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Woman Killed In Wii-Related Competition
snuffin writes to tell us that a local radio competition to "hold your wee for a Wii" has ended with a Sacramento woman dead from water poisoning. From the article: "An Associated Press interview with another contestant, named James Ybarra, claimed that contestants were initially given eight ounce bottles of water to drink every fifteen minutes, with larger bottles being used once contestants began to drop out. According to Ybarra, 'They told us if you don't feel like you can do this, don't put your health at risk.' He described the victim as 'a nice lady' and that 'she was telling me about her family and her three kids and how she was doing it for her kids.'"
What a stupid world.
Perhaps life really is full of possibilities.
A woman wasn't killed, she died as a result of self induced water intoxication. It's a difference that means a lot. The headline makes it sound like a sport killing of some kind. Would have been more appropriate to say "Woman dies In Wii-Related Competition".
I can't believe that nobody involved in this event had misgivings about this, especially since just a couple of years ago a kid at Chico State died of the same thing (which got all sorts of press around California at the time).
What a stupid thing to have happen. You've got to feel for her family, especially with all the reports saying she was doing it for her kids -- having your mom die trying to get you some stupid video game system would be a shitty thing to live with. I hope they sue this radio station and the individuals involved into the poorhouse...
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
That is the most deceptive headline you have successfully posted ever. This death could not have less to do with the Wii. It is ONLY about a radio station that tried an irresponsible stunt, and a lady who put her own health at risk to win a competition. The Wii is only related in name, but has ZERO relevance to her death. Stop trying to decieve people and learn to post honestly for once. Thanks!
Ne quid nimis. Aristotle was right.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
My point is/was that to the casual observer (and contestant), signing a waiver and being "warned" (I didn't see anything in the article to suggest they warned how dangerous this was) would seem a mere "standard" formality and for the purposes of participating in a water-drinking contest, absurd. But, the radio station, as I pointed out, with minimal research should have known going in this was dangerous and not even hosted this contest.
The only difference I see between this and a contest where contestants drink as much alcohol as possible to win a Wii is that to the common man, dangers and risks associated with alcohol are much more widely known and understood. And, no radio station in the world would get away with having contestants drink alcohol in a similar fashion, waivers and warnings or not.
Why is the radio station obliged to understand the danger, but the contestants are not?
FATMOUSE + YOU = FATMOUSE
They were negligent because they were having a potentially deadly contest, and they should have had some absolute limits, beyond which a tie is issued. A "play to the death" contest is not acceptable.
Why is the radio station obliged to understand the danger, but the contestants are not?
Because the radio station is putting the contestants in the danger that they need to understand in the first place.
If I did something stupid like this, I'd be up on charges of manslaughter. So would you.
It doesn't mean you wouldn't get off (You might...but you'd still get tried for it in most cases...)- but just because it's a radio station (or other business) doesn't let you off of culpability for this sort of thing.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
it's run by lawyers.
If you don't know that, you've never tried to read the gobs of fine print attached to every single corporate contest.
This contest wasn't something cooked up by some guys in their clubhouse it was a corporate promotion and lawyers insist on vetting those because they offer all sorts of ways the company can get in trouble.
wtf???? Try to get a payout? Do you think this woman's kids are jumping up and down in anticipation of making some money over their mother's death? There may be frivolous lawsuits (not nearly as many as people think,) but this is a case that the legal system was made for.
IIRC (we had a private die in training a few years ago with this sort of thing), the symptoms that you're coming down with water related death include becoming thirsty.
Yeah, that's an easy one to read.
A nebulous "quit if you feel sick" warning isn't good enough when she could have done the harm before she started to notice any dangerous side effects.
Not Meta-modding due to apathy.
>Why is the radio station obliged to understand the danger,
>but the contestants are not?
Because the radio station is planning the freakin contest. They have staff devoted to planning the thing, and it's their responsibility to make sure that the event goes smoothly and safely.
Sheesh, you could sue the station if you slipped on the ice on their sidewalk. Why would this be any different?
Me, for example.
What we need is "witty" up-moderation, a combination of "Funny" and "Insightful" which rewards the karma of the poster.
-- KiloByte
I'm trying to understand your comment, and I see three possibilities. Either:
(a) You believe this woman intentionally got herself killed in order to collect easy money from the radio station.
(b) You don't believe that the radio station, which set the rules of this contest and provided enticement for people to participate, was at all negligent in not exploring the possible injuries that could result from it.
(c) Your comment had nothing to do with this case, you just have a problem with lawsuits in general.
Assuming (c), I feel like I should point out that, given the facts as we currently understand them, this would hardly be a frivolous lawsuit. The radio station was clearly negligent in not exploring the hazards of what they were encouraging people to do and, although you may not think it's fair, they have an obligation under the law to do so.
Furthermore, the example you cited with the GPS, aside from sounding like an obvious urban legend, doesn't actually map to this situation. Anyone with a driver's license should know that you look before you turn your car, but understanding the risks of this sort of contest would require some basic medical training. It is therefore reasonable to expect a driver to look before turning and not reasonable to expect the average person to understand the health risks of this sort of activity.
