Family sues Strava for cycling death.

In the Tour de France there's a stage in the competition where a cyclist is crowned "King of the Mountains." William "Kim" Flint had captured that title in an amateur online race, speeding down a hill in Berkeley's Tilden Park and the 41-year-old engineer apparently died trying to keep his record.

boege wrote: »

Putting aside the humerous side of this claim there is a couple of points to note:

If they can prove Stava were actually organising an event then event organisors have been fair game in the past.

The people behind this claim often work on the basis that court cases, especially in the US, have huge uncertainty. This uncertainty represents a risk for Strava and all risk has a cost. Many companies settle under confindentiality for an amount in line with the risk involved. Better to pay out a modest amount than risk long oddds on a huge amount.

Not saying I agree with any of this but bet Strava will have a bunch of warnings and disclaimers on their web site, if not there already!

doozerie wrote: »

Just in relation to the suggestion that this is purely American idiocy in action, I think we in Ireland are on shaky ground with that view.

We used to laugh at the "fat Americans", but Ireland now has its very own significant obesity problems.

We used to laugh at the "lazy Americans" who we considered utterly dependent upon their cars even to travel trivial distances. We can no longer point the finger at others in that respect.

We used to laugh at the "dumb Americans" and their "dumb and dodgy politicians". That was always optimistic of us but even the most blinkered of us would now need a brass neck to be willing to ignore our own politicians failings over many years now, and our willingness to re-elect them regardless.

We continue to laugh at the litigious culture in America even as more and more restrictions are applied here in Ireland often in response to the many, and often ludicrous, court cases taken by Irish people hoping to earn a wad of cash by exploiting loopholes in the law.

Etc., etc. The lawsuit in question is certainly ridiculous but it's also not uniquely American. Grief can make people do otherwise very odd things, though 2 years after the tragedy you'd hope that common sense would start to prevail. And of course when money is involved greed can make people do utterly stupid things, and Ireland has no shortage of greedy (or stupid) people.

Lumen wrote: »

Just to be clear, your defence of lazy, pejorative cultural stereotypes is "human nature"?

buffalo wrote: »

At least they only elected him twice.