Patria Hume: AUT Human Performance Professor on the danger of the Run it Straight game

Renewed warnings that people are 'rolling the dice with their life' when partaking in 'run it straight' style games. 

Ryan Satterthwaite has died after a private version of the game in Palmerston North.  

The 19-year-old suffered a serious brain injury on Sunday and died in hospital on Monday.  

AUT Human Performance Professor Patria Hume told Ryan Bridge Police can intervene in these games, particularly at official events. 

She says event organisers are legally required to ensure the health and safety of participants. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
And nineteen year old has died from head injuries after
playing a run It Straight style game with his mates.
Last week. Professor Petrie Hume warned at the risk to
life letting these events continue. She is with us this morning,
Human performance professor at aut Portrayer. Good morning, you predicted
this last week. Sadly your predictions come true.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
Yes, Ryan's death was preventable. It was a backyard copycat
of the run at events which have been designed for
social media impact. And you know, people need to understand
the risks when two people are running at each other
under this run it style. It's like the forces are jumping,
like jumping off your house, you know, and landing flat
on your front. That's the level of trauma. And so

(00:41):
unfortunately Ryan has died. And I did warn about the
impact forces and that this could happen.

Speaker 1 (00:47):
The thing is, these are young boys, right, and I've
been a young boy before, and you do dumb stuff
and sometimes you get really hurt. Do you how do
you stop behavior like that? Because obviously I weren't listening
to you.

Speaker 2 (01:02):
No unfortunate at the moment. And it's everyone to make
their own decision about what activities they want to participation.
So if you think about skydiving that has a fatality
rate of one death and one hundred thousand jumps, and
paragliding you know one death in eleven thousand flights. Rugby
Union and League actually death rates are quite low, they're

(01:23):
extremely rare, but we do have high injury rates. My
concern is for these run it type events, we've already
had one death so far with only just about a
month of promotion of the activity. It's an extremely high
risk activity. You're really rolling the dice with your life
and with your risk of injury if you participate. People

(01:44):
have said, oh, it's the fight bull rush. It is
not like bull rush. Bull rush you have someone who
wants to tag and you're trying to evade them. In
this case, you've got two people who are purposely running
at each other with very high impact. There is a
very high risk of injury.

Speaker 1 (02:01):
There's a lot of people saying, oh, the police should
get more involved in stuff. I mean, what are they
going to do.

Speaker 2 (02:06):
Well can actually intervene, particularly with events. So under the
Health and Safety at Work Adventure Activities Regulations twenty sixteen,
event organizers they're legally required to ensure the health and
safety of participants, and as the public, we have a
moral duty to be able to protect em.

Speaker 1 (02:26):
Couldn't you then ban a rugby game. I mean, if
it's about the health and safety of participants and people
break their necks in rugby, we shouldn't be having rugby games,
you know what I mean.

Speaker 2 (02:35):
So if you think about rugby, it's got safety protocols
and it's got very clear governed rules to minimize harm
and protect athletes. You know, we've conducted over thirty years
of research, including with World Rugby and New Zealand Rugby
to try and reduce the risk of injury. And if
you look over the years, there have been changes to

(02:56):
the game to reduce injury risks. So doctor Ken, the
senior scientist from the Zellen Rugby with his PhD, he
did studies to look at how you changed the scrum
and the scrum was depowered and it reduced the incidence
of neck injuries and severe spinal injuries. There's also been

(03:17):
changes to the height of the tackle. I remember in
twenty twelve I had a debate on TV Where's Wally
Lewis about the shoulder charges and why they should be banned.
And while he was completely against them being banned. They
have been banned for many, many years for very good reason,
because they were inducing a lot of injury into rules.

Speaker 1 (03:37):
Yes, those rules have changed, and some would argue they
have made the game boring and you get sports specifically
like this popping up and UFC went nuts because it
gives people the first that they craved for body combat.

Speaker 2 (03:57):
Yes, it's said of the sad reality of human nature.
I mean the mixed martial arts. The death rates has
been twenty deaths recorded already in sanctioned events. So yes,
that's human nature. It's like we have wars as well,
but they are not desirable human attributes. We should best,
don't they. I mean public to come up with ideas.

(04:19):
We need events that are going to be really intellectually stimulating,
develop our minds and bodies that people really want to
participate in, that are not going to kill people.

Speaker 1 (04:28):
All right, Fortria, I really appreciate you coming on the program.
Pature whom a Human performance professor at aut For more
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