You know what they say about the degradation of our education system...

GFLPraxis said:

So I'm at a gas station today refilling my tank when I happen to look on the warning label.


"Swallowing gasoline may be fatal" okay, duh, but a fine warning. And beneath that...

"Do not siphon with mouth."

... 😱

Do they actually need to say that? Do people actually try to siphon gasoline with their mouth?

Click to expand...

So? Not as bad as (on a sweedish chainsaw) "do not attempt to stop chain with hands and/or genitals". I guess someone must have done it

That's not the educational system, that's the legal system making people put up those warnings.

The legal system has found that Americans are morons, it's so bad you probably need warning labels that tell you not to mow the lawn with your $13 million helicopter. 🙄

Point of law.

A paper mill equipment maker that designed a piece of equipment in 1963 was found not guilty of negligence in their design.

Seems they designed their multi-ton rollers to be fed/started from the ground.

Seems the mill had been telling their workers to feed the paper from above, and a worker slipped -- ooops.

So the equipment maker was sued for faulty design, even though this was the first accident of it's type (squished worker) -- and the mill decided to use a Darwinian restart procedure. 🙄

Edit: of course the case will be retried due to judicial error, because he allowed the lack of accidents to be entered into the record.

GFLPraxis said:

At this rate you'll be able to walk in a store, buy a knife, stab yourself with it and sue the knife manufacturer and the store. 🙁

Click to expand...

No it's worse than that, if you walk into a home hold up the occupant at gunpoint, steal a knife from the owner, and kill yourself -- your family will sue for wrongful death and probably win.

If it happens in a store the store and manufacturer will be protected by attorneys supplied by their insurance companies, your homeowner's policy probaby will not protect you because the death is "intentional rather than accidental."

While you hear a lot of stories like that, it's extremely rare for those type of "burglar was injured and sued" stories to happen. Not that it hasn't, but it's very rare. The labels are definitely designed to avoid even the chance, all liabiliy is is a percentage of chance you could get screwed: spending $1000 on stickers would be cheaper than getting screwed, so there they go. Personally, I'm more pissed about those "DO NOT USE CELL PHONE WHILE PUMPING GAS" stickers, considering not ONCE has there been a fire related to cellphone sparks at the pump. Using stickers to avoid imagined liability. Nice.

A warning label that just might work

While in Canada recently, I picked up a pack of smokes and was pretty stunned by their warning labels. Coming from America, I'm used to the standard "The surgeon general..." label that's probably well-honed to avoid legal lawsuits. Here's an image of the front of a box of Canadian Marlboros: