rant on personal responsibility

[Friday]

I just found out that the sister of an acquaintance died in a traffic accident.  My initial thought was "Oh, that's terrible!  I feel so sorry for my acquaintance."

Then I found out more details of what happened.  The woman didn't exactly die in a traffic accident.  She was driving with her two kids in the car and got a flat tire, and was changing her flat on the side of the road when a bulldozer blade on a passing truck hit and killed her.  Now, *maybe* this was the fault of the truck driver, but I tend to think she was an idiot for not placing herself and her car, which contained her two children, well outside of the flow of traffic before starting to work on her flat.

But it gets worse.  She's a single mother, and she had no life insurance.  There's now a fund online to accept donations to help pay for the support of her two orphaned children.  This, despite the fact that her mother is still alive, my acquaintance her sister is married and, AFAIK, both she and her husband are gainfully employed; I don't know how many other family members these kids have. 

Stuff like this really pisses me off.  Take care of your damned kids, people!  And don't immediately start relying upon the kindness of strangers when the inevitable rainy day rolls around.  grrrrr 

[Friday]

Continuing to catch up on my email, and it gets worse: the woman's father is also alive, and promptly set up a PayPal account so people can give him money.  WTF?

[Friday]

The family has an attorney, so they're hardly destitute.  *I* don't even have an attorney (but I have #$%^ing insurance).

[Friday]

Here's a news article about this incident:
http://www.wwaytv3.com/fund_set_accident_victim039s_children/08/2009 

Apparently, the woman wasn't even changing her own flat. She was standing in the road, watching someone else change it for her, when she was hit.   

On an unrelated rant, a few days ago I passed a cop who had pulled someone over.  But rather than park his cop car alongside the road, he had parked it at an angle, so it was sticking into the right-most lane on Highway 3, taking up a good third of the lane.  This was during commute hours.  I had to slam on my brakes to avoid running into his parked car, because the lane to the left of me was full.  Everyone behind me then had to do the same.  What a #$%^ing a-hole.  To protect and serve, my ass.   

[Tom Sawyer]

Once working down in the DC metro area, I came upon a woman sitting in her car in the middle of a very busy/dangerous road. I pulled off the road and ran over to ask her what was wrong. She had run out of gas. I told her to get out of the car and wait on the side of the road for me to go get her some gas. I came back and she was standing in the road like she could some how protect her car from a 10 ton truck traveling at 60 miles per hour.

People have become so used to being protected from everything including themselves. It has gotten to the point that the need for a big Mommy Government (Democrat) or Daddy Government (Republican) is harder to argue against.

[KBCraig]

Here's a news article about this incident:
http://www.wwaytv3.com/fund_set_accident_victim039s_children/08/2009 

The comments there remind me of the futility of ever trying to engage in meaningful dialogue on any TV station website.

The car was apparently parked right at the white line. The car wasn't hit by the dozer blade, but she was. Indicating what? Yes, children, that she was in the path of traffic! And yet there are endless accusations that the truck driver was at fault. Those accusers explain that she "couldn't" get over, because the vehicle was "disabled". Really? A flat tire causes a car to screech to an instant stop, immovable by mortal force until the tire is changed?

I share your frustration, Sandy. Both with the original incident, and the maddening response. Call it the "9/11 Effect": families who sadly lost a loved one to unexpected tragedy are somehow entitled to financial compensation many times greater than if their loved one had stepped in front of a moving bus, or had simply keeled over with a heart attack while waiting at the bus stop.

Being a family-oriented kind of guy, I am also aggravated that the kids' immediate family are trying to get the equivalent of life insurance, instead of just taking care of the kids. If such a tragedy should befall our nieces/nephews/cousins/godchildren/not-really-related-but-call-us-"Aunt"-or-"Uncle"/etc., we would do whatever we could to take care of those kids.

I love private charity, but there has been an odd twist in recent years, where it seems that anything and everything somehow obligates us to donate to others.

[Friday]

Call it the "9/11 Effect": families who sadly lost a loved one to unexpected tragedy are somehow entitled to financial compensation many times greater than if their loved one had stepped in front of a moving bus, or had simply keeled over with a heart attack while waiting at the bus stop.

I think the phenomenon of people trying to get a payoff out of the death of a family member predates 9/11, but it has always baffled me.  Honestly, how could you even live with yourself if you sought out a million bucks because your relative drowned in the neighbor's pool/died in a car accident/was killed by a rogue cue ball...? I'm not talking about people who received life insurance, but people who sue somebody as a form of revenge.  I can't even imagine sitting around with my feet up, sipping a pina colada and enjoying a life of leisure because someone I loved was DEAD?!  Ugh.   

[Lloyd Danforth]

Might make it easier to take

[K. Darien Freeheart]

I can't even imagine sitting around with my feet up, sipping a pina colada and enjoying a life of leisure because someone I loved was DEAD?!  Ugh.

I can see how this would be useful in the event of negligence or ill-intent. The problem is that today's society has really twisted concepts of responsibility, so anything someone does can be rationalized as "negligent", and if some "negligent" bastard killed my wife, I'd want him to pay.