No, Gitarcarver , that is not my position and you know it. Did you not read my very long post about senile drivers? My position as I clearly stated it is that it was the senile driver and not the road that killed the cross-country runner. I gave you example after example of how these drivers kill people on the road, in parking lots, on sidewalks and even inside stores! Can you not see that this driver was a menace on any road that he was driving on? It was just a coincidence that he killed someone on this road.

Schools are not intended to be nursemaids for young adults. This was tragic but the fault lies squarely on the driver and possibly a bit on the victim for running in an unsafe manner, the wrong side of the road. Not on the School.

I did answer it. You just don’t like the answer. The answer is that it gives the person the ability to avoid a road on which a runner was killed and the sheriff has concerns about.

Really?

Yes really. The kid wasn’t killed on another road. He was killed on THAT road. The staff didn’t have discussions as far as we know about the dangers of other roads, they had a discussion about the dangers of THAT road. The sheriff didn’t call about other roads, he called about THAT road.

What gives the school the right to withold information about the dangers of a road and then send a runner out to train?

Gitarcarver, you have repeated this same point over and over and over again. However, what you conveniently leave out in your mantra is that the warning had nothing to do with the accident that killed her.

Just out of curiosity, how many of the people in your articles were sent out by their bosses / superiors / coaches onto those areas?

Place the blame where it belongs not on someone with deep pockets.

So your position is that when a school tells a kid to go out and train, running the streets of an unfamilier city, they have no responsibility to protect them, or give them information as to what routes and roads are more dangerous than others. The school has no reponsibility to pass onto the their charges the dangers of a road that the professional on road dangers – the sheriff – called them about.

That doesn’t pass the smell test.

….Sorry Richard

Gitarcarver, you have repeated this same point over and over and over again. However, what you conveniently leave out in your mantra is that the warning had nothing to do with the accident that killed her. It was not the road that led to her death, but the fact that a senile old man who should not have a license to drive ran off the road and plowed into her. It is just as likely that he would have killed someone on a different road. It was just a coincidence that he hit her on this road. A sidewalk or a curb would not have made a difference. You constantly read stories about these incompetent drivers hitting people on sidewalks or going through barriers to plow into crowds. The excuse is always that they mistook the accelerator pedal for the brake; the more out of control they were the harder they hit the gas. Nothing short of a Jersey wall could have protected her from this incompetent driver.

A quick google search turned up the following accidents involving older drivers.

An elderly man who killed 10 people and injured more than 70 others when he drove through an outdoor farmers market was sentenced today to probation, the Associated Press reports. It adds that the judge said he believed the crime deserved imprisonment, but the defendant was too ill.

George Russell Weller, 89, was convicted Oct. 20 of 10 counts of vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence in a case that ignited debate over the licensing of elderly drivers. Weller, confined to a sickbed, was not present.

George Russell Weller, then 86, killed 10 people and injured more than 70 when he drove his Buick Le Sabre into a crowded farmers market in Santa Monica, Calif., on July 16, 2003.

His attorneys explained that Weller had confused his car’s accelerator for the brake. He was convicted of vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/11/20/national/main2200813.shtml

An 8-year-old girl was serious injured when an elderly man drove his SUV over a sidewalk and pinned her against the front of Lyons Elementary School today.

The driver of the SUV, William Geisler, 86, of Randolph, was trying to park the vehicle so that he could go inside the school to vote in the presidential primary. Police said Geisler lost control of his Ford Escape, it went over a grassy area and then onto the sidewalk in front of the school and struck the girl, pinning her against the school building.

Oct. 15, 2007:
Jane Berghold, 76, of Rockland, drives her car through the front doors of Brockton Hospital’s radiation center, killing Dr. Mark A. Vasa, 58, of Norwell, and Susan Plante, 59, of East Bridgewater. Berghold faces two counts of motor vehicle homicide by negligent operation.

Feb. 13, 2006:
An 88-year-old North Weymouth woman strikes another woman with her car, smashing the woman through a 7-Eleven storefront window and pinning her beneath the vehicle, seriously injuring her.

Oct. 1, 2005:
Enrico Caruso, 66, drives his car into a crowd outside a Stoneham elementary school, pinning several adults and children to a stone wall and injuring 12. Caruso is convicted of negligent driving.

Nov. 11, 2004:
Joseph Davis, 80, of East Bridgewater, runs over and kills William Hammond, 81, of Abington, during the Tri-Town Veterans Day parade in Whitman.

