I've been seeing this argument all week. I'm getting rather sick of it.

[deird1]

The Context
A kid was killed by an alligator at Disney World. The pond he was wading in had a sign saying "no swimming".

The Argument
The parents were at fault because
a) It's Florida, alligators are everywhere, and everyone should know this.
b) There was a "no swimming" sign, which should have clued them in that alligators were likely to be in the area.

The Rebuttal
a) I am Australian. I live in a very dangerous region of the world, where we don't put on gumboots without checking for spiders. We expect to find snakes, dingoes, sharks, and crocodiles in most outdoor settings.
I would not have expected there to be alligators in this pond.
Yes, I'm aware that Florida has alligators, but Queensland has crocodiles, and I still expect hotels to be crocodile-free. Crocodiles can't generally get over fences. Alligators can. I didn't know this.

b) If I see a sign that says "Danger: Crocodiles! No swimming!", I expect there to be crocodiles around, and that I shouldn't go swimming. If I see a sign that simply says "no swimming", sans explanation or exclamation marks, I assume it's roughly equivalent to "keep off the grass" - ie: the maintenance crew are trying to stop you from trashing the area. I certainly wouldn't expect wading to be dangerous.



People who keep making this argument? You kinda suck.

Comments

[lydiabell]

Also, why should people from Nebraska, a thousand miles or so away from any coast, be expected to be savvy about a danger specific to the Southeast? I'm from pretty far inland myself, and while of course I know that there are alligators in Floria, I hadn't realized that they're in basically every imaginable body of fresh water! Including ones that the famously control-freakish management at Disney lets people splash around in! That's not something tourists can be expected to know.