With the death of British actor Natasha Richardson this week, there has been renewed screeching for all kinds of mandatory safety appliances to be applied to every sport from skiing to chess. This is only human nature in action as like most dumb beasts we only know how to react, instead of think.
That Richardson died from head injuries is very sad, as she was very talented and it is even sadder that her injury was from an apparently minor fall on a bunny hill while taking a lesson. We tend to forget that humans can be a bit on the fragile side when it comes to blunt force.
Safety equipment is one of those things that gets some people up on their back legs about a nanny society, kids in a bubble-wrap world, government over-legislating everything, individual freedom and so on. There is some validity in that point of view.
We have warning labels on aluminum step ladders cautioning us about everything bad that could happen if we use one. There are bright yellow labels telling us not to use a step ladder to stir coffee, as the coffee might be hot and a step ladder could spill the coffee causing burns. Beware!
Perversely, there are no warning labels on handguns, shower heads or your blender. After all, it is much more likely that you would use your blender to make fruity alcoholic drinks, get drunk, go play with your handguns in a shower, slip, fall, break your shoulder, get laid off, wind up on the street and need a lawyer to sue somebody for $12 million.
The legal system is to blame a bit here. Personal-injury contingency law specifically. Contingency law means you, as the moron playing with a handgun, in a shower, while drunk, don’t have to put any money up. The lawyer gets paid a percentage of what you eventually might win.
Theoretically, this helps the disadvantaged individual go after the big corporations, who can essentially tie things up in court for decades and bankrupt the poor guy who fell in the shower, with a handgun, while drunk and lost his job. Remember, lawyers don’t work for free and they don’t sue poor people, as there is no likelihood of actually getting paid, which is the real objective of contingency law.
The odds of suing a corporation are much better, as the corporation will pay out on a lawsuit, if only to make it go away. Right or wrong doesn’t actually matter, just make it go away with confidentiality agreements taping your mouth shut forever. You get a piece of the $12 million, probably around half of it, while the lawyer gets the other half.
Let’s see, a $6 million dollar payday for filing some papers, answering some phone calls, having your clerk spend time online with Lexis-Nexis to find the case law and precedents, then signing a letter that a drone typed up. Not a bad payday at all.
Which explains all the warning labels. At some time, the manufacturer was sued and settled the case, the opposition lawyer demanding payment because the manufacturer didn’t warn the customer that using a metal step ladder to stir coffee would be a bad idea, not only because of overhead wires and a danger of electrocution, but because the coffee might be hot and burn you.
In an adversarial legal system one side has to prove the other side are a bunch of bloodthirsty criminals while their client is as innocent as can be. He didn’t know that a blender could make alcoholic drinks and that playing with a handgun in a shower, while the showerhead was spurting out water on a slippery tub, could result in such serious, career-ending injuries.
There must have been collusion between the blender manufacturer, the hand gun company and the shower head monopoly to hide their product flaws. Sue, dammit, sue! Shortly, we will see big red warning labels on blenders and showerheads: There won’t be any on handguns, but that’s another posting.
Which leads us back to Natasha Richardson and helmets for skiing.
Companies who make helmets, like Bell, Arai, Riddell (football) and so on, have all been sued at one time or another for deliberately foisting off shoddy products and not warning their customers that using their products is no guarantee you won’t get injured. At least that’s the perspective of the opposition lawyers.
Simpson Safety, specifically Bill Simpson, was a pioneer in helmets and other safety equipment for motorsports for many years. The story goes that a motorcycle racer at Daytona, on the big track, during a sanctioned race, lost it, high-sided and hit the concrete wall head-first somewhere in the neighbourhood of 200 miles per hour. He died of course. The helmet was a Simpson.
Then the lawyers got involved. There was no warning on the helmet that it wouldn’t protect you at 200 per into concrete, so Simpson lost and it bankrupted the company.
The lesson, no matter how dumb, is that there will be a lawyer somewhere, who will try. As a company, you have to defend yourself and that costs money. Lots of money for lawyers, that doesn’t go to profits, shareholders, employees or even research to make better products.
So, why do some people want helmets for skiing? Simple enough, it’s easy to bang your head while skiing. Just like it is easy to bang your head riding a bicycle, doing tricks on a skateboard, or for that matter, making love in a bed with a big headboard.
<Insert your own cynical and dirty-minded comment here.>
Had Natasha Richardson been wearing a helmet, the bump she took might not have eventually killed her. Or, it wouldn’t have mattered a bit. I don’t know, I wasn’t there and neither were you.
However, some common-sense should apply. If there is a likelihood of you banging body parts into hard objects, then it’s prudent for you to wear a helmet, or other appropriate protection. Or not engage in the activity in the first place.
The question becomes how much can you rely on the protective gear? There will always be circumstances where even the best safety protection won’t help. Circumstances that no reasonable person could predict. That would be the tiny little crack that personal injury lawyers try to squeeze through.
Scotland used to (I don’t know if they still do) have a finding of “Death by Misadventure”, meaning the deceased was in the wrong place at the wrong time, not necessarily doing something that contributed to their own demise.
We need something like that, a finding that things go bad and sometimes it happens for no good reason to good people for no better reason than Shit Happens.
Which is probably exactly what happened to Natasha Richardson.
Sadly, shit happens.
RoadDave 