how people have to die before something is done

[LexiaFira]

this is meant in a general sense. but to be as specific as i can. i will keep it to my city
for anything via safety meassures or precautions or having things that SHOULD be in place such as CROSSWALK LIGHTS someone apparently has to die.
specific situation
I say this because this town is a college town, been around for 20 plus years but only NOW are they putting (since late last year) crosswalks and crosswalk lights around the stop lights at the college. Both pedestrians and drivers are to blame for the deaths of people around the college for jaywalking or someone was driving badly and hit another pedestrian. but seriously? 12 people at the college had to die for the city to do this?

vastly generic situation
having safer devices or putting out public announcements for things that have been happening until someone is hurt enough to do something about it. such as car seats or the latest public announcement of not putting your baby in bed to sleep with you because you could accidentally smother your child. (not going to get into specific situations as I DO understand not being able to afford a crib or even extra blankets to make a baby fort for said non crawling infant) but seriously?

specific again situation
another case i know of that hits close to home and is very similar to what happened to a member here. I promise it is NOT that member, but a friend i knew in 1997 long before I knew of customerssuck.com and was still in high school
yes this very close friend of mine and of the family committed suicide but it wasn't until then that any precaution system was implemented and people informed until this happened. we all KNEW he as well as a few others fought with depression. why did no one do anything? WHY? i still wonder that because its not like his teachers and friends and classmates didn't know and he fought hard for help but nooo he just needed to suck it up. and now in 2012 we have allll this info about depression and stop bullying etc. yeah this makes me rage sometimes. i will go out on a limb and say this friend at least WANTED to leave his house instead of stay in the problem causing area...
again not pointing fingers as its long past nor making accusations about the similar incident only stating that having seen enough of it i do know friends here on the forums and in my town that want to leave but don't want to leave their comfort zone which is often the cause of the problem.
(good example the house they grew up in is a bad unsafe place but because its all that person has know leaving it is way out of the comfort zone thus said person stays.)

it makes me angry because why should people have to die for any kind of precaution that is part of the procedure and SHOULD be there but isn't. IE the crosswalks are by law required in my state yet not until last year at these specific roads were they installed until another student was killed again. not touching on the sleeping babies post.
how many more people like me with depression have to go through 20 plus years of hell before someone believes us when we say we need help because we KNOW feeling like this all the time isn't normal.

[bara]

Simple answer (I dont like it, but its the truth), money.
Things like that only tend to get done when lawsuits are threatened or there is enough public outcry that politicians are trying to protect their 'phony baloney' jobs.

My sister lives in a more prominent area. Higher taxes, so the area has more money. All the cross walks are well marked and easily visible. Red light cameras are used for the purpose of safety rather than income. If something needs done or fixed, it happens and happens quickly.


In my town, it took them about 10 years to put up a barricade to keep people from turning left out of a corner market. Since the 'No left turn' signs were ignored and a daughter of a city council member was hit and pushed off the road.

[BlaqueKatt]

it's the same in microbiology.

My co-worker Jean, did her doctorate thesis on Bacillus cereus(pronounced the same as "serious"), discovered that if it got into the bloodstream it would cause meningitis, sepsis, and death, and if it got into the eyes the toxins it creates will actually dissolve corneal tissue, resulting in blindness in less than 4 hours. No one cared, and no one tested for it until it killed a child, via a contaminated alcohol wipe.

She was told her research was good, but it "wasn't on the radar" as a serious problem because it hadn't killed anyone yet. Now we do a TON of testing for it, and the FDA actually shut down the company that made the contaminated wipes.

It took a death for anyone to care, just like with most other outbreaks of food borne illness, no one cares until there's a body count.

[draco664]

Simple answer (I dont like it, but its the truth), money.

It took a death for anyone to care, just like with most other outbreaks of food borne illness, no one cares until there's a body count.

Devil's advocate mode: If we reacted to every possible risk in the way we do after there's a death, the economy would be in the stone age.

Risk management suggests that with limited resources available, you apply those resources based on the probability of something occurring and the impact of the event. You don't spend trillions of dollars preventing people from stubbing their toes in the dark, even though everyone does it (low impact) and you don't spend trillions of dollars to prevent anyone from being hit by a meteorite (low probability).

But often, the calculated probability is wrong. Like the kid with the infected wipe, the calculated probability of that happening was low, and since it had never happened before, no one revisited the calculation. Once it happened, the probability rose. (probably to a too high value) This meant that something was done, because the probability/impact ratio indicated that resources should be spent to mitigate the risk.

It's a lovely sentiment to say that "We should have done something before he died!", but the fact is that we live in a dangerous world. For every perceived risk, there are many, many unknown risks. And if we tried to mitigate them all, there wouldn't be enough money in the world to do so, and there'd still be unknown risks out there.

Fact is, cities have a very limited budget for things. There's literally ten places to spend every tax dollar. Unless there is popular support for increasing taxes (yeah, right...) city planners will go with risk/cost tables and formulas to work out where best to spend the money. In your example of putting up lights for pedestrians, they might have budgeted for that in the next fiscal year. But the deaths prompted them to do it now, and that money might have come from a budget for road works, which means that critical works are delays, leading to injuries or deaths.

It's not nice, but there it is.

[LexiaFira]

and to try and cover all points made here on the first page and make up for the absence yes,...money.
yet what if money wasn't an issue in the first place? what if there was enough money to fix this before anything happened?

beyond this i can't say anything nice without cursing sorry.