More schools ban BIKING to school

National organization finds that bike-to-school bans are on the rise

Robert Ping, the State Network Coordinator for the Safe Routes to School National Partnership shared a startling bit of information during his presentation at the Safe Routes to School Conference today.

In communities throughout America, students are being told they are not allowed to bike to school.

“It’s pervasive throughout the country and we’re hearing about it more and more,” he said. The problem, according to Ping, is that many school principals and administrators feel that biking and walking to school is simply unsafe. They are concerned about being held liable for anything that happens during the trip to and/or from school.

“The problem isn’t necessarily the biking or walking, but the concerns over liability that come with it.” Ping said his organization sees this as “an emerging issue” and they’re in the process of coordinating more research on it. At this point, they want to get a handle on just how many cities have bike bans in place.

...


Even in Portland there are liability fears around Safe Routes to School programs In 2007, the City of Portland changed the name of their program from Safe Routes to School to Safer (with an “r”) Routes to School. The reason? PBOT didn’t want to be held liable for suggesting that the routes they recommend are safe. Instead, they wanted the message to be that they are merely “safer” than other routes.

New Jersey is a state where bike ban policies have become a big battle. Leigh Ann Von Hagen, Project Manager for the N.J. Bicycle and Pedestrian Resource Center has been in the middle of that battle. Back in July, she wrote about the issue on the Livable Streets message board. She has worked with School Boards to overturn one bike ban policy so far and hopes for many more victories. “It is true that teenage driving is significantly more dangerous than students bicycling when you look at crash statistics,” she wrote, “Yet, no schools considers banning teenage drivers.”

http://bikeportland.org/2009/08/19/national-organization-finds-that-bike-to-school-bans-are-on-the-rise/

Good lord what is our country becoming?

:banghead:

preventing them from getting exercise. I missed the bus and I walked the 3.5 miles home and managed to do it without being killed.

When liberal ideology goes bad . . .

It's about liability.

Make it impossible for parents to sue school districts for what happens off school grounds, on the way to or from school, and you remove the reason for the ban.

not allowing workers to deduct the costs of transportation to and from work.

Another way to approach the problem is to eliminate the compulsion, so it's not the state making a demand that kids get to school which requires any liability releases, going to school then becomes the child's choice.

Banning biking and walking to school seems like a story that should be on TheOnion.

which makes it that more pungent. ;)

We could make school not mandatory; that would be bad for a representative democracy.

We could keep schools open and staffed 24-7, with enough staffing to make a 100% individualized education possible; but everyone might have to agree to abolish the department of defense to fund it.

Or we could ensure that school districts cannot be held liable, in any case, for what happens off school grounds or buses.

Or we could allow school districts to pay increasingly expensive liability insurance.

What are some other options?

Is there any science to back that association up? That 'compulsory education' increases 'democratic representation'?

The post-civil war timeline of corporatism in the United States seems to suggest the opposite. That compulsory education is inherently part of corporatism, and that as corporatism has grown, representation seems to follow the lead of those entities who vote with money instead of one-person one-vote conceptions of "democracy".

I hope you can keep your good humor up. It's a strength of yours, you know.

I don't know. But then, having seen the blatant, gross misuse of "science" to support political goals, I don't know that I'd be looking for science, unless I was convinced that studies were good science, and that results were reported and used without corruption.

For the record...as an educator, I've known that the uses of standardized testing to grade schools and teachers were corrupt; that the insistence that schools who don't make AYP for a certain period of time adopt "improvement plans" that benefit corporate "trainers" and publishers. In my profession, there are myriad misuses of "science," and uses of "studies" that did not include an appropriate representative sample.

So, no, I don't have science to back it up. Just logic. Logic tells me that an illiterate populace will be easier to manipulate than an educated one.

Not that the populace isn't already manipulated through the media, and the destruction of the public education system has not helped with that.

I want a literate populace. More literate than we have now, not less. I think public schools can do a better job of making that happen, but not, perhaps, under our current structure. I'd rather focus on restructuring the system to better serve the populace, PUBLICLY, not privately, than get rid of the system.

but I was hoping you could offer facts instead of beliefs.

"an illiterate populace will be easier to manipulate than an educated one" are two ideas that I'm not sure that logically follow each other.  As specialized higher education has progressed, I'm thinking particularly of public relations and business, and the money making aspects of information dissemination such as advertising to support it, the techniques used for mass manipulation have increased in sophistication. You may not recognize that this is similar to a feedback loop. Everyone needs more education to detect manipulation, because a few who have gathered their brains together in a corporate structure appear to succeed brilliantly at their increasingly sophisticated manipulations? Manipulations within other manipulations.

If schools, whether public or private, were truly concerned with liability, then why do we still read that schools strip search students that have been accused of carrying prescription strength Ibuprofen, but don't in fact have any on their person or bags? We read about similar types of unreasonable schoolhouse cases nearly every day.

On one hand, we have schools that wave the liability-fear flag as justification for increased authoritarianism over kids, yet schools seem to not be able to avoid unreasonable and illegal acts themselves, and when they're caught, they're generally uncooperative with the folks they've wronged, though lawyers seem to use the courts to pierce that uncooperative nature. How many wrongs have occurred that went unreported, and uncompensated, and how many future dreams were squashed as a result? Are schools that have become largely authoritarian over the course of the last century, whether public or private, simply avoiding responsibility, and projecting that responsibility onto others?

If so, no amount of education will fix this problem, it is one that exists within the hearts and minds of the individuals avoiding responsibility, indeed, that refusal to be voluntarily responsible seems to increase with increased education levels, and that education level appears to correlate well with corporate staffing structures, suggesting the problem isn't per se one of educational level achieved.

The issue isn't a problem of kids biking and walking to school, that's just a symptom of a metastasized cancer underlying the entire facade.

is the political manipulation of curriculum. The "back to basics" mantra is political, based on the propaganda about "failing schools." The bottom line, though, is that "back to basics" means "no critical thinking." I don't see the loop you refer to; I do see that the longer we've been demanding the mastery of "basics," leaving critical thinking out of that mix, the more sophisticated that mix you refer to has become. Those, mine and yours, are just observations, though. They aren't "facts," because nobody has "proven" them.

