The City Museum in St. Louis https://www.citymuseum.org/ is a wonderful counterexample to this: there are tunnels, sky-tubes made of rebar, slides, and a school bus hanging off the roof, and pretty much everything there is designed to be climbed-on, explored, and experienced.
...at your own risk. There's a feature called the Big Pig. It's a huge bucket that fills with a few hundred gallons of water and tips over, pouring it all out. In doing so, the bucket slams into a stop. There's rebar between where people go and the bucket, but there's enough space to get under the rebar, and to the bucket, and right in the way of the water. A woman did that, and put her hands on the stop. The bucket came down, she lost the fingers on one hand.
And she's not the only one. Multiple people have demonstrated lack of good sense, and injured themselves, at the City Museum. The ticket booth has a sign crediting a ticket surcharge to multiple law firms that have sued the museum over the years.
If you're ever in St. Louis, The City Museum should be near the top of your list of places to visit! Just don't climb on the Big Pig!
I'm not talking about tort law, or damages. I'm talking about morals, which are subjective.
If you build a structure that is designed to be climbed on and experienced (your words) and someone climbs on and experiences a part of it and is maimed for life - isn't that a little bit your fault?
> And she's not the only one. Multiple people have demonstrated lack of good sense, and injured themselves, at the City Museum.
If your open-to-the-public interactive structure causes maimings when the public encounters it (given that we know many of them lack good sense), those maimings are a little bit your personal responsibility and fault.
Fair points, and I'm not saying it's 100% the woman's fault. But to be clear: the big pig is not designed for you to go near it. The woman had to climb through the channel where periodically a ton of water comes through, and pretty much shimmy under the rebar to get to it. But that said, obviously another few pieces of rebar could have prevented the incident.
I'm pretty sure that a set of commodity, heavy-duty friction hinges would slow the bucket considerably - perhaps not enough to stop you getting your fingers stuck underneath the bucket, but enough to stop this from happening before the majority of the water had been poured out.
I think it adds yet more moral culpability when making the installation safer isn't particularly expensive, complicated or compromising to its value. This isn't an exhibit where danger is expected or inherent to the observers' experience.
It's not particularly fast (or maybe this video is more recent and they have taken your advice), but obviously when you're talking about hundreds of pounds, the pinch point doesn't have to be fast to do damage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDac5uSxLlg
Or a stop that moves the pinch-point further out of reach, and then clearly sign it off. This can be a hard thing to get right, but there definitely are solutions.
Sure, but the City Museum was created by an artist, who would have hated the idea of warning signs. He died in an accident building a companion outdoors art installation/amusement area, probably by not being safe while working with heavy equipment.
If there us a clear warning, definitely and only woman's fault. Pour enough people on/in/at literally anything and somebody is going to badly injure or even kill themselves on something trivial like a single stair.
Big moving dangerous mechanical stuff? Just a question of time till somebody ends up badly. People do stupid irresponsible shit all the time, internet is full of that.
If I invent a Sports game and someone falls playing it -- am I also responsible?
Certain structures have expectations e.g. a bridge should not prematurely collapse. A skyscraper should not fall over. Falling off a climbing frame is an 'expected risk' and therefore not the fault of the designer. A sign saying you're at risk is plenty of warning like a wet floor sign!
...at your own risk. There's a feature called the Big Pig. It's a huge bucket that fills with a few hundred gallons of water and tips over, pouring it all out. In doing so, the bucket slams into a stop. There's rebar between where people go and the bucket, but there's enough space to get under the rebar, and to the bucket, and right in the way of the water. A woman did that, and put her hands on the stop. The bucket came down, she lost the fingers on one hand.
And she's not the only one. Multiple people have demonstrated lack of good sense, and injured themselves, at the City Museum. The ticket booth has a sign crediting a ticket surcharge to multiple law firms that have sued the museum over the years.
If you're ever in St. Louis, The City Museum should be near the top of your list of places to visit! Just don't climb on the Big Pig!