One symptom of my obsession with heavy industry is that I often find myself begging to sign away my rights just to be allowed to wander into places most people would run screaming away from.

In my post about letting idiots be idots and the accurate follow-up about what idiots do to insurance premiums, I should have mentioned a solution.

I was reading LINESIDE, the NMRA industrial SIG's newsletter, last month and it had an article about a field trip to German steel mills.

It seems many abandoned mills have been turned into parks. Not US parks where you can't touch, climb or otherwise partake, but fully open you-wanna-climb-go-ahead. No guardrails. No safety anything except lighting.

How can this be?

Well, apparently Germany has a law of self-responsibility. In other words, if you do something, you are held accountable for your actions and cannot sue. For instance, if you wander into a working steel mill and have a fresh iron pour dumped on your head, your family cannot sue the mill, city, state and Carnation for evaporating you.

I LOVE THAT.

If we had a sensible and logical responsibility law here, things would be much better.

Of course, since big business controls our guvmint and we elect lawyers to the congress and lawyers are big business and since insurance is big business, we'd have to find elected officals who do not have JD's and who are not on the take. But if we could, imagine all the premiums that would drop if, say, there were simple laws like... if youa re standing on railroad tracks and a train kills you... tough. You made the choice.

It would be soooooo nice.

And the effects of that premium reduction would immediate;y impact the rail preservation communicty in very favorable ways.

Rob

trains@robertjohndavis.com

AMEN!

derailment

Rob,

I agree with you almost 100%, except that it does not solve the City of New Orleans problem. The people that are suing are the passengers and their estates. They were minding their own business, doing nothing wrong or unsafe when they were injured or killed by the actions of an idiot. Since the idiot and his insurance (if he even had any) won't come near to paying the tab, it's the railroad that has to pay the bill. Unfair? Yes, but if you had bought a ticket to ride and wound up severely injured, you'd want compensation too.

Prevention is almost always cheaper then cure, which is why the railroads have the Operation Lifesaver program. The message that the Cadillac commercial sends is totally contrary to this. It may seem cute to people with normal intelligence and judgment, but if it gets even one kid thinking that beating a train is cool, it's a bad idea. I hope GM pulls the commercial for that reason, but in this litigeous age, the GM risk management lawyers ought to pull it once they find out about it!

Michael

a231pacific@aol.com

I agree with the first post. But in this country where everyone is a "victim", the likelyhood of people taking responsibility for their actions is a long shot. Eveybody hears the stories of someone robbing a house and the intruder gets hurt and sues the people they were robbing.

It would be nice to have that type of policy, but I don't think it would ever work here. It is always someone elses fault. It's not even my fault I wrote this, the keyboard told me to...

jeff Lisowski
West Chester, Pa

unfunkyufo76@hotmail.com