This trend hasn't been creeping up on us, its already here. My parents, bless 'em taught me to stand on my own two feet by making my own mistakes and I made a lot of them. From what type of food I chose to eat - liver - just the word turns my stomach. To the friends I hung out with - to what time I went to bed. Phrases like 'on your head be it.' or 'are you sure you know what you're doing' to 'watch where you're going' and Mum's personal favourite 'you've made your bed now you can lie in it.' All of these contained the word 'you' in some form or other. They taught me to take responsibility for my actions and deal with the consequences when I made choices which weren't smart.
But this is 2011 where personal injury is an industry. Our sense of self preservation seems to have withered just as our ability to lay blame on someone or something else has grown. Here in Utah I'm amazed at the things people blame, the weather, the pavement, the barbed wire fence they were trying to climb over, snow, hot coffee, the list goes on and I won't bore you with more stuff you can blame. Of course there are acts of god, like lightening strikes, no one has yet tried to sue God (if there is one and that's a topic for another day) and some things come out of the blue which no amount of forward planning could stop but most events are the culmination of a series of small events that altogether cause a problem.
I witnessed an example just a couple of days ago. We were driving out of a busy car park, not going very fast because it's pretty much impossible with all the cars bumbling around looking for the space closest to the store they want to go into. So we get to the exit which opens onto Highland Drive and this bunch of six or seven people are wandering along - to the side of the path of our car, when one of them just wanders across in front of us, never even looked behind him, we weren't going very fast and sat stopped while he meandered around. We couldn't move until he was out of the way and my husband - who doesn't list patience as one of his virtues - honked the horn to get him out of the way. The response was immediate, that horn is loud and it certainly got his attention but what he did next was mind numbing, he got angry and slapped the back of hubby's car and shouted something with dude in it - he wasn't surfer dude material. Of course my husband doesn't like anyone touching his pride and joy let alone slapping it so he stops and the bloke starts shouting that we almost ran him down - we shouldn't have been going so fast. Our speed at the time zero miles per hour. See there you have it, rather than look stupid or - god forbid - apologize for wandering into traffic he gets angry and blames someone else for his stupidity.
One other example I can think of is the woman who was so busy texting that she walked right into the fountain. She of course now has a lawyer and I'm guessing they'll have to take the fountains out after she gets a massive pay out - for being an idiot.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/8268547/Dangers-of-texting-while-walking-woman-falls-into-fountain.html
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