair-Goldensohn, falling branches do not pose the sort of systemic and unnecessary risk that incidents of medical malpractice, construction accidents and even many auto accidents do. These are areas where real improvement is not only possible but dearly needed. On many issues complacence is warranted - on these it absolutely is not.

[The New York Times via City Room]