Posted By Stuart Nagle
People.
There are two sides to every story.
Firstly, when I read the orginal thread, the car and roads comparison immediately jumped into my mind also, but on further thought we need to weigh-up the overall picture in respect of this fairly remote and unmanned pond on a large park.
Firstly, as I'm sure we are all aware, public facilities run by Local Government Organisations (LGOs) are subject to the 74 Act and LGOs have been prosecuted on a number of ocassions for failures that have come to the courts following deaths and injuries, even though the accidents were fully the result of, shall we say, the 'adventurous' nature of the persons involved... and have resulted in LGOs being heavilly fined and ordered to take action to prevent further occurrences.
Secondly, there is the matter of costs. As a LGO, the costs of the provision of facilities come from the public purse and, in the event of an incident resulting in an LGO being fined, those costs too come out of the public purse i.e. those funds payed by the local tax payer to the LGO in question. There is no Government fund for paying fines, and although to some degree insurance may assist, in the event of a court finding an LGO guilty of an offence, it is unlikely that insurances would pay anything towards costs.
Where, a known hazard exists, such as in an unsupervised facility, and an accident resulting in the death of a person has occurred, what are the responsible LGO to do?
To simply ignore the problem is not an option under any circumstances. and in consideration, a dwath in a publicly owned pool in a remote location is intinsically a different case to a road death, The question is one of what is in the public interest generally. Whilst there may well be a small and vocal interest in continuing to use the facility, should the LGO ignore the outcome of the accident on the basis of 1 death in xx years is OK!! as we have more deaths on XXXXX road, or do you think they need to take action to, so far as is reasonably practicable, ameliorate the situation.
If action is necessary, costs to the LGO (and ultimately the local tax payer) will be incurred, which of course we all know will cause the vast majority of people who do not use the facility and those who do probably, to also object to the costs involved.
Whilst I am all for freedom of choice and the freedom of expression, all choices made will always result a loser - thats democracy. If there are other well supervised and managed facilites available, in the area then the only logical choice open to the LGO is too close the unsupervised facility in favour of the safer options available, if suitable and sufficient measures cannot be put in place, there are insufficient funds, and persons are threatening to jump over the fence after mid-night to swim or before 6.00am if the place does not open until 10.00am!!
One could argue that freedom of choice and the lack of lots of accidents over many years does indeed show that it is safe, but it is only safe in your opinion untill you may be affected (perhaps by the death of a family member in the facility) or another incident occurs. Then of course opinions change - like the wind, and everyone will then say that it was inherently unsafe always was and, should have been closed after the last accident and the LGO have been negligent in not doing so - here we go... another court case...
The LGOs options are limited not by choice, but by their duty to protect the public. In this instance the choices are a little more complex, it not just simply a case of erecting a few barriers and painting a pedestrian crossing on the road, the costs of infrasture and on-going costs for maintenance and manpower may well outweigh the risks involved in maintaining an unsupervised facility, where a person has already died, to simply placate a small group of individuals who vocally express a wish to bathe in somewhat unusual circumstances...
Stuart