Today’s post comes from Bathtub Safety Officer Rafferty, a public official obsessed with everyday hazards and  minimizing risk.

At ease civilians!

Be at ease, but always be aware of your surroundings, because most things that are called “accidents” are anything but accidental!

I learned that saying back when I was studying for my BSIC (Bathtub Safety Inspection Certificate).

The bathroom is the single room in any house that is most prone to be the site of injury and distress, and as a licensed inspector I had to learn all the different ways there are to fall in a tub.

Most of them involve soap, and soap is not an autonomous actor in bathtub-injury scenarios.  By that I mean soap does not introduce itself into events – it is introduced by someone – usually a party to the action.

I learned that when questioning participants in any bathtub-injury-incident, the whereabouts and disposition of the soap is absolutely key to assigning liability.

Yes, liability.

We were trained to view this statement, “I slipped and fell in the tub, it was an accident,” as the beginning of an investigation, not the end.

That’s why I was alarmed to read several mainstream press accounts of yesterday’s publication in the journal “Nature” of studies examining an ancient collision in space that led to the formation of our moon.

It seems that a proto-planet named Theia collided with our still-forming Earth, and the debris from that impact, rather than just lying around in the intersection and the road ditches as it does in modern-day car crashes, congealed to shape the orb we know as The Moon.

The scientific studies computer-modeled many scenarios to figure out how two lumps of similarly  composed planet-stuff might run into one another.

But nowhere in any of the articles did I see any consideration of which proto-planet was to blame!  It is JUST ACCEPTED that they crashed.  End of story.  Don’t ask questions.

But I say NO!  Questions must be asked and blame must be assigned!

• Were they headed in the same direction when one planet collided with the other from behind?
• Was one planet trying to make a left turn and happened to  misjudge the speed of the oncoming sphere?
• Was a planet trying to get across a busy orbit without looking both ways?

“Water under the bridge,” you might say.  Or “It happened hundreds of millions of years ago – who cares?”

But in taking that attitude, we automatically absolve the parties, shrug,  and accept that it can happen again.

That may be a comfortable place for you, but I, for one, am not ready to re-live (for the first time), the cataclysmic collision of sister planets.

Blame must be assigned!

Yours in safety,
B.S.O.R.

Are you a good driver?