What was the past really like?

Whatever one thinks of 'elf & safety I think that its pretty obvious that there are quite a lot of people around today who would not be alive had the safety on the railway network - or indeed many other industries become much safer than they were twenty or so years ago.

We hear a lot about compensation culture, but accident victims suffer real financial loss in addition to their pain & suffering. Pray explain why if you or your company injure someone why should you leave them or the state with the bill?

Looking at this case as a 'for example'

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/little-girl-left-paralysed-crash-6664484

Not only did this result in a huge cost to care for this little girl, and loss of income to her family but you also have the light sentence imposed on the perpetrator. All to often the only 'justice' victims and their families receive is through the civil courts rather that seeing the perpetrator locked up for a long time.

 

I have to take issue with this as someone closely involved in a case where a cyclist was killed by a careless driver. The basis on the criminal law is that people commit offences on purpose and the sentencing system reflects this quite well. Where it falls down is when people clearly have had no intention of causing whatever tragedy it was, but have nonetheless caused it by carelessness or, in more extreme cases, demonstrably dangerous behaviour. Prison can be appropriate but lengthy terms serve very little purpose. In the case I was involved with, the driver was guilty of inattention, could offer no explanation for his inattention, was a broken man full of remorse and never worked at driving again. Recently we have seen the case of a lorry driver getting 10 years for causing the deaths of four people; this is the other end of the scale.

As for the cost of medical care in the case of the little girl, this would have been borne by the driver's insurers, not by the state. No difference to the pain and suffering, but at least not borne by the taxpayer.

 

As someone who works in insurance claims, I can confirm that there are genuine accidents, and that some elf n safety is sensible in helping to prevent them. However we do get a lot of fake "whiplash" claims in 1 mph parking bumps where there is no injury whatsoever, which simply abuse the system. A lot of health and safety is to create a paper record so that these chancers get knocked back

 

Most certainly - I was plagued for months with phone calls asking me to claim for "discomfort" after someone backed into me in a car park at less than 1 mph. I must confess to getting quite annoyed....

 

I did say that if I could claim for the aggravation of being constantly called, I most certainly would.

 

I remember some years ago the Russians wanted to talk to a Chechen Rebel Leader, traced his satellite phone & brought down an air strike on top of him.................

Possibly a service BT might offer in the future