accidents

[eclectica]

We're always taking risks in life. We calculate which risks are acceptable and which are unacceptable. Reckless people tend to take risks with higher odds of catastrophe. The difference between reckless and safe is not black and white, but is a shade of grey.

I define an accident as a chosen risk which ends in catastrophe. I believe that all accidents are preventable, but there is a point at which being too safe is cost prohibitive and inefficient. Because all accidents are preventable, every accident has a level of responsibility that can be assigned to it. People who behave recklessly are more responsible for the accident than those who are safe. The difference between being reckless and being safe is just a matter of degree.

When we hear "safe", the typical Apollonian model is conjured up in our minds, of the quiet guy who doesn't smoke or drink, who wears his seatbelt, and is a devout religious man. Well such a guy is probably not safe from my point of view, due to his being feeble minded. The best way to be safe is to be highly alert and perceptive. The Apollonian image of the passive safe person is flawed, because zombies are dangerous when operating machinery.

This reminds me, of the fact that car insurance rates are higher for men than for women. That is due to women getting into fewer accidents than men. Are women better drivers than men? I believe that on average men are more skilled at handling the machinery of a car than women, but by also being more willing to take risks, they do get into more accidents.

The law is clumsy in deciding that either #1 a person behaved recklessly and caused an accident, or #2 it was just an accident that no one is at fault for. The law would have you see the issue in black and white when in reality it's not. That is a problem for people who seek justice through the law. Imagine if your child runs across the street and gets hit by a car, and you know that if it were you driving, it wouldn't have happened, yet the law declares it was an accident. What would you do then?

[Criminal_Sniper]

dont forget murphy's laws lol
its nice n down to the point and how it is basically :)

[eclectica]

On July 1, 2002 an air traffic controller made a mistake and directed two planes to crash into each other over Germany. Recently a grieving relative who lost his wife and two children in the "accident" went and stabbed the controller to death. An official report on the cause of the crash is to be released next month. The guy who killed the air traffic controller held him responsible for the death of his whole family. Here is the full article:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/russia/article/0,2763,1158361,00.html

In every job some people do their jobs better than others. When it involves a specialty or a profession that we are not familiar with, such as being an air traffic controller, it is harder for us to realize that competence plays a role there as well, and we tend to view failures as "accidents". But knowing that it is caused by incompetence, is it really an accident?

Saying that something was an accident is like saying it was an "act of God" and there was nothing that could be done to prevent it.

The justice system doesn't hold people responsible for things such as accidents, so that requires people to have to seek justice with their own hands.
:jihad:

[assorted]

americans live under the delusion that the only way that death will happen to them is if it is something THEY do. that if they do such and such correctly, they will live forever. i think this obsession has to do with kind of losing god in our culture and the prevailing fear of death that goes with it.

the problem with this attitude, for me, is all these horrid laws "protecting" us from ourselves and each other like seat belt laws, helmet laws, no smoking shit, drug laws, etc. this attitude has also made us litigation crazy, feeling there has to be blame for every tiniest thing that happens.

yes virginia, there is such a thing as a pure accident.

[eclectica]

Originally posted by assorted
laws "protecting" us from ourselves and each other like seat belt laws, helmet laws, no smoking shit, drug laws, etc. this attitude has also made us litigation crazy, feeling there has to be blame for every tiniest thing that happens.
I agree this is a problem, and what that actually does is create stupidity and dependency in the people. They have allowed others to decide what is safe or not for them with signs and warning labels. I think it's ridiculous how coffee in some places has a warning label that it is hot and may burn you, or how the guy was suing McDonalds for making him fat.

[Dollar_Girl]

incompitency vs human induced accidents... reminds me of "what's the difference between a reason and an excuse?"


there is no difference... in the technical sense any reason is an excuse and any excuse is a reason. If i am walking near a large rocky cliffe... and a rock falls from above and hits me on the head, and as a result i stumble, trip and fall over the edge... surviving, but, badly injured... i call that an accident... it wasn't incompitency that caused it, because it wasnt' human induced.

Protection against human induced accidents or 'incompitency' is a natural thing to seek... for anothers incompitency affecting our individual selves is viewed to be an injustice... 'not fair' ... "Why did i have to lose my family and my ability to walk and move because HE, the accused was DUI?" ... not fair... not at all... on such a large scale we turn to the justice system... lock him up, make him pay... if that fails, inability to handle wrong doing and pain, can make ppl seek an 'eye for an eye' justice... like the man stabbing the air traffic controller.

