Yeah, the workers were at fault here. I can’t for the life of me figure out why they’d remove the manhole cover, and then go grab the orange cones to mark it for passers by to see. I mean, they’d have to start from the truck where they keep the cones before they could even go to the manhole, right?
Also, the girl is a darned fool idiot. I hope I am not living in New York when this girl gets a driver’s license. Can you imagine what will happen when she starts texting and driving? Fortunately for her at least, most cars don’t fit in manholes easily.
As someone who reads whilst walking, while crossing NYC streets, it is perfectly easy to dodge such things as manholes, dog poo, other pedestrians, oncoming traffic, light poles, and bicycle messengers while one’s vision is apparently obscured. There’s a talent to it, but it’s not hard at all.
I’m sorry, I have very little sympathy for someone who is sending text messages and walking at the same time. I would feel the same lack of sympathy for someone who was reading and walking at the same time.
When someone is paying full attention to the world around them and falls, that’s sad. When someone is doing something stupid to distract themselves, well, in an evolutionary sense, it’d be good to have them out of the gene pool. 10,000 years ago, she’d have been fodder for a sabre tooth…
My wife witnessed something very similar a few years ago. The water mains in our street were being replaced, and they’d taken up half the pavement [US sidewalk] outside our house, resulting in a deep trench some 20 feet long by three feet wide, surrounded by cones, tape and warning signs. My wife happened to look out the front window just as a young guy talking on a mobile phone disappeared into it.
Someone texting will walk right over or through orange cones, snag a piece of yellow tape but keep moving, and fall down a marked, barricaded manhole anyway. The DEP guys can’t be expected to use jersey wall barriers or something. If you’re not looking where you’re going, trouble will happen.
A blind person would not have fallen down the hole, because the white cane is used to feel for things like that. Or the dog. Unless the dog hates the blind person, I guess.
I used to work with a guy whose seeing eye dog would walk him into walls. Repeatidly. The drywall was all banged up at the same height, down all the halls at work.
Winston was a sweet dog, but not particularly suited to be a service dog. (he’d also abandon his job to go wandering around looking for petting.)
Yes, and no. Some people will train and sell dogs as “guide dogs” without going through a professional organization.
Organizations like “The Seeing Eye” and “Eye Dog Foundation” provide dogs at very low cost or free of charge to people. These organizations have extensive waiting lists and criteria to be fulfilled to qualify. Yet, anyone can purchase a dog and train it to be a guide/assistance dog without regard to “standards” as there really aren’t any.
I know a woman who trains and raises assistance dogs for private purchase and she does an amazing job with her dogs. She uses Bouviers, a breed not normally used for assistance dogs.
Well, I suspect that ol’ Winston was from a professional organization. Since his owner’s job was advising on accomodations for blind employees, and he worked at… a professional organization for the blind.
I think his owner was just more motivated to have a pet than to not be run into walls, and so Winston obligingly followed that lead. oddly, I recall the name of the dog, but not of the guy.
But, it was funny. Much like texters dropping into open manholes.
Walking into an open manhole is a comedy classic. Not only is it funny in itself, but to see such a standard joke setup actually occur unscripted in the real world adds a level of surprise that would make it comedy gold.
In short, yes, it would be funny. How responsible you were for the accident, and how badly you were injured, would be contributing factors for the level of guilt I felt afterward for laughing at you
A couple months ago a 26 year old woman was killed here while texting because she stepped off the curb into oncoming traffic. I felt no sympathy. (Well, I did for the poor driver who slammed on the brakes to no avail.)
If you knowingly do something that compromises your situational awareness, well, tough noogies if you then have to deal with the consequences. I don’t wear headphones while cycling because I rely on my ears to help keep me safe from cars coming up behind me.
That being said, the workers shared responsibility and probably will be found liable. Around here, they usually put up that little portable railing thingy, like the yellow thing here , immediately after opening a manhole.
People who have compromised peripheral vision (eg/ those with glaucoma) are more at risk to missing things like that.
I can’t stop laughing at the thread title. Everytime I think about it I start laughing again. I’m going to have to get up from the computer and go walk around.
