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You say control, I say guilt. Society loves to attribute systemic problems to individual wickedness, because it empowers the judgemental elements while requirin

by toyg 4y ago

You say control, I say guilt. Society loves to attribute systemic problems to individual wickedness, because it empowers the judgemental elements while requiring no actual effort. As you say, careful drivers are not immune. But as long as someone, anyone, involved in the accident can be condemned as sinful (in many cases the sin of being tired from overworking forced on them by societal pressures), it can be explained away.

libraryatnight 4y ago
This extends in so many directions. I hear people speak this way about the homeless, the addicted, the laid-off, the sick. Cancer? Begin the list of things the person did, consumed, didn't do that could have caused it (no shortage of headlines to feed the lists). Homeless? Must have acted irresponsibly and made stupid choices. It's sort of hand in hand with the "It can't happen to me" mindset. I remember my wife telling me - during the George Floyd trial - one of her co-workers interrupted when someone referred to him as a man and said "He was a drug addict" like that should end the conversation, like that exempted him from being human, like some of her favorite celebrities weren't drug addicts. "To the dumb question 'Why me?' the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply: 'Why not?'" - Christopher Hitchens, from Mortality.
tialaramex 4y ago
> But as long as someone, anyone, involved in the accident can be condemned as sinful (in many cases the sin of being tired from overworking forced on them by societal pressures), it can be explained away. And indeed if we look at railway safety this is exactly what we saw. Originally, railway companies would say well, yes two passenger trains collided, killing a hundred people, but conveniently for us both drivers died in the collision so we'll blame them. The problem wasn't us, the railway company, who are great, it's those awful drivers, who fortunately are now dead so no need to investigate further. In fact, since there's no body to examine we can confidently declare that one of the drivers was drunk. Which explains why we've told his widow that she won't be receiving one penny from the death-in-service fund. Eventually (this kept happening, because of course it did) coroners weren't talking this bullshit, and they said it seems like the problem isn't these lone drivers who are conveniently dead, it's the company hiring them. If the drivers aren't good enough, the company should get better drivers. If instead the problem is elsewhere (e.g. maybe it'd be a good idea to invent signals so that you know if a train just around the corner has broken down so that your express doesn't hurtle into it at full speed...) that's something for the railway company too. This didn't magically fix things overnight, but it did push back against the useless "blame the driver" narrative. Modern safety agencies, focused on a blameless "Learn from the past, prevent future accidents" model have improved things considerably, but that did not happen automatically, somebody had to call the corporate entities on their bullshit. Maybe we should call individual private car owners on their bullshit too. One trend I don't like is people who resist the word "accident". It's an accident unless you think it was done on purpose. Accident prevention is a thing. We can, and should, prevent accidents.

by toyg 4y ago

libraryatnight 4y ago

This extends in so many directions. I hear people speak this way about the homeless, the addicted, the laid-off, the sick. Cancer? Begin the list of things the person did, consumed, didn't do that could have caused it (no shortage of headlines to feed the lists). Homeless? Must have acted irresponsibly and made stupid choices. It's sort of hand in hand with the "It can't happen to me" mindset. I remember my wife telling me - during the George Floyd trial - one of her co-workers interrupted when someone referred to him as a man and said "He was a drug addict" like that should end the conversation, like that exempted him from being human, like some of her favorite celebrities weren't drug addicts. "To the dumb question 'Why me?' the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply: 'Why not?'" - Christopher Hitchens, from Mortality.

tialaramex 4y ago

> But as long as someone, anyone, involved in the accident can be condemned as sinful (in many cases the sin of being tired from overworking forced on them by societal pressures), it can be explained away. And indeed if we look at railway safety this is exactly what we saw. Originally, railway companies would say well, yes two passenger trains collided, killing a hundred people, but conveniently for us both drivers died in the collision so we'll blame them. The problem wasn't us, the railway company, who are great, it's those awful drivers, who fortunately are now dead so no need to investigate further. In fact, since there's no body to examine we can confidently declare that one of the drivers was drunk. Which explains why we've told his widow that she won't be receiving one penny from the death-in-service fund. Eventually (this kept happening, because of course it did) coroners weren't talking this bullshit, and they said it seems like the problem isn't these lone drivers who are conveniently dead, it's the company hiring them. If the drivers aren't good enough, the company should get better drivers. If instead the problem is elsewhere (e.g. maybe it'd be a good idea to invent signals so that you know if a train just around the corner has broken down so that your express doesn't hurtle into it at full speed...) that's something for the railway company too. This didn't magically fix things overnight, but it did push back against the useless "blame the driver" narrative. Modern safety agencies, focused on a blameless "Learn from the past, prevent future accidents" model have improved things considerably, but that did not happen automatically, somebody had to call the corporate entities on their bullshit. Maybe we should call individual private car owners on their bullshit too. One trend I don't like is people who resist the word "accident". It's an accident unless you think it was done on purpose. Accident prevention is a thing. We can, and should, prevent accidents.