March 22, 2002:
David Sacca, 75, of Stoughton, passes out while driving and his car strikes and kills 10-year-old Kevin Coombes as he talks with friends on a sidewalk on Summer Street. The boy’s family files a lawsuit against Sacca’s physician, claiming he did not adequately warn Sacca about the potential side effects of the medications he was prescribed.

http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/state/x469092623

Brian Fay, 19, was making change for a customer at a Sears store in Orlando on Oct. 9 when he heard what he thought was a bomb. Fay looked toward the store entrance and saw a pane of glass shatter and fall to the floor. Then he “looked down and saw (a) car barreling” toward him.

Elizabeth Jane Baldick, 84, drove her car into the cash register counter Fay was using, knocking him over. Bleeding, he rushed to check on Baldick, whose car had come to rest against a concrete pillar. Her foot was still pressed firmly against the accelerator, the tires screeching against the tiles on the floor.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-05-02-older-drivers-usat1a_N.htm

Last year, 75-year-old Stella Maychick mowed down an afternoon crowd in New York City’s Washington Square Park, killing four people and injuring 27 others.

In July, 83-year-old Meyer Holtzin lost control of his car in a supermarket parking lot in Philadelphia; according to witnesses and a police diagram, he hit a tree, careened through the air,and landed at a bus stop, striking three children waiting there with their father and killing one of them, six-year-old Bruce Ferguson Jr.

Salvatore Starvaggi, an 88-year-old former truck driver, for one, was on nine different medications last year when he ran down his wife and killed her in a Wayne, N.J., shopping-mall parking lot while trying to pick her up, according to a National Transportation Safety Board accident report.

Across town at another mall that day, 82-year-old Ralph Naimoli plowed into three pedestrians in the parking lot, landing all of them in the hospital. Even though one of the pedestrians ended up on the hood of his Oldsmobile Delta 88, and even though the car also careened into a tree,”I continue to drive,” Mr. Naimoli said last month.

http://www.joanrigdon.com/clips/olddriver.html

Shall I go on? There is no way to prevent these tragedies unless we get these senile people off the road. In all of these cases it is not the roads that kill, but the people that should not be driving on them. Or would you suggest that we warn people to stay off of sidewalks and not go into stores? Place the blame where it belongs not on someone with deep pockets.

Unless you compile, administer and efectively disseminate data for all the roads on an ongoing basis, there is no way that a person could make an informed decision. Sure they won’t travel on Route 90A, but maybe they go to another road that’s more dangeroous for them. Pehaps TYU has not had the misfortune of other hit runners to scare others away from some other roads yet. Perhaps the coach or TYU leads them to a road that appears safe to them anectdotaly but is statistically much worse in reality.

This is central to your argument that:

“While the risk of injury may have be everywhere, the school knew that the risk on this particular street was greater than other streets. They sent this kid out on a training run without telling her the risk and the history of running on that particular road.”

Really? Being a big university, TYU had ALL the necessary data on ALL of the surrounding roads to give an unknowing outsider a perfect picture of the risk of ALL said roads?

Sounds more like hindsight. “If only she had known about that accident….”

As to the call to the Sheriff, according to the first 2 articles, the call was about a different road. The last article is ambiguous at best. If we could read the testimony, that would help clear it up, but the article does not say that that was refuted-it just restates the position of Suarez.

The school said in their openins statement that the sheriff called about another road. The plaintiff’s in their opening statement said the call was about that particular road. The final article – after the sworn testimony – says the the sheriff’s call was about Route 90A which is the road in question.

Why does she have to be informed of every possible unique risk of the community before being allowed to exercise her right to freedom?

She doesn’t have to be informed of every risk. She should be informed of the risks known to the school before the school sends her out to train.

You keep focusing on “every road.” It is not every road, it is a specific road. You keep trying to focus on “every warning.” It is not every warning, it is a specific warning. It is not “every student” it is a specific group of students that the coach says “go train.”

This appears to be a line of reasoning fashioned to hold TYU responsible for risks that are everywhere towards the actions of adults.

I’m trying to write this between issues at work and I feel like I’m rambling.

You’re rambling because you keep bringing up issues that are not in this case. While the risk of injury may have be everywhere, the school knew that the risk on this particular street was greater than other streets. They sent this kid out on a training run without telling her the risk and the history of running on that particular road.

We will never know what Suarez’s decision would have been if she had been informned of the risk of running on this road. We’ll never know because the school ignored the history of the road, and the warning of a professional on the dangers of that road.