Meanwhile, emphasis on rights, justice, guilty, victims, fault, incompitency has led to some craze where an individual attempts to deny any responsibility of his own actions and plant them on someone else.. "i'm not fat coz i eat cheeseburgers, i'm fat coz mcdonalds makes them" ... step in water, u will get wet. Meanwhile if Mcdonalds stopped making cheeseburgers because some fuckers eat 20 a day and die of heart disease, we'd be outraged... it's a type of censorship... how dare our variety be reduced coz of these addicts? these cheese burger addicts.

RIGHTS and 'JUSTICE' work on the basis of RESPONSIBILITY ... to have rights and seek justice, means you are part of a system and are thus responsible for functioning within this system... but some people seem to refuse responsibility and are thus SPOILT by having rights and justice. Spoilt, because we take advantage... back in the ole day, citizenship meant equal amounts of RIGHTS and DUTIES... modern citizenship where ppl winge and whine because once every four years they need to go and vote, where ppl complain coz they were picked for dury duty, or ppl bitch coz they got a speeding ticket... points to a death of citizen duties, and a new generation of citizen GREED, GREED FOR RIGHTS and denial of duties.

[eclectica]

Maybe he accidentally stabbed the air traffic controller.

[jcmd62]

Accidents????????

Is there really such a thing as an accident when it involves human input of ANY kind?

An accident can only be something like getting struck by lightning on a bright sunny day without a cloud in the sky. If a man Chooses to venture out during a thunderstorm and was struck then its no longer an Accident or act of god because the man decided to "chance" his saftey after weighing the dangers.

This poor guy who lost his family is correct for blaming someone for this human mistake. The ATC made a mistake that caused the crash but the man invited his wife and family to join him and his wife CHOSE to board an airplane knowing that they can and do crash regularly.

I believe the grieving husband is blaming himself, but let the ATC's lack of "punishment" or loss of his job after making a mistake that killed a lot of people, allowed the husband to be blinded by the human need for "closure" or the placement of guilt that helps comfort us through these tragedies, and he wrongly took the life of someone who deserved punishment but not death.

Mr Kaloyev was one of the first relatives to arrive at the scene, and discovered the body of his daughter, still intact, almost two miles from where the accident happened. "Diana dreamed of coming with her mother and brother to see me," he wrote on a website commemorating the crash's 71 victims, most of whom were Russian schoolchildren.

That had to be tough....then he stewed for 2 years while the man who caused the crash wasn't reprimanded or fired and niether was the director that left this controller ALONE and with no senior ATC's around to oversee his actions......no wonder the dad finally lost it......of course he'll be punished and jailed for the rest of his broken life.

Maybe he accidentally stabbed the air traffic controller.
The man planned to "stab" the air traffic contoller, the ATC didn't (at least that we have been told), "plan" to cause this plane crash. Neither incident is an "accident" because they were both brought about by human planning and or human mistake.

[Criminal_Sniper]

choosing to swallow is an accident? (and a fishy worm at that - sounds bad)
thats the only way it can be an accident
see human choices are not accidents if something good or bad happens
they are results for actions
you might fuck up and accidently break something
you might not have meant to break the window through the ball but u were still playing ball inside and broke the window
getting struck by lightning thats a prick its all about being at the wrong place at the worst fucking time
chance somes in here it was no accident
it was said somewhere i think E said it but anyway the things u cant predict seem random such as fliping a coin
the lightning was going to hit and u happened to get in the way
though stand on a big building and hold a 20 foot metal pole and the chances are much greater
imagine the amount of people that would be hit if we did that and there was more lighting
would it be considered an accident then?

[eclectica]

My wife was telling me that when accidents happen in Senegal, many people have a fatalistic attitude towards them; that they were destined to happen. People inexplicably die and no autopsies are done. It would be easy to get away with murder there, by way of poisoning. You can inject someone with potassium chloride and stop the heart, or do what some landlord tried to do in New York, which was to inject the tenant with heroin so it would look like a fatal overdose so he could charge higher rent to new tenants once they moved in.

[Criminal_Sniper]

are accidents perhaps thing we cant understand at times?
the randomness of a moment is organised actions colliding