# Idiot teens jump from parking garages. Parents blame the garage.
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/idiot-teens-jump-from-parking-garages-parents-blame-the-garage/292446
**Category:** The BBQ Pit
**Created:** [March 1, 2005, 4:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/idiot-teens-jump-from-parking-garages-parents-blame-the-garage/292446 "2005-03-01T16:16:35Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Mr.Moto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Moto)
#### Post date: [March 1, 2005, 4:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/idiot-teens-jump-from-parking-garages-parents-blame-the-garage/292446/1 "2005-03-01T16:16:35Z")
[From here.](http://www.local6.com/money/4239256/detail.html)
> [@](#):
>
> ORLANDO, Fla. – Teenagers in Orlando, Fla., are leaping between 80-foot high public parking garages in a new trend called “garage jumping,” according to a Local 6 News investigation.
>
> Local 6 News reported that the thrill seekers are vaulting themselves between garages in downtown Orlando.
>
> Tim Bargfrede told Local 6 News that he was following friends when he attempted to garage jump and did not make it to the other side. Bargfrede fell six stories and was knocked unconscious on impact.
>
> “I just didn’t make it,” Bargfrede said.
>
> Bargfrede survived the 80-foot fall but was injured.
>
> “The first time I came to the garage after my son’s accident, I looked over and I just about broke out in tears,” the boy’s father Tim Bargfrede said. “I can’t believe he actually survived. He looked like he was near death.”
>
> …Since Bargfrede fell, the City of Orlando erected a partial fence but there’s still room for someone to take a dangerous dive.
>
> The family says that’s not good enough and that both garages need to take responsibility before a garage jumper loses his life.
It’s far easier to blame the builders of a parking garage here, rather than accept the fact that your beloved child is a slobbering moron, and that your child-rearing somehow left the impression that a fall from a parking garage won’t necessarily kill you. But parents are called to do the hard thing sometimes, and the right thing here would be to educate the brain-dead little creep somehow.
I’m amazed, frankly, that the parents in question didn’t blame video games or Road Runner cartoons. Characters always walk away from falls in these, and if they’d mentioned this, they would have had even more fawning press.
This case seems just tailor-made for a nuisance lawsuit ruling, and I dearly hope some judge has the balls to rule such.
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### Author:  [@lno](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lno)
#### Post date: [March 1, 2005, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/idiot-teens-jump-from-parking-garages-parents-blame-the-garage/292446/2 "2005-03-01T16:23:06Z")
> [@](#):
>
> Since Bargfrede fell, the City of Orlando erected a partial fence but there’s still room for someone to take a dangerous dive.
“And then they built a complete fence, but they realized there’s still the possibility for someone climb over it! So now they’re electrifying it, which will certainly prevent anyone from hurting themselves…”
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### Author:  [@Lord\_Ashtar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lord_Ashtar)
#### Post date: [March 1, 2005, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/idiot-teens-jump-from-parking-garages-parents-blame-the-garage/292446/3 "2005-03-01T16:23:18Z")
Is this a real trend, or are three or four kids doing it and the local news wants to make a bigger deal out of it for ratings?
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### Author:  [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)
#### Post date: [March 1, 2005, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/idiot-teens-jump-from-parking-garages-parents-blame-the-garage/292446/4 "2005-03-01T16:37:30Z")
Is sweeps over?
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### Author:  [@Mr.Moto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Moto)
#### Post date: [March 1, 2005, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/idiot-teens-jump-from-parking-garages-parents-blame-the-garage/292446/5 "2005-03-01T16:42:29Z")
Don’t know, but even one kid doing this would be too much, if his parents subsequently sued rather than educating the little lunatic.
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### Author:  [@Neurotik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Neurotik)
#### Post date: [March 1, 2005, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/idiot-teens-jump-from-parking-garages-parents-blame-the-garage/292446/6 "2005-03-01T16:45:23Z")
The title would have been better if it was “Idiot teens jump from parking garages. Idiot parents blame the garage.”
But yeah, this is just dumb. I hope it gets tossed out.
How far apart are the garages, anyway?
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### Author:  [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)
#### Post date: [March 1, 2005, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/idiot-teens-jump-from-parking-garages-parents-blame-the-garage/292446/7 "2005-03-01T16:47:03Z")
His problem was that he looked down – everybody knows that if you don’t look down, you don’t fall. Just ask Wile E. Coyote!
