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Down, but not out!
Funny thing happened to me on vacation in the Swiss Alps last week; I came back from my skiing holiday with a broken leg. I didn’t break it on some really crazy, ice covered, narrow black piste overlooking a cliff – no. I broke my leg the way that most skiing injuries are incurred – standing on solid ground and simply falling over!
What I actually did was slip on melted snow in the hotel’s lobby. My ski’s had been safely off my feet for about 30 minutes. And of course this accident was not any fault of my own, because these days nothing is ever your fault: the hotel should have not left a puddle in the lobby for someone to slip on. So after going to get emergency medical attention, we quickly got back to the hotel to take photos of the wet lobby. Yes, this is the age of hyper-litigation, and I am an American, so naturally we will be filing a personal accident claim against the hotel.
Husband, being British, finds this whole concept distasteful. He, quite rightly, feels that the whole cycle of small claims for personal accident and injury cases to be the root cause of many of the ills of modern society. Because so many people/organisations/institutions are afraid of being sued, they simply have developed this preventative ‘heath and safety’ attitude toward normal activities. At some stage we as a society have decided that the purpose of insurance companies is to pay out our small personal injury claims. We have decided that we are no longer responsible for our own actions, decisions, or consequences. We have decided that nothing is ever our fault, and it is ok to blame and sue someone else because we had an accident. Even though the definition of the word accident means an unplanned and unfortunate event which results in damage, injury, or upset of some kind. How can we hold other people accountable for causing something that was unplanned?
So great is this fear that many children today are unable to participate in activities that are quite simply rites of childhood – such as conkers (in the UK), ice skating, fairground rides, or anything that might result in a skinned knee. Should parents let their kids play outside unsupervised, they may get hurt? Isn’t getting hurt part of the fun? Should parents let their children do things they know will almost certainly result in injury, let’s say skiing, for example? Who would you sue if you decided to put your 2 year old in the ski nursery and they ended up falling over and hurting themselves? Isn’t falling over part of learning how to ski? Wasn’t the fall the result of a decision that the parent made?
The water in the hotel lobby was both unplanned and unfortunate, but it was completely preventable had the hotel acted proactively. Negligence caused my accident, and therefore they deserve what is coming to them. As much as I agree with husband on the evils of an overly litigious society, I am afraid that my not suing will not change the world we live in, so I am still going to do it.
Just before I broke my leg, I had been watching the children in the ski nursery. The mothers were all watching their little ones stand on the conveyor belt that brought them from the bottom of the nursery slope to the top. Mothers were instructing their 2 and 3 year olds in French, Italian and German to stand with their skis in a point, and keep their arms up. When they reached the top of the conveyor belt, they were given a little push by one of the staff, and were sent careening down the gentle slope, narrowly avoiding the big polar bears or other animals dotted throughout the course. Many fell over before making it to the bottom. They were simply up righted and pushed onward. The staff member at the bottom had to catch around 2 children every 30 seconds as they reached the end, having picked up a bit of speed, before they crashed into the snow pile.
I stood watching the children, so fearless and having a great time, and dreamt of the day we get to chuck our kids into the ring. Having spent a great week skiing all over the mountain, husband and I have decided that our love of winter sports will be something we pass on
