Thread: Go cart death

Sorry Steve no offence intended but you are 100% wrong, an operator of any business is responsible for providing reasonable safety standards for their employees and their customers while on their premises.

The big difference here is she wasn't driving a go kart in here own backyard and it wasn't her go kart to start off with, so it is unreasonable to expect that she should have known that her head dress could have caused her death in this manner.

In this instance she had hired the go kart from a professional venue that did this for a business and were supposed to be the experts, it is up to the operators to know what is safe attire and what is not, just like it is for them to judge what is safe driving at their venue and what is not.


Regards,
Terry

Safety is not just their responsibility its yours too if you want to do something dangerous dont complain if you get hurt

and dont blame teenager workers for there lack of knowledge or lack of training
that'sjust pointing fingers


Its this attitude that causes the Nanny state mentality

your not smart enough to look after yourselves we need to do it for you
is there attitude

Just like helmet laws
again your not smart enough to wear a helmet so we make it a law

If i jump out of a plain with a shoot on and it fails do i blame the pilot for letting me jump or do i blame the person that was in charge of my safety (me)

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion Steve and while I disagree with yours I still respect your right to voice yours.

I have some knowledge of motorsport in general and from the little information that has been made public it is reasonable to say this death was more then likely quite avoidable if the operators had acted in what I expect will prove to be normal industry practise for restricting unsuitable and unsafe attire.

This is but one of the operators responsibilities to thier customers safety and well being while using their hire go karts and has nothing to do with a nanny state.

Everyone has responsibilities in life Steve even you believe it or not.

Have a nice day

Regards,
Terry

As previously pointed out, a young operator may well have been pressured by the family into letting her use the cart.

It is entirely possible that the male member of the family could have been quite vociferous in insisting she be allowed to ride with the hijab, perhaps even pulling the race/religion card to add even more pressure on the operator.

We won't know until after the inquest.

Sorry Ron I have to disagree,

sterotyping people is wrong no matter what their religion is, just as most reasonable people would accept that sterotyping people because where they live or grew up or what school they went to is equally wrong.

Coming up with a potential scenario of 'what if the big bad Muslim husband said this' as a potential excuse for her being allowed to drive the Kart with potentially unsafe attire holds no water because it is nothing more then supposition which sterotypes the people involved and isn't based on anything other then preconceived ideas about how some people with a certain religous background will behave.

Just over a year ago I moved from Port Stephens to Goulburn, I lived for eight years only ten minutes drive away from this go kart track and I would not go back there after seeing twice how they ran it and how crappy their karts were, now this is my own personal experience and others might have had better experiences at this venue but I did not. Now this isn't supposition it is my first hand experience of how badly this joint was run.

I know I have walked my way into a minefield by voicing my thoughts on this which appear at odds to many others opinion on here, but what the hell, we are talking about someones life that was lost and as far as I'm concerned thier life is not worth any less then anyones elses no matter what religion they are.

regards,
Terry O'Neill

I dont think anyone has said her life was worth less
Its a tragic loss

From as it looks based on media rather than fact, I think probably what will bring the track unstuck here is that they could have reasonably forseen that the head dress could become entangled into the karts driveline, and they dont appear to have taken any reasonable steps to prevent it.

I agree with Terry comments 100% and he would probably know better than most.

Terry, I don't think that Ron's post is "stereotyping" at all - merely proposing an alternate scenario / explanation of the circumstances based on other similar examples of the behaviour based on what we all know to be fact.

A relative of mine is a bank manager - he and one of his employees got into some very serious trouble a while back for asking a woman wearing this type of headgear to either remove the headgear or leave his bank. The "religious community" backlash against his bank was loud and stirred a lot of heated debate in the general community for obvious reasons, and included threats of legal action against the bank. There are numerous documented reports of this type of behaviour.

You have stated, from your own experience, that this track may have been left in the care of young teenagers. If such teenagers were confronted by a group of people including one or more people wearing this head dress, who wanted to ride on a go-kart, then I would find it quite believable that the teenagers may have been intimidated enough to allow one or more to use a go-kart in what we all know to be unacceptable dress standard, whether intimidated directly by the woman or others there at the time, or simply in consideration of the knowledge of other events, similar to my relative's experience.

The bottom line is that none of us really knows the full circumstances and will not until the outcome of an enquiry is released. Simply jumping in and blaming the operators of the venue is, in my opinion, no different to "stereotyping" the victim of the accident without full knowledge of the facts behind the event.

While it is true that the operators of any venue such as this must take responsibility for the safety of their clients - stating that they should shoulder ALL responsibility is a simplistic way of looking at things, and is a development of the "nanny state" mentality and the American way of life, where everything is somebody else's fault and an opportunity to sue. We are all equally responsible for our own safety, and should be expected to shoulder at least some of the blame if we injure ourselves through our own stupidity. The likes of Stihl and Husqvarna can only recommend in their brochures that we do not wear loose clothing while operating a chainsaw - the rest is up to us.