Our obsession with finding someone to blame

We seem to have an obsession to always blame someone else for the things that happen to us, and most often doing so in court. That has it's good and it's bad. As the tobacco lawsuits of the last decade showed, people sought blame with the tobacco companies for their own decision to smoke. However, the good that came out of those lawsuits was a much bigger general awareness, and more public policy against smoking.

However, I could not help but scratch my head when I read this evening that the father of Josh Hancock, pitcher of the St. Louis Cardinals filed a law suit as reported by CNN SI not only against the restaurant that so willingly served drinks to him, but also against the driver who's car was stalled on the highway and the tow truck driver who tried to help. Of course I only have limited insight into the facts, but from what the story describes this goes far beyond the boundary of reason, taste, and integrity in my book.

While certainly it is most unfortunate that a person died in this incident, clearly Josh Hancock shouldn't have been behind the wheel in that condition. And as an able bodied adult, he and only he is responsible for that decision. While arguably the restaurant supplied the drinks, and did not stop him from either drinking beyond reasonable limits or taking effective steps to prevent him from driving afterwards, the driver of the car and tow truck are totally coincidental actors in this situation. Assuming the tow truck had its flashing lights on, and wasn't stopped in a location of limited visibility there's no reason that an alert driver wouldn't have been able to stop. If one uses such a low cause-effect threshold, then one could argue that his father should have listed himself as defendant for not teaching his son to make more responsible decisions.

I can certainly appreciate the grief this loss is causing the family. But instead of taking this opportunity as an occasion to reflect on the effects of drinking and driving, driving without a seat belt (even though based on an earlier story that wouldn't have made much of a difference in this incident given the speed and other circumstances), driving while talking on a cell phone, the role model any professional sports player is for many in our society, and the obvious failure to act as such, it becomes yet another example of our obsession to blame others for the lack of thoughtfulness and discipline of oneself. That's very unfortunate, and also a poor role model in itself.

While I have, fortunately, not been in a similar situation, I think after proper reflection some contribution to the fight of drunk driving would have been not only been acknowledging the lack of judgement but also plaid a role in educating others not to repeat the mistakes.