Many of you may have heard about the trial of the mounties in the taser death of some nut at an airport. I don’t want to minimize a death in anyway, and I feel for his family and friends, but many words have been thrown around about these officers: “knee-jerk reaction”, “impulse acting”, “instinctual” etc. and all I can think of is “Wait… What?!”
These are police officers we are talking about! In most cases all they have is a knee-jerk reaction time, or a split second to make a very difficult decision. We are literally listening to a group of Monday morning quarterbacks tell us what “They would have done” and that is absolute bullshit. I have never faced a situation where a person was directly threatening my life or the life of others around me (although perhaps I should get myself in those situations, according to Die Hard 4, Transformers and most action movies all I have to do to get the hot chick is save the world), but I can certainly say that my frame of mine would not be the same as having to make a decision about über-stressful work. Sure, hitting send on an email to an executive with the word “fuck” in it isn’t smart, but it isn’t a mistake that is going to kill me!
In the same regard, an actress recently died while skiing. A headline in the UK from this tragedy: “Natasha refuses £6 helmet”, are you kidding me?! A woman has died and before the dust settles on her grave we are starting to say that “helmet action is overdue”? The article I linked even says that 2 people who died (of the VAST 3 he talks about) were wearing helmets and still died! Dying is a risk of being MORTAL it is what makes life so much fun to live! if there wasn’t a fear of dying the X-games wouldn’t exist!
Everyday people die from smoking and car accidents, and yet we legally sell cigarettes and hand out driver’s licenses to anyone who wants them, but 1 famous woman dies and someone decides it’s time that helmets be mandated for skiing, what happens when someone dies after that law is passed? Is the next logical step to wrap all people everywhere in styrofoam?
We are so bent on saving everyone, that we forget what rational safety is.
Skiing has been around since over 1000 years! How could we have survived that sport for so long if helmets are mandatory for it?
Taser’s have been around for 35 years, and we are just now realizing that people can be injured by injecting them with electricity?!
Wake up people, death is inevitable and no bylaw or government mandate will solve that.
stoss you never cease to amaze me…….