When someone does a valid, reliable study to address my points, then I'll have facts to offer.

This question: "If schools, whether public or private, were truly concerned with liability, then why do we still read that schools strip search students that have been accused of carrying prescription strength Ibuprofen, but don't in fact have any on their person or bags? We read about similar types of unreasonable schoolhouse cases nearly every day."

First, the media is more likely to report negatives than positives. I hope we can agree on that. Why anyone would give the media more credibility than the people who actually work at schools is beyond me; one group makes a living generating sound bites and ratings, and the other is actually on the ground at schools every day. Who is likely to know more about what's going on?

Secondly, the reports that appear in the media are a tiny fraction of interactions that happen between adults and students at school every day. Schools are human-run institutions. People who work in public schools are thoroughly trained, and interactions with students are highly regulated. I can guarantee you that the % of abusive incidents between teachers and students are significantly less than those between family members, and those out in the general public. Not that I think I can find statistics to support that, at least, not before I have to be in my classroom this morning. Regardless, there are procedures in place to deal with illegal acts at schools, and they ARE used. Maybe one problem is that actions taken against school employees are generally confidential, so the public doesn't hear about them, and doesn't think they are happening.

Schools have become increasingly authoritarian over the last 15 years or so, with the growth of the "standards and accountability movement." The system is authoritarian; top down federal threats and bribes dictate policy across the nation. Every local district and school site simply reflects that. I'd love to change it, and so would every teacher I've ever worked with.

You are correct about one thing: it isn't the biking and walking. It's the lawsuits; the costs for liability insurance and legal fees.

Your remarks reflecting a negative perspective on schools simply point to one of the reasons schools have to worry about lawsuits. Even when frivolous or inappropriate, they still occur. Too many people want to blame and punish schools regardless of whether or not they are responsible the problem.

Bear in mind: I don't have a vested interest in either side of this issue. I don't have to agree with the bans to recognize the source they are springing from.

On every issue, I'm one of those who would rather address the source than the symptoms. :shrug:

That includes the state of public education as a whole, which goes beyond the topic of this thread, and deserves multiple threads of it's own.

We have some points of agreement, and other points of disagreement.

My argument has not been anti-school, it has been anti-compulsory school, and which can perhaps be further refined to anti-corporate-compulsory school, and even you are in some agreement when you write about top-down mandates and control. My point is that being anti-compulsory education is not equal or similar to being anti-education.

Your argument has often trod into the divisional muck of private versus public schools. I'd suggest the two points of view (mine and yours) are somewhat like comparing apples and oranges. That said, I'd also say that the public schools that existed 40+ years ago were prime examples of corporate schools: Corporate doesn't necessarily imply only private, though the existence of private schools do provide a nice red herring when someone calls a public school corporate, the water can probably be further muddied by calling private schools public, as some of the charter schools are being called today.

You've mentioned how the media likes to concentrate on negatives, but is that not precisely what all schools do? Generally ignoring good behavior because it's expected, and punishing bad behavior when and whenever possible. Of course there are exceptions, a few kids that prior generations might have called "teacher's pet", but I refer to the majority of the bell curve.

You really don't understand the feedback loop? Heh heh. Here's one recent example:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x6491526

There was a study sometime back, it was titled something like Life's Harsh Lessons Make You More Gullible. The study actually had to do with suggestibility, and how negative life events increase suggestibility. (relates to above linked screenshot)

You wrote, "Too many people want to blame and punish schools regardless of whether or not they are responsible the problem." I don't know about wanting to punish schools for something they haven't done.

However, school closely relates to punishments and rewards in a training sense. For many, it was far too much of the former, and nowhere near enough of the latter (a red star on a perfectly answered test <> the negative life experience of a strip search, (and BTW, the name was Savanna Redding, she was more than just a "media report")). I've even wondered if this is not part of the reason we have CEOs who seem to believe they're worth an infinite amount of money---that they're trying to fill a hole created by too much punishment and not enough reward when they were young, and they keep filling that hole with more and more money, but it still doesn't satisfy them even though it definitely gives them more and more financial control over an increasingly corporate society, but no matter how much control over others they have, it's still not enough to fill that hole in their hearts that they're really trying to fill. I don't know this as fact or observation, it's just something I've pondered.

So, lets combine the techniques into a macro picture. A corporatist structure needs low-wage (the lower the better) employees, and these folks primarily need to be "trainable" but not already knowledgeable. So, the system as it exists seems to have said, Let's put them, when they're young, into a mandatory punishment routine, where they will work for years for free, and at the very least, even if they wash out of school and later the job market during an economic downturn, having gone through the long-term punishment routine that at least tends to increase their future or adult suggestibility (gullibility). It's important that this multi-year program not confer useful knowledge, but instead menial and dreary tasks that largely lack connections to worthwhile or profitable endeavors (a high school diploma today qualifies one for minimum wage--check). Further, a centralized media apparatus under the ultimate control of a few oligarchs works to create particular opinions and beliefs as well as sow targeted confusion and discord, and even raw fear, among the adult populace, because people, having been part of the Negative Life Experience Enhancement routine when they were younger, are more suggestible than they otherwise would have been. There will always be some individual exceptions to this rule, but mass trends are what's really important here. So, it appears we have a potential answer as to why so much more attention is paid to punishment instead of reward in schools, even when psychologists have known for years that intermittent rewards modify behavior most successfully. A gullible adult population is needed in order so that the few oligarchs who largely own society can change the adult populations' beliefs on a whim as later conditions may dictate. The easiest way to do this is to get em when they're young and impressionable.

I think that pretty much creates the reason for the corporatist educational construct, which as you've pointed out, controls all the schools top down. We disagree on how long this has been happening. I suggest it goes back to the early 1900s, somewhat coincident to, perhaps shortly following, the Industrial Revolution. You seem to believe it's limited to the last 15 years or so. I'm sure there are valid rationales for both views, but are probably rationales for different parts of the issue, so apples and oranges to some degree.