Which is, ultimately, why we as a society have lawsuits like this. The radio station was obligated to do their due-diligence before enticing people into this behavior. And that's why they're going to get clobbered by the lawsuit that will come from this.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Those who know of frat initiations also know how dangerous this is.
During the early 90's many colleges and Frats were banning drinking, in order to continue with the traditions of the frats, they replaced beer with water.
Imagine a keggar with water, including all the stupid drinking games.
People didn't know how dangerous this was. The universities and Frats approved the activity as childish fun, until people started dying from the hyperhydration.
Beer funnels killed students with or without beer.
too much of anything is a bad thing.
Yes, gatorade probably would have saved her life. Not sure why parent is modded funny?
Why is this modded funny? Parent is serious. Sports drinks would have been safe (though I am not positive Gatorade specifically has electrolytes).
Arg
I hate this kind of crap. Are we all children who need corporate guidance and someone to blame everytime we f*ck up? The woman did something stupid. Most likely out of ignorance. The station did something stupid, most likely out of ignorance. Who's at fault. THE WOMAN. It was her body,and her DECISION. If some maliciousness on the part of the station could be proven, maybe things would be different, but as it stands, a group of ignorant people did something stupid and one of them died. They all freely chose what they were doing.
Personally, I don't want any company protecting me from myself. For that, I have myself, and some scientifically based government warnings and programs. I'm all for certain types of warnings: "This may be radioactive" etc. . But only for things which I would have no reasonable way of detecting myself, especially without expensive equipment. Drinking too much water is hazardous? Well, duh! So is consuming too much ketchup, or hair, or heroin. This is common sense: consuming pretty much anything can be dangerous if you consume too much of it. What kind of sorry world do we live in where people don't realize that? If the station does get sued, I hope they win. The last thing we need in this world is a bunch of self-serving ass-coverers trying to protect us from ourselves. Really, government has gone too far in this regard as well, but there is still a nugget of credibility, and at least they are theoretically under OUR control.
This stuff makes me so mad I could spit. I better call Samsung, though, and make sure they think it's safe for me to spit in front of my monitor. Sigh.
"You find this so funny you pissed yourself?"
Actually it was just another play on the 'wii' bit... seriously, you can't actually pass out from too much irony ya know.
"Then you moan and cry about the moderation you got from your sorry ass comment?"
Troll, flamebait, overrated, I would have been fine with. But off topic? It's just not true.
"I hope when a moment of extreme sorrow comes into your life"
Been there, done that. Everyone deals with things in different ways dude, and death, being one of the hardest things to deal with, introduces even wider ways of being dealt with than most other things we experience. You can't spend your whole life crying, you get nowhere, and may as well not be alive yourself. So you laugh, about some funny word or whatever, it doesn't matter, and hope it does make you insensitive, at least a little more than you'd usually be, because you can't cope if you soak up every little bad thing that happens.
It doesn't make you an arsehole, it just means you're trying to survive the best you can in a world where shit happens.
You'll understand as you get older. Or you'll get crushed by the weight of the world.
The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia
"When some piece of shit like you starts spouting about how she got what she deserved, well, I can only hope you share your opinion to as many people as possible in person. You'll get what you deserve too."
Nice. Truly. If you had read what I wrote, you'd have noticed I mentioned nothing about whether the woman deserved it. I said she did something stupid, which I think is hardly disputable. And I said she did it, most likely, through ignorance. Whether that equates to her deserving death or not is a completely different issue. Whether anyone deserves to die due to stupid behaviour or ignorance is not something I'm even sure I have an opinion on.
The point is: she freely chose to do something, and that thing was fatal. She should have known better for three reasons: Death by water consumption is not such an unheard of phenomenon, actually. I suspect most endurance athletes have heard of it, many medical people, and many livestock farmers as well. Not the majority by a long shot, but it's not exactly esoteric knowledge either. Secondly, it's just common sense that ingesting vast amounts of anything is dangerous, this should come as a surprise to no-one. Thirdly, our bodies have this amazing ability to signal us when we are consuming too much of something. Go try to drink a two litre bottle of water right now, you'll see what I mean. If she was so unaware of her body, she was being ignorant, if she was ignoring it, she was being stupid. Deservedness is irrelevant.
Why the station should be considered more responsible than the woman herself, for what was happening in the woman, is truly beyond me. If we really needed to be shepherded away from behaving in such a stupid fashion, one would think our beaches, river banks, bathtubs, and swimming pools would be littered with the bodies of people who lacked such sense. I haven't noticed that happening. Is it unfortunate? Definitely! Is it tragic? Definitely. It's too bad for her, her kids, and everyone else who cared about her. That doesn't mean the station should be held responsible for a bad decision that the woman made. The woman made a bad decision, a stupid decision, and unfortunately died because of it.
It may feel good to blame the station, but it isn't exactly rational. If they should have researched it more, why not the woman? Why is the station more responsible for finding out the dangers of what the woman puts in her mouth than the woman herself? It's really taking "save us from ourselves" a little too literally.