Responsibility

`I look at the daily news and I see indications  that people are no longer taking responsibility for their actions.  I just seem that people are more likely to say “it wasn’t my fault”, even when they have done it.  Just an example.  Several years ago, when I was working at Walmart, I was standing in, at the front door, for one of the door greeters.  While I was standing there, dealing with customers, I heard a commotion behind me, and the call, over the PA system, of a “Code White“, which means accident.  When I looked back I saw a crowd of people gathered around an older woman who was draped over one of the floats that are often used for carryouts.  The float was in the aisle between the first register, not being used, and the lines of shopping carts.  It seems that, for some reason, she had decided to go down that aisle and had to cross the float.  When she stepped on it, it being on wheels, the float moved, and she was injured when she landing on it.  She sued Walmat because she was could not understand that the float was not a secure step.

There was another woman, I even read about this one, who sued a Walmat store because they failed to control some children whose actions caused her to fall and be injured.  She did this despite the fact that they were her children.  She expected the store to have better control of those kids than their mother?

Florida passes a traffic law called something like “Road Rage Prevention Act”.  The idea is that if you are driving along a road with two, or more, lanes going in the same direction and are going the legal speed limit you are required the move right, unless it is not possible, if a speeder comes up behind you.  If this speeder, impatient to get to his next crash, causes an accident it is possible that it is YOUR fault.  If an officer, or deputy, sees your disregard for the traffic flow he can cite you for hindering the flow of traffic.

Why not cite the speeder for following to closely?  NO.. that would be saying that he was responsible for his actions, and we can’t have that.  There must be a way to blame someone else.

More and more these days you can see people who run lights, or just not stop at STOP signs.  I am not talking about the people show misjudge the length of the yellow light and go through just as it turns red, or even those people who pull out into the intersection, to make a left turn, and got caught out there when the light changes.  Both of these are technically illegal.  What I am talking about are the people you see when you are at the light, your light goes green, and then the other car enters that intersection.  For those people who do not realize this, there is a space of time after his light went red that all the lights were red, which means it was red before he even got close to the intersection.  I have been at lights that just turned green, waited, and still almost go hit.

Florida passed a law last year that would allow local governments to place stop light cameras at intersections.  It has had mixed reactions, and new it seem that the law might be axed.  The reason given for this is that the cameras violate privacy of the drivers who run lights.  If they want to worry about their privacy they she save it for the bedroom, though, on second thought, it would be hard to run a light in your bedroom.

What we need is to get people to understand that THEY are responsible for their actions, not everyone else.