Kevin Drum writes about the US-European lawsuit gap. I was thinking about this a bit at Acadia. How is it that kids can just run around on granite cliffs where there’s obviously a very real possibility of falling in a way that causes death or serious injury?
I’m not complaining — it’d be a shame if people weren’t able to wander those rocks and see the views. And as best I can tell, all the kids around were being well-monitored and reasonably sensible. But it seemed so out of character for America. I’m always being told that playgrounds can’t have monkey bars anymore for fear of lawsuits. How does running on wet rocks leading to sharp cliffs fit into that? Has congress granted the National Park Service some kind of immunity from lawsuits? I couldn’t seem to google up the answer, but I bet someone out there in readerland knows the answer.