From a summary this week in Science Daily of a study conducted at the University of Leicester:
Mr Nolan said: "It is common knowledge that broken glass bottles can be used as an effective stabbing weapon and the results of the study have reaffirmed this."
Good work.
The study was apparently intended primarily to measure the amount of force it takes to stab someone effectively with a broken bottle, which the summary suggests could be important in stabbing prosecutions although it's not obvious to me why that would be true. A possibly more useful result was suggested by another researcher who said they might be able to use the data to design new types of pint glasses that create less damaging surfaces when they fracture.
As I have mentioned before, people in the UK have a habit of stabbing each other (hey, guns are harder to get there) and if there are no pointy knives handy, they will fall back on their well-known British pluck and resourcefulness by breaking bottles or pint glasses and carving each other up with those. Despite all the evidence that people will find things to try to kill each other with no matter what you ban, the British government responded to the bar-stabbing problem by considering a ban on pint glasses made out of glass. Happily, it then seemed to have reconsidered, and instead started trying to redesign glass pint glasses to make them less stab-friendly. So this may be part of that effort.
Again, I have no problem with taking reasonable steps to make things safer, but the world cannot be made completely safe, nor would that be any fun. More to the point, if you try to force me to drink beer out of a plastic glass, I will find something to cut you with.
