As the Crow Flies

A few days ago the Crow was minorly involved in a discussion about accidents and responsibility.

One side of the discussion involved the stern and firm stand of, “Don’t do this thing again.” And, “Take responsibility for what you’ve agreed to be responsible for.” The other side of the conversation involved the understanding that humans will naturally have accidents, forget keys and misspell jest about everything given enough time. Knowing that, we, (society or the workplace) should problem solve so that either the outcome of a mistake can be mitigated or that the mistake can be avoided.

For the sake of my sanity and protecting the identity of the innocent, Crow will refer to the two sides of this discussion as Stern and Understanding respectively.

Understanding noted that when a professional in Understanding’s line of work makes a mistake, people die. It’s kinda hard to argue with that. Stern noted that when you agree to sign on to Stern’s crew, you agree to being responsible for whatever occurs on your watch, so to speak. It seems that in Stern’s perspective, the expectation is clear. For example, Stern would say, “Do not lose your keys or you will pay to re-key this facility.” Understanding might say, (in Stern’s position,) “Hey, I understand that given enough time you may lose your keys, so we have done away with keys and replaced all locks with a key pad. Now, just don’t forget the secret pass code.”

Crow brings all of this to your attention because on my way to work, a Big F@#$#@ Suburban raced through a fully red-light and almost killed the Crow on his bicycle. Of course, Crow immediately thought of Understanding, and perhaps Crow should problem solve the situation so that the outcome could be mitigated. Then, Crow realized that we (in this case society) had already problem solved the shit out of the 4-way, traffic control lighted, stop line painted, paved, police patrolled, beeping walk signaled, time delayed green, yellow warning lighted, pedestrian cross walk identified intersection.

Sure, if the outcome would have been different and Crow was dead, then this would have been an accident. But there was no accident this morning. It was the Crow who was vigilant and took extra responsibility at the problem-solved intersection so that the outcome wasn’t death. Crow avoided death with the Understanding that Big F@#$#@ Suburban would likely be irresponsible. So it is to Big F@#$#@ Suburban that Crow Sternly says, DON’T RUN RED LIGHTS!!!