Sheesh – does anybody have any sense of personal responsibility anymore?
And the senior Tim Bargfrede is understandably distraught over his son – but how does he figure it’s the garage’s responsibility to prevent this sort of stupidity?
Does he have a sign in his front yard: “Warning – if you decide to jump under my lawnmower while I’m mowing my yard, you may be injured” in case somebody decides to do just that? After all, he didn’t prevent them from doing it – it must be his fault!!
Or maybe he should post, “Don’t climb on my roof and attempt to swing to the neighbors’ roof like Spider Man!”
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### Author:  [@MagicEyes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MagicEyes)
#### Post date: [March 1, 2005, 5:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/idiot-teens-jump-from-parking-garages-parents-blame-the-garage/292446/8 "2005-03-01T17:24:56Z")
I have a friend who has three sons. She told me that you have to specifically tell them not to do things, so you have to be very creative in figuring out how they can possibly misuse other people, pets, and anything in the house. That leads to some very odd statements (including the classic exchange, “Did you take a shower?” “Yes.” “Did you use soap?”). I thought this was just for boys, but obviously it still applies to teenagers. It’s just the way things are–if you don’t tell them not to jump off a parking garage, how can you expect them to know that they shouldn’t do it?
And boys have been doing stupid stuff like this for a long time. My grandparents had a big old barn with an opening on the second floor to throw hay down to the stalls on the first floor. It was about the width of a hall, and there was a concrete floor underneath. So my brothers and I are playing the barn, and after we got tired of climbing the rickety ladders up to the roof, they started jumping across this big gap in the floor. They dared me to do it, and I looked at the cement floor one story below, and I said, “No way.” I always was the smart one. 🆒
ME
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### Author:  [@Cat\_Whisperer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cat_Whisperer)
#### Post date: [March 1, 2005, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/idiot-teens-jump-from-parking-garages-parents-blame-the-garage/292446/9 "2005-03-01T17:37:34Z")
There are signs on some of Calgary’s overpass bridges that state “Don’t jump off bridge.” I suspect it’s because people have casually hopped over the railing, thinking there was a sidewalk there, but no, not so much. Well, there is one - 30 or so feet down.
There are stupid people everywhere, doing stupid things. Some of us don’t make it out of our teens/early twenties. It’s not always because we’re smarter than the dumb ones that get caught - sometimes we’re just luckier. But the parents blaming the garage - that’s just people lashing out in a highly emotional state, I believe - looking for some explanation for something that doesn’t make sense.
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### Author:  [@UrbanChic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UrbanChic)
#### Post date: [March 1, 2005, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/idiot-teens-jump-from-parking-garages-parents-blame-the-garage/292446/10 "2005-03-01T17:41:45Z")
Not only do I hope these morons lose their case, I hope they have to pay the legal fees of the private garage owner. This kind of shit makes me nuts.
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### Author:  [@NurseCarmen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NurseCarmen)
#### Post date: [March 1, 2005, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/idiot-teens-jump-from-parking-garages-parents-blame-the-garage/292446/11 "2005-03-01T17:59:44Z")
Only when someone dies will our gene pool be cleansed.
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### Author:  [@Ogre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ogre)
#### Post date: [March 1, 2005, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/idiot-teens-jump-from-parking-garages-parents-blame-the-garage/292446/12 "2005-03-01T18:10:14Z")
6 stories, and he lived? Wow.
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### Author:  [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)
#### Post date: [March 1, 2005, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/idiot-teens-jump-from-parking-garages-parents-blame-the-garage/292446/13 "2005-03-01T18:14:47Z")
> [@Mr. Moto](#):
>
> …your child-rearing somehow left the impression that a fall from a parking garage won’t necessarily kill you.
But that impression is accurate:
> [@Mr Moto's link](#):
>
> Bargfrede survived the 80-foot fall but was injured.
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### Author:  [@World\_Eater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/World_Eater)
#### Post date: [March 1, 2005, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/idiot-teens-jump-from-parking-garages-parents-blame-the-garage/292446/14 "2005-03-01T18:17:07Z")
> [@NurseCarmen](#):
>
> Only when someone dies will our gene pool be cleansed.
Seriously, this is correct, and the problem is this doesn’t happen anymore. We should take the bubble wrap off everything and weed these morons out.