The only remaining step that could be rationalized as anti-liability would be for schools to take physical custody of all the kids, but that's probably unlikely, as it's much less costly to make parents financially responsible for the kids' food, clothing, and shelter, but to reserve all other responsibilities to the politics of the state and the shifting whims of those currently in power. One thing that corporate is consistent on is the need to socialize expenses wherever possible. But as far as limiting liability, taking custody would seem to put the school personnel in full control 24/7 or all the time. At least then, schools wouldn't need to worry about needing to prohibit kids from walking to school, as the bunkhouses could be placed on campus near the gym showers and cafeteria, and there all kids can be more easily monitored and controlled 24/7. With the explosion in Robotics, in the near future it may not even be necessary to pay humans to do the non-classroom hours monitoring. Just a one time purchase of a RoboCop!

You may have the last word, I'm reasonably sure the authoritarian issues will be continuing for some time yet, and we'll probably have the chance to continue the discussion later.

One question you asked, "Who is likely to know more about what's going on?" Recently, our polling location was transferred to a public school campus, and that's where I voted last. After I'd gotten out of the car, I walked up the sidewalk and before entering the campus itself, I noted a sign on the chain link and campus surrounding fence. It said something like "Drugs Prohibited, all violators will be prosecuted". Crap. I was chewing Nicorette. So my first stop was the nearby office, just inside the gate. I asked about it. I was told, "we'll let you slide today".

I guess the sign was simply another rule that allows selective enforcement, IOW, punishment on a whim. I certainly felt punished that in order to vote, I had to stop at the office and ask if I would be prosecuted for chewing nicotene-containing gum while on campus. The answer was truly enlightening. Imagine what it must be like for the poor kids that have to suffer this selective enforcement 5 days a week for some 13 school years.

YOU are "anti-school," but that some of the arguments you are using are those used by those whose agenda is to turn people against public education.

Then again, after a good conversation with you, I detect a different perspective than those, and begin to better understand.

It's the authoritarian nature of public schools themselves.

I can see your perspective, since I'm not a lover of authoritarianism, but I'm on the fence on that one.

You bring up some rich points for discussion, which I'll comment on briefly, since I have to get to school this morning. ;)

All schools don't ignore "good" behavior because it's expected, and focus on the negative. It can sure seem like that sometimes, though. Our factory model of schooling, shoving large numbers of kids in together, where the ratio of students to adults is not optimum. Our days are scheduled to the minute, and we are constantly scrambling to get everything done within those strictly constructed time periods. It's easy to only notice when something is going wrong.

Still, most schools make SOME efforts to recognize positive behaviors. My current school has been working with a grant from the U of O, training us in a "positive behavior system." They provide us with a lot of research to build on, and one of the findings of the research they've presented is that people need a 5-1 ration of positive to negative recognition. I can't give you a citation, that stuff is at work. To achieve that means that we HAVE to be focused on the positive. It's really difficult to remember, while trying to get everything done, to stop and recognize everything we're doing RIGHT, but we are certainly focusing on it as a staff.

So are a lot of other schools. I do have an area of disagreement with our PBS "team," though. They are heavily into extrinsic "rewards," while I prefer intrinsic. They have presented some research that suggests that, for those most at risk, whose behavior patterns are most ingrained, extrinsic rewards have to come first to start changing behaviors. That doesn't sit that well with me.

All of those rules are a response to managing problems that, in the current structure and under the current budget, we can't find a way to address in better ways. Change the factory model to something more appropriate, and schools would be less authoritarian. Change the authoritarian climate, which starts at the top with the federal Department of Education, to one that supports rather than bribes and punishes, and it will make it easier for us to change.

Truly, American culture seems to thrive on the "bribe and punish" method of controlling behavior. America just doesn't know what else to do. Education is run that way because the culture thinks that way.

You may be right about the long term. When I'm looking at the last decades, I'm looking at the changes I've seen happen in that time. As a whole, public schools in the nation are significantly MORE authoritarian in the last 2 decades than they were before. That shift started with the Reagan era, but took some time to pick up steam, shifting slowly until the 90s, when it took over in several states, moving federal in 2001.

Explain why you think this is a liberal idea.

The liberals I know support construction of bike paths and sidewalks.

Sorry enlightenment don't take this the wrong way, but, I fail to see how this nanny state BS is anything liberal. In my opinion its opposite of Liberal.

Whoever is proposing this is either NOT a Liberal, or, a Liberal by name only and who has no clue what it is to be a Liberal





:hi:

Once we slid downhill in the snow and slammed into a trash dumpster, other time (hmm same driver too), we clipped and damaged another bus pulling out after school.

And invitations to her church. Worst thing she did though, was bring a tv on the bus to watch the marriage of Luke and Laura on a soap opera. While driving.

I used to walk a few miles or occassionally cycle to avoid buses - but the road I was on were pretty safe and when I walked I cut through the forest.

LOL

Most people didn't have VCR's yet in 1981. Can't miss Luke & Laura's wedding. :rofl:

:rofl:


But that is scarier than scary, and it probably wasn't a huge deal at the time. Was she fired? Probably not. Can you imagine today if that happened?

I have no idea how that could be done but seems to me that would solve the problem.

to sue schools for what happens off school grounds, including on the way to or from school (except for what happens on school district transportation.)

Who is "liable" for all the things that can happen out in public?

The kids, whose job it is to follow reasonable safety rules, the parents, whose job it is to supervise,

and the local law enforcement, whose job it is to make sure people follow laws intended to keep them safe.

The purpose of public schools is to educate; not to babysit, parent, or enforce local laws on the street.

I live semi-rurally; semi, because our very small town has blossomed in the last decade with the spreading fungus of housing tracts. Pastures and former ranches are being eaten up by the mile to make room for more houses on miniscule plots of land. Still, traffic is generally light, people drive slower, and there are plenty of kids out there. Most of our roads have bike lanes, and bicycling is a big sport and hobby late spring through early fall. It's much too cold for bicycling during the frozen half of the year.

