Why do children have to die for common sense laws?
Abigail Taylor died Thursday from injuries sustained last June when when she sat on a wading pool drain; the suction so strong that it suck out part of her intestines. It is always a tragedy when a child dies, and always there is some knee-jerk reactions, some good and sometimes even some not so go. But when it happens for something incredibly stupid, it is all that much more infuriating.
On the heels of this incident, in December Congress approved legislation to “ban the manufacture, sale or distribution of drain covers that don’t meet anti-entrapment safety standards.” It was called the Virginia Graeme Baker Pool and Spa Safety Act [pdf], the named for the granddaughter of former Secretary of State James A. Baker, III, who was killed when she was trapped by the suction of a drain in 2002!
Now, I don’t understand why this wasn’t already a law, because it seems so brain-dead obvious to me as a parent, but can somebody explain to me, even after the first incident, and when people started lobbying for this law in 2002, it took 5 freakin’ years to get this written into law? Now, I am willing to bet if I left it at that, I would have somebody come along and say “there’s a war on and Congress had ‘more important’ things to contend with.” But if that is the case, then can somebody explain to me why Abigail Taylor had to die when over those same five years Congress sat back, played IM games with Pages, stuffed freezers full of cash, taking bribes, and making medical diagnosis via videotape. They had “the time” to do it, but it seems unless there is enough dead children for them to stop taking donations from corporations that are too cheap to manufacture these things safely, they just allow it to go on.
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I don’t know if I agree that there should be an act of congress every time something like this happens. While I DO agree that it’s horrible that a child (or, rather, children) died from something that was entirely preventable, I don’t think that it’s the government’s job to regulate or enforce common sense. If there are ALREADY safety standards on the books about anti-entraping pool/spa drain covers, then the responsibility is on the companies that manufacture them and the people who purchase and install them.
I think that your anger is misplaced. There are plenty of reasons to be pissed off at the government, but in this case, I think it’s more appropriate to be angry or infuriated at the drain manufacturing company who, despite knowing the anti-entrapment safety standards, willfully manufactured a pool drain cover that did not meet this standard. ALSO, be angry at the wading pool owners/installers who purchased a drain cover that did not meet these standards. Even if they were misinformed by the contractor about the drain cover, there were still permit inspectors who could and should have told them that they were installing a pool drain cover that did not meet anti-entraping safety standards.
Sorry to get a bit on the verbose side, but I honestly don’t believe that MORE government in our lives is the answer.