bjturk.commentary: response and responsibility

bjturk.commentary
hanging from my own rope

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this bjturk.commentary:
response and responsibility

Just before I began writing this, I ate some candy. Creme Savers® hard candy, it was. I still don't know if it was disgust, amazement or horror I felt when I found the following warning on the wrapper:

Safety Warning: Hard candy can cause choking.

This is not a joke. That's a real warning on a real piece of candy. You can check it out yourself if you don't believe it. Are we really that stupid? Have we become that stupid? Well, yes. We are, and we have.

I'm not going to launch into a diatribe on tort reform, but I cannot believe that I am the only one who thinks that things are getting out of hand. We see warning labels great and small on almost every product that you can name. We as a society have lost two main things, it would seem, that sit at the root of this useless garbage.

One is common sense, otherwise we would know that the whirling blades of a lawn mower just might be able to cut off our fingers. Isn't there an obvious danger? If you don't use the mower the way you are supposed to, you deserve what you get. If you don't know that coffee is usually quite hot, then any burn you might get is the result of your own idiocy rather than the misdeed of the store or shop that sold it. If there is an obvious risk, then you shouldn't have to be told. However, we have become brainless and senseless, so we have to be warned against our own infantile ignorance.

The other thing that we've lost is a sense of personal responsibility. Everything that goes wrong is always someone else's fault, even if any reasonable person would have recognized that there could be a danger. Accidents don't just happen, but are the result of someone's negligence. Every injury is caused not by one's own careless act but by the manufacturer's failure to account for the user's level of stupidity.

It appears that our legal system has gotten out of hand by failing to apply a reasonability standard and by failing to hold people accountable for their own actions. In my home state of Arizona, if the jury finds that you are fifty percent or more to blame for your injury, you cannot recover any damages at all. Not a dime. Not all states apply this kind of standard, so courts across the country are the source of tremendous injury awards.

When will it end? Perhaps one day, people will be held responsible for what they do, and this terrible blame game will come to an end. Until that day, our prices will rise along with our indignation at outrageous jury awards to people doing things they should have known would be hazardous. Until then, it's just not their fault that they're dumber than a box of rocks. That we let it continue is our fault.

October 10, 2005

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