I was on my way home the other day, on a main artery; one of the two local roads that will get you across the dry canyon that bisects the town. There's a sidewalk and a bike lane. Two local kids...middle school or high school age...were riding bikes down the bike lane. BMX bikes. They were weaving and hopping with their bikes. The one in the rear heard me approaching, and straightened his bike out to stay in the lane. The one in front looked over his shoulder, saw me, and jumped out in front of me to do a figure 8 and then spin.

It's a good thing I was driving 20 miles below the posted speed limit, having seen their antics from a good distance back.

Until you can figure out a way to make all kids ride responsibly, and to ensure that we aren't paying for off-campus accidents out of money intended to educate people, bans on biking to school will probably become more widespread.

"threat" of frivolous law suits the corporate world and the GOP want to take away from us, a legal, non violent means of settling disputes.

If tort reform passes, you will see more people walking into businesses to take revenge at the point of a gun. Deny justice, expect a violent response.

instead of emotion? This is one where people should look in the mirror instead of just blaming others. Do they dodge jury service? If on a jury, does the injury the plaintiff sustained cloud their emotions, so they figure someone has to pay?

Health care would also solve this problem, with fewer people needing to sue because of their medical bills.

People also fail to realize that insurance companies sue each other - after paying medical bills, insurance companies sue the person liable for reimbursement. Yet nobody complains about this.

Drive or take the bus only.

I know parents who drive their kids because otherwise they have to walk along a busy highway with no shoulder at all. They can't take a bus because they live within a mile and they don't bus students who live close. Alot of our cities and towns don't have highways, streets conducive to biking or walking unless you want to take your life in your hands each day - narrow highly traveled roads with lots of hills or curves, no shoulder and no place to walk alongside due to heavy forest and streams.

Countries like the Netherlands where many bike and their are bike trails are alot safer for school kids.

As long as I live in this shithole town, my bikes will continue to rot in my garage. I had one close call too many. Here in the South cyclists are considered target practices. My cycling friends and I have long lists of things that have been thrown at us, including full 2 liter bottles of soda. I know people who have been hit at least once by passing cars, and I was within half an inch of that myself.

Another thing is that the parents around here who drive their kids to school drive like lunatics. I almost got in a head on 50 feet from my house last fall, when some dumb SUV-driving soccer mommy decided to drive on the wrong side of the road. On a residential street. At 45 mph. The roads around here are swarming with people like that, all rushing at the very last minute to make sure little Jaycub and Madyson get to school on time. Even though the little darlings could easily walk the three or four blocks. Let a kid ride a bike on the same roads as these lunatics? No effing way!!!

and my husband has had more than his share of stuff tossed at him.

I live in the South. I've ridden about 20,000 miles on Southern roads.

If anyone ever threw anything at me they missed and I didn't notice.

I've never had anyone intentionally do anything to endanger me.

I've gotten some rude yells and encountered some stupid people but I'm sure that happens in every region of the country.

YMMV of course.

The car never stopped. I guess schools might not want that happen to their students. Or if it does, the schools don't want to be liable for it because the kiddie was just trying to get to school.

Crazy to have a system that assumes that cars are the only transport system with a right to use the roads-- that's the second problem.

Crazy to locate schools in such a way that kids living within a mile of the buildings aren't guaranteed sidewalks or wide level shoulders for walking.

The reason some other countries (and many older areas of our own country) have walkable routes to school is because the cities and towns were designed for it. We have a burgeoning rails to trails movement in this country for recreational walking/riding trails and in some parts of the country bike lanes are fairly common. We know how to address the problem of safe access -- we just don't do it.

For my son to walk or bike to school would be way way too far - 6 miles.

I was very lucky: my primary school was 500 yards away, my secondary school was about 0.8 miles away.

As for biking, it was not permitted for primary school but at secondary school it was permitted after a certain age and only once you passed a bike safety test and given bike parking privileges. If you were naughty these privileges could be revoked.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=6478093&mesg_id=6478093
:eyes:

following the rules, I am usually wondering as to how they managed to stay alive for so long.
There are not that many biking trails. The body is not protected by anything (like a car) when someone is biking on the road.
Bike can not ride as fast as a car.
And add to that I see people on bikes crossing the roads on red, ignoring traffic lights, etc.

http://www.newwest.net/city/article/freiker_launches_bike_to_school_movement/C94/L94/

Seeking a way to encourage his own two boys to bicycle to school, software entrepreneur Rob Nagler three years ago created a system that would record the students’ every ride, and award them a series of prizes based on the number of two-wheeled school trips.

Today that system – now powered by an ingenious sensor technology known as the “Freikometer” – is going nationwide, with a sponsorship from the leading U.S. bicycle maker Trek. Now in use at schools in three states, the Freiker system (the name is short for “frequent biker"), will have TREK SUPPORT TK.

“My kids were complaining about riding their bikes to school,” recalls Nagler, the founder and CEO of Bivio software, in Boulder. “And we lived a whole half mile from the elementary.”

<snip>

more at link.

:crazy:

Really... I don't see why.

Do you have to ask?

Still, kids belong to the parents and not the school system. I don't see why the school is responsible here. I find it ridiculous that kids cannot use their bikes to ride to school.

Coffee so hot it fused the woman's nylons to her thighs. Sue McDonald's even though they had had several other lawsuits all over the country because their coffee was served at temperatures too hot for the containers they were using. Spilled coffee that caused injuries so severe the woman required several surgeries and was scarred for the rest of her life.

Yeah, sounds "frivolous" to me. Why should a large corporation be held responsible for doing something wrong, injuring so many of its customers, and refusing to take any corrective action? It's just so unfair! If only McDonald's had the money to hire a good attorney. The system is soooo rigged.

Wait; that's not what you were talking about, was it?

It's as bad as the welfare queens driving Cadillacs IMO. McDonald's was clearly negligent and aware of the danger.

Are you trying to ruin an almost universally excepted talking point?

