I saw on the news the other day a parliament member talking about how kayaking safety measures are being reviewed, in response to a drowning case a while back when a man who didn't know how to swim drowned after he capsized and he was swimming around before his PFD slipped off him. She mentioned that demarcation area signages will be made more prominent etc, and the newspapers promptly reported her speech too.
Recently, I was made aware that we PE teachers cannot use the hall for wet weather activities during recess during the TAF club sessions, as a kid apparently got a gash on his head while playing there recently. The teacher who told me was baffled by the decision (as was I), as it doesn't seem to us that playing anywhere else will be safer.
What's the connection between the two? In both instances, people of authority devised spurious measures as a knee-jerk reaction to accidents. They know nuts about the incident, probably think it is inevitable in their heart, but still have to put in place some measures to show that steps are being taken to prevent future incidents from occurring. Of course, in many cases, these measures are utterly ridiculous and does nothing to help at all. How does staying within the demarcation area help save that man's life? It's not as if someone at Water venture could get on the water in time to help if the paddlers had stayed within the space, given that the man apparently bobbed below and never appeared again.
Such examples are everywhere and they make me sick - when silly people make useless decisions in the aftermath of an accident only for the sake of show. It seems like in Singapore, everyone in power are anxious to protect themselves against liabilities, that they often lose track of the real objective and instead uses diplomatic responses to avert responsibility.
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2 comments:
yeah.. cant agree more. Things seem to be done to show that they did something, so they cant be accuse of not doing anything. maybe one day they will stop PE eventually. i guess the death in the recent triathlon have no link to any organisation to bear the blame and maybe that why nothing was being done.
Regarding the case of the death of the triathlete, I think it is quite justified for SSC to consider enforcing the engagement of ambulances with defibrillators to resuscitate athletes with cardiac arrests.
The examples I quoted are really uninformed suggestions that does little to manage risks. For example, ometimes the human factors have to be looked into, rather than pointing the blame to the environment and trying to change it.
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