How many deaths happened on each road of this community? Is your claim that this road is unsafe because of the total number of accidents with runners or on the fact that it had lots of traffic and higher speeds? Some other reason?

Who compiles all of this data and becomes resposible for administering and disseminating it?

Or, is it just because there is A history with this road? Just like any road in America.

You seem to be focusing on the fact there was at least one death and the Sheriff called about another completely different road and different circumstances. It doesn’t work that way. Except for the lawyer.

Or we seriously to believe that the lawyer didn’t notice that the sheriff call was about an entirely different road? Was he trying to show the callousness of TYU by making a connection to this case?

I refuse to belive that this 20 yr old was so naive so as not to know that certain characteristics, that are visible to the naked eye, can mean that the road is more or less dangerous. If we were talking about young kids who don’t understand yet, I could understand to some extent(My wife and I consider that OUR responsibility when under our supervision.) This was not a child under anybody’s supervision.

I keep rereading the 3 articles and fall back to the same thoughts: If these were kids walking to town on a city street, who would be responsible for a driver jumping the curb, running them over and then stopping later to “help?”

Why does she have to be informed of every possible unique risk of the community before being allowed to exercise her right to freedom? Could she not have asked for suggestions? Of course, a response from the school would immediately be seen as cause for holding them responsible. This appears to be a line of reasoning fashioned to hold TYU responsible for risks that are everywhere towards the actions of adults.

I’m trying to write this between issues at work and I feel like I’m rambling. 🙂

Humor me with one more question: How would warning them about an accident a year ago on this road and the concerns of Sheriff over some other road provide anybody with enough info to make that all too important “informed decision?”

You keep forgetting that some roads are more dangerous than others.

Of course I’m going to use the knowledge and experience that I’ve gained and been told over the years, it helps me survive.

So you agree that someone that has lived in an area for longer would have more knowledge of which streets are more dangerous than others. Being that the school has been there longer than Suarez, and being that the sheriff warned the school of the dangers, you believe that the school has no obligation other than to say “go out and train for our team.”

In your mind, the school was right to ignore the warning from the sheriff, ignore the discussions they had 4 months earlier about the death of the runner, and then tell this kid to go run and train. The school knew the risks. The runner didn’t. The school sent the kid out to run. The runner did what the school wanted. The school had a duty to protect their runner and if they want to say she made an adult choice, give the information they have to the runner.

My point is that there is a history of the area not presented here that, if I were a gambling man, I could put money on the bet that EVERY road has had a serious injury or fatality on.

Yet we are not talking about “every” road. We are talking about a specific road where a runner was killed and a specific road that the school was warned about. Your postion is akin to saying “all drugs have side effects, therefore the company has no responsibility to warn customers what those side effects are, and the severity of those side effects.”

She would still have to make the decision to pick the safest of the roads listed, but they’re off the hook now, right?

So you are saying that the school was on the hook for failing to warn, and if they did warn, they would be still be on the hook for failing to warn. Sorry, once again this doesn’t pass the smell test. If the school had warned the runner, I would be sitting here saying “she knew the facts and made a decision.” Instead, she didn’t know the facts because the school withheld them from her.

The randomness of this type of accident….

Yet there was more to this than a “randomness.” There was a specific warning to the school about this road. There was a recent death to a runner that occured on this road. The school was telling a runner to go out and train for their school without telling the runners of this specific threat.

I didn’t get into trouble because of the tar on my hands, I got into trouble because it was evidence of my playing in the road and my parents made the leap that no amount or speed of traffic makes the road “safer”. I just should not play in it.

Of course I’m going to use the knowledge and experience that I’ve gained and been told over the years, it helps me survive.

My point is that there is a history of the area not presented here that, if I were a gambling man, I could put money on the bet that EVERY road has had a serious injury or fatality on.

If the school had compiled a list of roads based on current safety stats, and she was hit by the same out of control driver on the safest road, would you absolve the school of all responsibility because they offered her the best odds? She would still have to make the decision to pick the safest of the roads listed, but they’re off the hook now, right? Of course not! The lawyer would find anything that pointed to the non-safety of the road in an attempt to hold the school liable and get some cash.

I beleive that this accident stands by itself. The history of casualties on this road didn’t “cause” this to happen to her. The randomness of this type of accident is completely different from the higher risk of running alongside a busy high-speed road, as opposed to a less traveled and slower one. Out-of-control drivers can happen anywhere so this doesn’t fall into a failure to warn category.