I am so tired of hearing about this case from people who don't want to investigate why the award was made.

been handed a cup of coffee that did not have the cap securely attached - were I not obsessive about checking the cap, the coffee that was hot enough to cause third degree burns could easily have ended up the same place with the same results since the cup is over the same body parts when I drink coffee as if I had placed it between my legs and

(2) had that been the case with Ms Lieback, her award would not have been reduced by $40,000 (17%) for the share of the the injury that jury found was her fault - and she would have gotten $240,000 instead of $200,000 in compensatory damages - what people remember as exorbitant are the punitive damages.

I usually get the coffee that is just lukewarm at best.
If I pay 2-3 $ for coffee, at least I would like to get it hot. It isn't cheap for just a beverage, and then it's not even hot. Apparently because people have to be protected from getting injuries by spilling it on themselves. Seriously, who would someone sue if the spillage occurs at home?

If you make something hot enough to give you third degree burns, you have no one to blame but yourself.

When you purchase something to drink, those preparing it have all the control and ought to be serving it at a temperature that is safe to consume - nothing that is capable of giving you third degree burns is at a temperature that is safe to consume, and in the case in question McDonalds had ample warning (via several hundred complaints and other claims) that their coffee was dangerously hot.

I've had one lukewarm cup of coffee from McDonald's in recent memory - otherwise it is about as hot as I can drink it (and if I drink it right away, most of the time it is a bit hotter than I can drink it) - and I have a pretty high tolerance for heat.

Despite the case directed at them, McDonald's still serves hotter coffee than anyplace else I buy it from - so I doubt it is the lawsuit that is creating lukewarm coffee you're getting.

I worked at McDonalds in the '70's and the coffee was scalding. This lawsuit comes around and about two years later I try McDonalds coffee and it's STILL scalding. According to the plaintiffs lawyer in an article way back in The American Lawyer, they lost because their suits got arrogant on the witness stand while testifying in Grandma's lawsuit. I worked in a corporate legal department at the time and know just the scenario. They coulda settled the lawsuit for peanuts in light of Granny's obvious serious injuries, but noooooo.

It's the woman's own damn fault that she put the coffee in between her legs. I hate people like you who would rather use lawsuits and find a scapegoat than use a little common sense.

McDonald's used to keep their coffee just under boiling. Far to hot for coffee.

I used to go to McDonalds for breakfast on the weekends. I remember having to wait a while before my coffee was at a tolerable temprature to sip.

Coffee is supposed to be hot.

After reading everything here is - how many others had been burned previously?

McDonalds was selling people coffee at a temperature that made the product unsafe for its intended use--190-degree coffee is too hot to drink without injury and that's what McDonalds was selling. None of the other fast food restaurants in the area Liebeck was burned in sold coffee that hot. Liebeck was sitting in the passenger seat of her son's car, which was stopped at the curb at the time she attempted to open the coffee cup. She put the cup of coffee between her legs so she could add cream and sugar to it. The coffee spilled on her skin, causing third-degree burns requiring eight days' hospitalization, debridement, and skin grafts. (Debridement is the process of removing burned tissue. It's done by sticking you in a tub of water and scrubbing the dead skin off with a Scotch-Brite pad. It only sounds like the most painful thing that can possibly be done to you because it is--there's not a painkiller in the world that can ease the agony.) Before Liebeck's injury, over 700 people, including children, had been injured by McDonalds coffee. According to Liebeck's attorney, McDonalds' coffee KILLED at least one person--she was burned by McDonalds' boiling coffee, went into diabetic shock from the injury and died.

This is what a third-degree burn looks like:


Stella Liebeck offered to settle with McDonalds for her medical bills, and they refused. Liebeck then filed a civil suit against McDonalds. The jury awarded Liebeck the sum total of two days' coffee proceeds. McDonalds earned, at the time Ms. Liebeck was crippled by lethally-overheated coffee, $1.35 million per day by selling coffee.

You know something? If I would have been on that jury I would have proposed nailing McDonalds for a whole WEEK of coffee proceeds, or a month of coffee profits, or a day of the total profits of the entire McDonalds worldwide empire. Give Stella Liebeck a billion fucking dollars, then put a picture of someone with a third-degree burn from her vagina to her knees thanks to McDonalds coffee on the front page of every paper in America so people can see WHY Stella Liebeck was going to the yacht dealer this morning. And I'd give her a suggestion: Name the 100-foot yacht you buy "Charred Pussy" so when people start talking shit about your case you can just whip out a picture of the back of your boat and say, "this is what happened to me."

I personally like hot coffee. But when I buy coffee, can I get a hot one? I don't think so.
It usually is nowhere near approaching hot. Lukewarm at best.
And no wonder. If a business can be sued over a coffee being too hot, why would they sell a hot one?
By the way I have not claimed her lawsuit was "frivolous."
It's your own interpretation. But if a business can be sued over spilled coffee that was too hot, why couldn't a school be sued over a child biking to school and getting injured in the process?

is still served as hot as I can drink it. I have a 45 minute commute. I buy a cup of coffee about 5 minutes into the drive and don't open it until about 30 minutes into the drive and it is still hot enough I have to carefully test to make sure it's not going to burn my tongue.

(It isn't hot enough to do serious damage to my legs, should it spill, at that point - but if it could it would be way too hot to drink anyway.)

Or worse, a child biking or walking to or from school and getting abducted--which wouldn't be all that hard.

As to why Liebeck had the coffee between her legs...my guess is that there ain't a whole lot of places in a Ford Probe, the car in question in this case, to set a cup of coffee without spilling it all over everything.

hot liquids, and sticking a cup of hot coffee in between ones legs is not the best idea that one ever had? But hey, if she were a man, I bet she could have gotten more money out of it.

Do you agree that coffee, which by its nature holds heat better than any other water-viscosity liquid (the oils in it are the reason), should not be sold at a temperature that's capable of killing someone?

accidents? Do you think car manufacturers should stop selling cars?
And by the way, what about guns? You can sue McDonalds for hot coffee, but apparently you can't sue a gun manufacturer when the gun kills someone. What gives?

Coffee is a food item. It is generally recognized as safe. People are not supposed to die from coffee.

