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Honolulu Lite Charles Memminger |
Sign should say
‘Beware of Avalanche
of Lawsuits’When you were a little kid, your parents had a cool way of making sure that every bad thing that happened to you was your fault. They'd give you a warning. Like, don't touch that oven burner. Then if you touched the oven burner and ran to your room with hand flambé, good ol' Mom would say "I TOLD you not to touch that burner" and thereby assuage herself of any guilt. Nevermind that she was the one who turned the bloody burner on.
The trouble was, you were warned not to do just about everything. Some were serious warnings, like "don't put your head in a plastic bag," and some were less serious, like, "don't poke the dog in the eye with a spoon." Some were sort of in the middle, like, "don't put the dog's head in a plastic bag." We learned from the very first words we spoke -- which weren't "Mommy" or "Daddy," but "Hot!" and "Auwe!" -- the world was a dangerous place and that everything bad that happened to us was our own damn fault.
I thought this "give warning/assuage guilt" trip was exceedingly unfair. Until I became a parent. Now I realize the vast wisdom of it.
If you are one of those people who believe the government considers itself a parent and all of us citizens little kids, you aren't far off. You think the house kitchen is dangerous, try being in charge of a bunch of islands made up of high cliffs, sharp rocks, falling coconuts, speeding cars, and all surrounded by water filled with killer waves and equally killer sharks. There are about 173,294 ways to get hurt in Hawaii and lawsuits have been filed in about 173,293 of them.
THAT'S WHY there are warning signs virtually everywhere and more on the way. These warning signs are the government's way of telling you not to do something, and then if you do it and get hurt, the government says "I told you not to do it." Unlike Mom, the government isn't as interested in assuaging guilt as it is winning lawsuits.
Oahu was pretty well "signed up" before 1999. There were big signs at the parks that had a large "No" and then a list of everything from drinking booze to walking your dog. There were jellyfish signs on the beach and "watch your belongings" signs at tourist lookouts. The government didn't realize it needed to put signs up in remote areas like Sacred Falls Park where on Mother Day 1999 several people were killed by falling rocks. If there had been a sign saying "Watch for Falling Rocks" and THEN people were killed by falling rocks, the government could have stood like Mom with arms folded before the judge and said "We told them to watch out. " But there weren't signs and so relatives of the victims collected millions of bucks for what actually used to be called "an act of God." (Why God wanted to drop rocks on people, I don't know.)
The state now is busting out all kinds of new signs that say things like "Warning! Falling Rocks!" and Warning! "Hazardous Cliff!" to make Hawaii safe from hazardous lawsuits. It won't work. No matter how many signs you put up, people will find new ways to get hurt. (I'm waiting for the first falling sign injury.)
The answer is to make visitors sign one blanket warning document when they land here. It will simply say: "Warning! Hawaii is dangerous to your health. If anything bad happens to you here, don't say we didn't warn you."
See the Columnists section for some past articles.
Charles Memminger, winner of National Society of Newspaper Columnists awards, appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. E-mail cmemminger@starbulletin.com