What is the most menacing terror lurking on the asphalt?
Count your lucky stars is my main message to you this morning, for you never know when disaster might strike. You may be hungry, for example, for a Subway sandwich, purchase one, eat half then get fined $2664 by the Australian government for having it in your purse. Or you could be there living in surf paradise Coolangatta and a top triathlete with many victories including illustrious Ironmen etc. but then slip off a dangerous piece of playground equipment and have to stare down the possible ending of your career.
Well, at least there is a lawsuit to cover the latter and triathlete Ari Day is taking that route, dragging Surf Life Saving Australia and others before the courts in a story that is gripping the Gold Coast.
Ali Day is demanding $485,000 after a promotional photographic session for the Iron X Series, the world’s “richest one-day race in surf life saving,” went terribly wrong. According to the report, Day was swinging between monkey bars, lost grip and fell two meters, or six feet, to the floor then immediately felt pain in his wrist. The defendants, including Surf Life Saving Australia, were negligent, he alleges, for providing adequate training and floor mats.
The course, he claims, was also “deliberately difficult.”
Day was forced to get 28 pins, screws and plates in his wrist and though he has won six more Ironmen since the injury, claims his career will certainly be cut short.
$300,000 of the claim, in fact, is for past and future economic loss. $10,000 is earmarked for his partner, Kel Day, who lovingly tended to him while he healed.
All very sad but let us further consider, together, the most most dangerous piece of playground equipment as to avoid one of these nasty incidences ourselves. When I was a young boy in Papua New Guinea, our school had one of those maypole like things with metal rings at the end to grasp. We would run, fly into the air with much g-force then slip and shoot across the yard like shrapnel.
Merry-go-rounds are also naughty with the same aforementioned g-force but also metal bars that spin wildly at child mouth level.
Swings, especially when dillweeds aren’t paying attention and walk out in front of a swinger in full pump.
What else? What is the most menacing terror lurking on the asphalt?