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### Author:  [@JohnBckWLD](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnBckWLD)
#### Post date: [March 1, 2005, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/idiot-teens-jump-from-parking-garages-parents-blame-the-garage/292446/15 "2005-03-01T18:20:27Z")
I’ve said it before and will say it again, if the [Brown Brothers](http://www.democratandchronicle.com/news/forprint/0622IV4M2DP_news.shtml) can get $108 Million (later reduced to $25 million) for diving into shallow water and breaking their necks from the city of NY, then I figure Master Bargfrede has got at least a shot at a million from the Parking Garage owners (Or the city of Orlando…Who may have made a mistake putting up fences after the ‘accident’).
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### Author:  [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)
#### Post date: [March 1, 2005, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/idiot-teens-jump-from-parking-garages-parents-blame-the-garage/292446/16 "2005-03-01T19:55:23Z")
> [@MagicEyes](#):
>
> I have a friend who has three sons. She told me that you have to specifically tell them not to do things, so you have to be very creative in figuring out how they can possibly misuse other people, pets, and anything in the house. That leads to some very odd statements (including the classic exchange, “Did you take a shower?” “Yes.” “Did you use soap?”). I thought this was just for boys, but obviously it still applies to teenagers. It’s just the way things are–if you don’t tell them not to jump off a parking garage, how can you expect them to know that they shouldn’t do it?
Because - possibly unlike your friend’s three sons - most kids aren’t retarded.
I do not ever recall my parents specifically instructing me not to chop off my own penis with an axe, or not to swallow a stick of dynamite, or not to set my hair on fire with a blowtorch, or not to hurl myself from an eighty-foot height. Incredibly I avoided doing any of those things. If your kid is older than six or seven and cannot extrapolate general commands (e.g. “Don’t hurt yourself”) to specific situations (e.g. “It is probably a bad idea to saw off my left arm with a steak knife”) then your child has some sort of mental problem.
Kids will take RISKS they shouldnt take from time to time, but whose fault is that? Theirs.
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### Author:  [@D\_Odds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/D_Odds)
#### Post date: [March 1, 2005, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/idiot-teens-jump-from-parking-garages-parents-blame-the-garage/292446/17 "2005-03-01T20:23:50Z")
**MagicEyes** , my children tried that, but were shot down at it, at a very young age. If they were smart enough to have an excuse ready (i.e. “But you didn’t say to use soap.”), then they were smart enough to know the entire meaning of the request and that they were actively trying to circumvent it. Weaseling in my house only works if you have a nice coat of fur, four paws with sharp nails, a chin like Frank Burns, and the ability to be placed in a cage when bad without running afoul of local Child Protection Services.
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### Author:  [@World\_Eater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/World_Eater)
#### Post date: [March 1, 2005, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/idiot-teens-jump-from-parking-garages-parents-blame-the-garage/292446/18 "2005-03-01T20:43:16Z")
> [@JohnBckWLD](#):
>
> I’ve said it before and will say it again, if the [Brown Brothers](http://www.democratandchronicle.com/news/forprint/0622IV4M2DP_news.shtml) can get $108 Million (later reduced to $25 million) for diving into shallow water and breaking their necks from the city of NY, then I figure Master Bargfrede has got at least a shot at a million from the Parking Garage owners (Or the city of Orlando…Who may have made a mistake putting up fences after the ‘accident’).
Why is putting up a fence after the fact a mistake? They’re admitting partial culpability or something?
/serious question
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### Author:  [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)
#### Post date: [March 1, 2005, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/idiot-teens-jump-from-parking-garages-parents-blame-the-garage/292446/19 "2005-03-01T20:49:35Z")
> [@Neurotik](#):
>
> How far apart are the garages, anyway?
A little _too_ far, apparantly.
I also am impressed by the kid’s survival, unless it turns out the garage is located in the mattress district, or something.
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### Author:  [@World\_Eater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/World_Eater)
#### Post date: [March 1, 2005, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/idiot-teens-jump-from-parking-garages-parents-blame-the-garage/292446/20 "2005-03-01T21:02:01Z")
> [@Bryan Ekers](#):
>
> A little _too_ far, apparantly.
>
> I also am impressed by the kid’s survival, unless it turns out the garage is located in the mattress district, or something.
Or next door to a bread factory that throws their old bread in the alleyway between them and the garage.
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