Hats off to the ATCs who continue to work while the politicians engage in their petty and pathetic game.
Is there anyone in this situation who potentially has more leverage than these ATCs? I imagine that if all of the ATCs simply said we're not coming in tomorrow, congress would get it together pretty quickly.
In the absence of legislation (and perhaps even if/when legislation is enacted), an effective approach would be to simply hold entities to a reasonableness standard and to seek relief/damages under a common law negligence theory in lieu of a regulatory/legislative enforcement mechanism. That way, what is considered to be the industry standard (ie reasonable) changes at the pace of technology. The weak link here is quantifying individuals' damages in breaches where there is no clear injury (such as what you have in the the Amazon/GoPro example described above).
The figure has been disputed [0] but it originates from an analysis done by a John Hopkins University doctor published in the BMJ [1][2]:
> We define death due to medical error as death due to 1) an error in judgment, skill, or coordination of care, 2) a diagnostic error, 3) a system defect resulting in death or a failure to rescue a patient from death, or 4) a preventable adverse event. The prevalence of death due to medical error leading to patient deaths has been established in the literature. From studies that analyzed documented health records, we calculated a pooled incidence rate of 251,454 deaths per year.
> (1) If we project this quantity into the total number of deaths in the year 2013 (2,596,993 deaths), they would account for 9.7% of all deaths in the nation.
> (2) This figure far surpasses the current third leading cause of death on the CDC’s most recent rank order. Moreover, the 251,454 estimate we derived from the literature is an underestimate because the studies conducted did not include outpatient deaths or deaths at home due to a medical error.
I'm 36 and in a similar boat. Without going into my story, I'll tell you that one thing that has been helpful for me is "giving back."
For instance, like you, I used to enjoy music festivals (still do, but differently now). Remember how cool your first festival was? How can you contribute to the experience that the first-time 20-something festival goers have now? Build a cool piece of LED art? Volunteer? Start on a project. Get involved.
The above is just one example of the many ways I've found to give back in various areas of my life. It is fun, rewarding, and opens doors to new opportunities and people.
I use it daily at my law firm. It monitors online court dockets for many of my lawsuits and sends me an email when there is a new entry/order/filing. Incredibly useful.
Is there anyone in this situation who potentially has more leverage than these ATCs? I imagine that if all of the ATCs simply said we're not coming in tomorrow, congress would get it together pretty quickly.