Cars are large mechanical devices that go 120mph. Anyone can see the danger in an improperly-driven car: go through a school zone at 90mph when the buses are picking kids up, and someone's gonna die. This isn't the fault of the car, but rather the moran who decided going through a school zone fast enough to qualify at Bristol was a good idea.

Similarly, guns are specifically designed to kill things. If you point the gun at Joe, pull the trigger and Joe dies, the gun worked as designed. It is generally recognized by all logical people that guns work properly when they kill people you shoot at. Why, oh why, should someone be able to sue a gunmaker because his product did what it's supposed to? Sue the people who enabled murderers to buy these properly-operating products, if sue you must. Sue the NRA for hindering effective background checking. Sue filmmakers for putting in the minds of America's Impressionable Youth that shooting people who piss you off is an acceptable conflict management strategy. Or the advertising business for promoting gun ownership. But the gunmakers? Their shit's SUPPOSED to end people's lives. That's what it's made to do.

But coffee isn't supposed to kill you. It's not supposed to put you in front of Nurse Bloethal and her scotch-brite pad. That's the difference.

dangerous if spilled? No one can?
Have you ever boiled water?

Go upthread and look at the picture of the third-degree burn I posted. That's what McDonalds coffee was doing to people--it did it to 700 people over the years.

Second-degree burns, no problem. They're painful, but they heal, and they're what one might logically receive from spilling a hot beverage on you. But third-degree burns? Ones that destroy tissue? You shouldn't receive those from coffee.

legs.

It was FRIVOLOUS.

Not to mention, cars have had cup holders long before the BPI, aka "burnt pussy incident"...

They had been sued and settled over 700 lawsuits over this. The plaintiff originally approached them asking only for $20,000 which did not even constitute the entire medical expense involved. The attitude of the witnesses from McDonald's played a large role in the amount of the award. After one expert after another testified as to the damage done by liquids the temperature they used they remained arrogant and indifferent on the witness stand. When asked if the company would now look at changing the temperature at which they held their coffee, one witness looked stunned and said he didn't think so as if it was the most ridiculous idea either.

BTW I never buy coffee there. In the past I have stopped if I was traveling and could not find any other. But I would have to go in and get it and get ice from the dispenser and add it to the coffee to get it to a drinkable temperature. I can't stand to have my mouth scalded. Their justification for the temperature is that they believed it was the correct temperature to preserve the flavor. Funny, I can't taste anything once my taste buds are cauterized.

You really should educate yourself about the McDonald's "spilled coffee" case. While there certainly are frivolous lawsuits filed in this country, there was nothing frivolous about that case, the woman's injuries or the corporation's liability.

Please don't assume I don't know anything about the case. You know what happens when you assume?
I personally like my coffee hot.
But everyone has to be protected from doing things like putting a coffee cup in between the legs.
Does the coffee cup belong in between ones legs?

Obviously you were just the customer McDonald's was catering to when it knowingly flaunted local safety codes throughout the country by keeping its coffee almost boiling before it was served. Why? Because by keeping it that hot they could pre-pour coffee to move faster during a rush and make a few more bucks. They knew it was too hot, dangerously hot (185 degree liquid can cause third degree burns in 2-7 seconds), and chose to make a few bucks instead.

And I apologize for assuming. How was I supposed to know you were Iron Mouth McGinty?

But I yet to put a cup in between my legs.

a 1 second exposure to water of 160 degrees will cause third degree burns...

sP

I have not measured the temperature, but I know its hot. All I know is that when I buy coffee it's never been hot enough for my taste.

will be peeling skin off the inside of your mouth for a couple of days...

sP

I presume McDonalds can't get the temperature of water above boiling.

I'm tempted to suggest you try it out for yourself if you don't believe 160-190F water can cause third degree burns, but if you're this ignore-the-facts about the whole thing I'd worry about the result.

(Oh, and it's fairly easy to get water temperature above boiling, physics being physics.)

Stick a cup in between your legs and see how it feels?
And when did I ever say I don't believe hot water can cause third degree burns?

I know if water's above 150-160F it will cause almost immediate third degree burns. So does everyone else with a clue on the subject. The location of the coffee in the case you're bringing up as relevant to, well, anything isn't important, since the coffee was around 190F, which can kill people fairly quickly in amounts larger than a coffee cup. You've been pshawing at that fact all through this thread, and moving the goalposts all over the place when called on it, an act fairly typical of people who let their opinions refute reality.

If you think that lawsuit was at all frivolous, you don't know, at all, in the slightest way, what you're talking about with this issue. Period.

You know how you're supposed to salt the water you boil pasta or eggs in, right? And about half the time you do it, and you wonder WHY you're doing it because it doesn't change the taste of the eggs. The salt's in there to increase the water's boiling temperature.

And before you say "but you don't put salt in coffee," the recipe for Navy coffee has salt in it. I don't know if it's in there to increase the boiling point or to add salt to a sailor's diet (probably the latter), but there's salt in Navy coffee.

I don't think that makes much difference. Maybe the pasta will be too salty. :(

--imm

Measure the temperature some day, you're not drinking anything near 190F.

If you say otherwise you're either lying or have a prosthetic mouth.

It's not like I get the freaking boiling cup of tea and gobble it right up.
But if I spilled the freaking cup on myself then it's a whole another story.
Jeez.

without a third degree burn...period...

I have not given you a specific temperature at which I drink my tea. It's other posters that keep throwing out numbers. I have specifically stated that I have never measured the actual temperature.

