... Just for the record, in the case against McDonalds, that particular
McDonalds had be cited several times prior by inspectors for keeping their
coffee too hot, they repeatedly paid the fine and ignored the warnings....
The law suit was long overdue---- (PS, I do agree with you though on most
of the points you make)
John Juhasz
<jjuhasz@Fiberoptions.c To:
"'oover...@lexmark.com'" <oover...@lexmark.com>,
om> emc-p...@majordomo.ieee.org
Sent by: cc:
owner-emc-pstc@majordom Subject: How Safe ???
o.ieee.org
07/25/01 09:51 AM
Please respond to John
Juhasz
Bravo!
Now if we can get lawyers and judges to read this. Is there
a legal listserv to send this too? Oops! Wait a minute.
Might get sued for sending spam . . . .
-----Original Message-----
From: oover...@lexmark.com [mailto:oover...@lexmark.com]
Sent: Wednesday, July 25, 2001 8:26 AM
To: emc-p...@majordomo.ieee.org
Subject: How Safe ???
In light of the recent e-traffic on labels, warnings, and litigation I
think
that this is a good article.
A better rant than I could write (and have written). When you need a break
...
_______________________________________________________________
By Mark Morford
morning...@sfgate.com
All contents, except the swearing and the random blasphemy, (tm) (c)
2001 Hearst Communications Inc.
MARK'S NOTES & ERRATA
Where opinion meets benign syntax abuse...
***********************************************
Twenty-one-year-old college student bangs and rocks and tilts
900-pound Coke machine to dislodge a can of soda. Coke machine
finally tips over on top of college student. College student dies.
College student's parents sue Coca-Cola, vending-machine
manufacturer, and school, claiming there should've been some sort of
warning. The gods of Fate and Destiny shake their heads and sigh.
This is a true story.
Coke begins placing cautionary stickers on vending machines:
"Warning: Tipping may cause injury or death." This part is also true.
Many employees at the vending machine company undoubtedly got a good
laugh out of this, wondered what's next, stickers on fine cutlery
saying "Warning: Inserting butcher knife into body may cause injury
or death"?
Or perhaps on large bridges: "Warning: Leaping off may cause death or
at least a bad headache." Buses? "Warning: Do not step in front of
this vehicle or you might die in a manner everyone jokes about and
then how would you feel?" The list goes on, and it too may cause
injury or death.
Oh how the jokes were flying, yes indeed, much like they probably
were at snide ol' McDonald's HQ a few years back when that old woman
spilled hot coffee on herself and sued because the coffee was too hot
and it burned her and everyone knows coffee is supposed to be
lukewarm and pleasing and mild. She won her case. The jokes stopped.
And the cynicism began.
And let us pause for a moment to pay our respects to what must be a
horrendous level of sadness and loss for the family in question, what
can only be a miserable and terrible event in the life of a parent.
There is genuine sorrow and rage here and the need to assign blame
and of course it can't be laid at the feet of the college student in
question because he was clearly the innocent victim of a malicious
vending machine attack and we as humans can *not* be held responsible
for our frequent lapses of judgement or common sense, can we? Can we?
Because after all this kid was just being a typical mindless male and
was likely just following the behavior of other students who he'd
seen bash the machine to score a free Mountain Dew and besides
someone at the school probably knew the machine was kinda tippy and
folks at the vending machine company probably knew those old models
weren't as completely secure as the newer versions.
But hey, it's not like the machines were malevolent capsizing demons
just lying in wait for the next hapless student to come along and
breathe on them wrong and then, whump.
It is not as if this laptop computer right here in front of me is
right this minute poised to to electrocute me if I decide to slam the
lid repeatedly to get it to unfreeze. See that big bookshelf in the
library? Pull on it too hard, it'll probably fall over on you. Should
you sue the shelf manufacturer? The book authors? Gravity? What if
our college boy had climbed atop the Coke machine and jumped off and
broken his neck? Is the manufacturer responsible? The shoe company?
The concrete floor? Where do you draw the line?
This is the ultimate question. It's an ever-shifting line in the sand
of human stupidity, a vague cultural boundary defining how much we
expect our products and corporations to protect us from ourselves and
how much we're willing to be answerable for our actions, a line
dividing how logic-impaired we're willing to admit we sometimes are
and how responsible a given corporation should be for dumping shoddy
and/or dangerous products on the market without warning.
In a perfect world (like, you know, Atlantis), it's a fair
distribution of both, an equal balance of good faith: people take
full responsibility for their lives and actions and don't blame the
government or the media or God or big mean corporations when they
themselves are caught in incredibly dumb behavior; and concomitantly,
thuggish corporations and the government take full responsibility for
their products and services and don't try to duck and shirk and scam
and dance around the law and pretend they had no idea nicotine was
lethal or their SUV tires exploded.
Instead we've devolved into a famously litigious culture that rewards
competing acts of idiocy, whereby the more ignorant you can prove you
are ("I had no idea the machine would tip over on me if I continued
to rock it violently back and forth, Your Honor"), the more likely
you are to earn a nice hefty settlement and warm approval from a
populace whose collective intelligence will now be further degraded
by yet another warning sticker and yet another inhibitory and
patronizing law instructing consumers not to stick their feet into
the blades of the lawnmower or put live animals in the microwave or
hit themselves in the head repeatedly with a brick.
I do not know the best way to protect the dumb from themselves, at
least not without flagrantly insulting the rest of us. But even I
don't want *all* warning labels to vanish. I don't want them to
remove the plastic guards on chainsaws or the safety locks on
bazookas or the volume knobs on small infants. Some protections are
necessary and good. Most are ridiculous and painfully obvious, but
some are not.
But we are entering deeper into dangerous cultural territory, a realm
of unmitigated, hand-selected fatuity whereby those with common sense
and perspective are drowned in a tidal wave of inane regulations and
brain-bludgeoning rules, whereby the dumb have discovered the
ultimate loophole and the intelligent can only snicker fruitlessly
and where lawyers are allowed to draw the lines of personal
responsibility for all of us whether we like it or not.
It is a land where the strong survive but the dumb flourish and the
meek really shall inherit the earth -- if they can survive long
enough. Warning: Life may cause injury or death. Please dress
accordingly.
DISCLAIMER
***********************************************
Please do not pretend you have no idea what you're not doing. You
probably shouldn't suck on that if you don't know where it's been.
Large bowls of fresh cherries are ideal indicators of potential
enlightenment. There is no perfect way to chop an onion. McDonald's
does not care one whit whether you smile or not. If this is not what
you expected, please alter your expectations. No such thing as small
change. No such thing as too much lubricant.
***********************************************
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This message is from the IEEE EMC Society Product Safety
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Visit our web site at: http://www.ewh.ieee.org/soc/emcs/pstc/
To cancel your subscription, send mail to:
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unsubscribe emc-pstc
For help, send mail to the list administrators:
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For policy questions, send mail to:
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All emc-pstc postings are archived and searchable on the web at:
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