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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".
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.
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.
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.
"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