That's about the temperature of a very hot cup of fully brewed black tea with no milk or sugar added. Tea brewed from slightly under boiling water is typically about ten degrees cooler.

boiling water at 212 degrees...and let's just say within 10% is 'close.' You're talking about putting a beverage in your mouth that is 190+...that equals a burn. Now, I will give you that when you sip a hot beverage you are actually mixing it with colder (much colder) air as it enters your mouth and thus dropping it's temperature dramatically at the point of consumption...but it is the method of consumption that cools it, so complaints about the beverage not being hot enough are not about the beverage, but about the method by which you drink it...

sP

if it happens to spill. Who does one sue if one spills it in ones own house?

or simply don't want to understand. When you sell a product in this country it is required that the product be safe for its intended purpose or if it is inherently unsafe, that the danger is explicitly made clear to the buyer. Suppose I sell chainsaws and I decide that in order to save money I am going to use a plastic bolt instead of a steel one to hold the blade in place. There are specific regulations governing the design and strength of bolts in chainsaws which mandates steel, but the cost of steel bolts is hurting my bottom line- I go with plastic. I know that there is a good chance that plastic bolt won't hold and the blade will come flying off, in fact, hundreds of people have already been hurt by my chainsaw design, but the cost of those claims is much less than the amount I am saving on bolts. If I sell you that saw, you would know that chainsaws can be dangerous, but it would not be reasonable for you to expect that the blade is being held on by a plastic bolt. If you took the chainsaw home and while using the chainsaw the blade flew off and cut off your foot, do you think I should be liable?

with its design. What if you took a perfectly fine chainsaw home, and it still cut off your foot (maybe you aren't that good using it). Who would you sue then?

Or do you think that in the scenario I described I should not be liable? You answer to my question with a different question shows that you still don't grasp (or just refuse to accept) the facts of the McDonald's case. The McDonald's coffee as it was being sold was not "perfectly fine". It was dangerously too hot, according to both public safety regulations and industry standards.

It's made right after water boils and then it's drunk.

Glad to see you are still around!

:hi:

but we did the whole vaca thing with the in-laws in FL. You know, it has been a wild and crazy ride here on DU for the years gone by, but I have learned a great deal and am very glad that I am still welcomed here...by most :-)

David

until just now!

Holiday weekends are always crazy, and then you have to catch up on the other stuff.

Hope you had a good vaca!

Things have been crazier around here it seems, than even in the old days. But maybe I'm just older and crankier. But I think you've been a wonderful part of our community and I always think back on your grandfather and your introduction to us with fondness. I think we were a more welcoming community back then, but I'm glad you still feel you have a place here (shoot, I've had to question at times whether I still have a place here). But enough griping.

Just so glad to "see" you!

:pals:

They had burn units asking them to lower the temperature over several years and many lawsuits and they consistently refused.

thus, the jury found McD negligent. How do you get around that? Let the judge decide it was "frivolous" at the start. Do you realize how much power that gives judges?

They are not responsible unless the kids are in their buses or on their grounds, outside of that they are the responsibility of the parents.

It doesn't work that way, though.

Parents still sue.

Take away their ability to sue for what happens off school grounds, and you take away the issue.

And even if the case is thrown out, the school district is still spending money on defending it to a point.

Two students lived on or near the same neighborhood. One attacked the other near their homes, outside of school hours, on a weekend too if I recall. The parents went after the school for it, on the logic that they should have, uh, done something about it at school before that happened.

Folks had a general "Qu'est-ce que fuck?" reaction out of the whole thing, but if I remember the order of things correctly the local schools started making it an offense to get jumped shortly afterwards.

... that they are desperate to get their medical bills paid any way they can.

And accidents involving kids are usually due to kid negligence.

Adults involved in these accidents always feel horrible, but often did nothing wrong.

They just need to put up caution signs, "School children walk along this road." They could add biking. In fact there are caution signs for bicyclists.

The real issue is the lack of bike lanes. I know of several schools that ban bikes, and all do so for the same reason...the schools were built in places with no bike lanes, and riding on the sidewalks is illegal and dangerous for pedestrians. When the schools realized that every one of the bikes in their bike racks represented a child that got to school that morning by either riding in traffic or breaking the law by riding on the sidewalk, they banned bikes and ripped out the racks.

It was largely for the safety of the kids, but there was a real liability concern there. Even if the kids are off campus, you can be held liable if you're encouraging an activity that you know is dangerous or illegal.

practically begged them to let the buses pick them up. The bus passes right in front of their house. He works 3rd shift and is not home in time to drive girls and mom has a 3 year old at home also who must be taken out everyday, no matter the weather, so the girls can get to school safely.Oh and mom has to walk, with the 3 year old, also because they only have one car.

I walked home 1.5 miles from middle and high school, and I didn't end up dead in a ditch.

We walked the 7 blocks to and from grammar school four times a day - we got sent home for lunch. No one thought anything of it: everybody did it. Even in bad weather, which, being Buffalo, was most of the time. High school was further away, so we took city buses.

I am pleased, though, to see in my current city many kids still walk or bike to school.

pedestrian routes. But that would involve thinking and require work.

This sucks for working parents and active kids.

Ours is full every day.

no seatbelts, and nobody slapping down the violent kids. I rode my bike the 3-5 miles after that.

that alerts police when they get within a certain distance?

Maybe give the pedophile a warning buzz when he's getting near the too close range.

If there were bike trails that would be one thing. But usually there are not.

At least since 1995. It is apparently not banned at the high school - at least when we asked at orientation they seemed puzzled at the question. Guess none of the high school students were interested in biking. In 9th and 10th grade, our daughter walked the mile home if she had after school activities when we couldn't get home in time to pick her up (her idea, I am pleased to say). After that, she had buddies with cars - and in her senior year had access to a car to drive herself (since she had to get to dance class after school several days a week which moved from a mile away to about 20 miles away.)

arrives to school by?

Can't the school make the parents sign a waiver stating that the child is not the school's responsibility until s/he is inside the building, or something?

...the kids are the school's responsibility from the moment they leave their house in the morning to the moment they reenter it in the afternoon. My elementary school (back in the eighties) was one of those, and wouldn't stop harping on it. "Go directly home after school! Do not stop anywhere along the way!" etc.

I understand the reasoning, but limiting it to school hours and/or when physically on the site would probably make more sense.

I would be absolutely terrified to run a school if I were responsible for hundreds of kids every single day before I could even see them. There's no way I would take that job.

Also, AFTER leaving the school until they get home? What if I wanted to go somewhere else? Do I have to go home and touch the front door, and then turn around and leave again? And again, obviously the school cannot possibly control every child, or even one single child, and yet is still liable?!

That's why just about everything's banned these days, now that people have become suehappy enough to push schools into a corner that way.

Oh wait, the only thing happening on the schools front is privatization.

I can't wait until I have to pay three times as much for school to cover the school's lawyers!

Nope.

I always wanted to say the following:

Fuck the school district. And not in the good way.

They are in my neck of the woods.

Of course, in my neck of the woods being bullied is punishable, so I guess we can't have it all..

It's really surprising this would happen in Portland, of all places.

People can't do anything anymore without being afraid of being sued.

And if the usual defenders of these scum want to accused me of spewing right-wing memes I don't give a damn.

:hi:

Nobody forces someone to go to a lawyer and sue.

And no one forces the juries to find for them, either. If the jury gave the plaintiff a verdict, then the case is not "frivolous."

These lawyers are on contingency fee, so they have no motive to file a case if they think a jury won't find for the plaintiff.

is there a liability concern there? What if a minivan full of kids being driven to school blows a tire and crashes into a nursing home, injuring 100 people? Are they all going to sue.

We could get pretty silly about this.

..comes out of the literal meaning of the term - "in the place of the parent." While the kids aren't under their parents' discipline and protection, they're under the school's. The driver in your first case would be the one liable (unless someone else caused the accident), for instance. After all, if the parent's right there, then there's no need for the school to have authority in their place.

And, for once, even the school district had a point about liability.

It's otherwise a shame that the school let the bullies do what they wanted on the bus, so it would have been safer to walk, but whatever... it's all good...

What did our country become, 30 years ago? Or 40...

If they start riding bikes, they'll make it a habit to riding bikes into adulthood. By banning bikes, they're socializing them into worshiping the almighty car.

Another problem is what about children who actually bike to school because the buses don't pick them up because they live 1 mile from the school?

I've observed on several occasions obese kids being chauffered to school by their obese parents. When I was a kid you were considered a sissy if you folks drove you to school.

My college's campus is built for bikes now - they closed a lot of the campus to car traffic.

And I'm biking around with my foot in a cast - hurts less than walking all the way across campus.

It's all sidewalk there, just a few streets to cross and there are crossing guards there every single morning (as well as parents) watching over them. It's just a little over a mile so not far at all. When they were in kindergarten and first grade I rode with them each morning, too. It does get hot but it's good exercise for them and a chance to unwind. The school doesn't bus within 2 miles so all of us have to deal w/it and we are encouraged to either bike or walk instead of drive unless there is bad weather.

More bullshit, as usual

If the school can tell students what NOT to do, when NOT on school property and NOT on school time, then I guess I'll start my work day when I leave the house. I could use the overtime. I'll just have the government mandate that I clock in when I leave the house and clock in when I get home again.

Gimme a fucking break.

:hide:

Most schools now are accessible in part -- or only accessible -- via busy routes. There would be no way in hell that I would allow my kids to bike to school. Then or now.

That said, I think sidewalks on both sides of the street should be mandatory around the perimeter of a school, including adjacent side streets. We lived behind a school that was on a relatively busy road and there was only one sidewalk on the school side. No sidewalk on the opposite side, and as a consequence, a kid who lived directly across the street from the school had to be dropped off by bus because it was too dangerous to let him walk across the street (his mom walked him over in the mornings). My kids walked to school but our street did not have sidewalks and drivers used it as a shortcut to get around an extremely busy intersection about a half-mile east of the school. Some drivers drove like bats out of hell, and of course a lot of school buses drove down the road as well.

gee, back when I was a kid it was OK - well, that was then. Fewer people, fewer cars.

the more congested an area the less safe a bike it - I never envy those people on bikes in the streets of NYC.

in the last couple school years. My 4th grader and her friend rode their bikes today. It's uphill on the way to school, so I give them credit. We're lucky we have a good route that avoids busy roads and is actually on no-car access trails for much of the way.

Walkers or drivers have accidents, too. Aren't they "concerned" about that?

Just a smokescreen for some other reason they just don't want to deal with.

Plus on the way to school the accident would obviously not be their fault.

How and why would schools be responsible for people that aren't under their supervision? Parents need to accept that shit happens beyond anyone's responsibility and the law should reflect that. This is bad law that allows parents to sue schools when the kid isn't even at school.

I don't buy into schools (public or private) telling kids what to do outside of school and have no more patience for making the same schools responsible when they can't possibly be.
The reality is that bad shit happens to kids and one day it may be yours, educate them, protect them as much is reasonable, and pray.

If I have a TV show that tells your kids to jump off the roof, tells them that jumping off the roof is fun, and that jumping off the roof will make them healthier, and I repeat this message every single day, should I be held responsible if your kids jump off the roof and break their necks? Under our current legal system, I would be completely liable.

Same concept applies here. Many schools are located in areas with no bike lanes, and riding bikes on sidewalks is generally prohibited by law. By encouraging students to ride their bikes to school, and by providing facilities to support that activity (bike racks), the school is actively supporting the kids to partake in an unsafe and potentially illegal activity. The school would share liability if any of those kids were injured or killed while partaking in the activity sponsored by the school, even if the actual event happened off campus.

The problem isn't schools or lawyers, it's the way we build our cities nowadays. Schools used to be built in the middle of quiet residential neighborhoods where bike lanes weren't a concern. Nowadays, standard suburban design typically relegates schools to commercial zones and places them on busier roadways. Hell, there's a new high school going up only a few miles from my house, and it's located in the middle of a planned industrial and business park, with heavy truck and vehicle traffic on all sides. Most of the kids who will be attending the school will have to cross a four lane state highway bridge over a six lane freeway to reach it. There are no bike lanes on state highways, and the freeway eliminates routes through residential neighborhoods. Why was it built there? Because the land was cheap, and because nobody wanted the "noise and traffic" of a public high school near their precious suburban stucco monstrosities. As you might imagine, biking will not be permitted.

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Think of the children!... yes... hmmm... ban the children from TRAVELING TO and FROM school!