Blame

A few weeks ago we had a horrible car crash near my house. The weather had been horrible and it had been raining. Overnight, the clouds cleared and the temperatures plummeted. Roads all over the county iced over. One of the main roads leading out the highway has a notorious stretch that gets icy and is hilly and curvy. It doesn't take much thinking to realize that those three things are not a good combination.
Late that night, a couple was driving back from the casino. They were both locals, but were driving way too fast for the conditions. They hit the ice and tumbled 400 feet down an embankment, landing near a creek. Neither person was wearing a seat belt and both were ejected from the vehicle. Both died at the scene.

Our local newspaper ran several articles on this crash. The first was a story that told of the multiple crashes that had happened due to poor weather conditions and ice. The second was an opinion piece about how difficult it is to write about accidents. It was followed by a brief piece written by a friend of family member of one of the people who died in the jeep. He basically stated that the woman who died was a lovely woman and that the County should be held responsible because they don't mark that the road is icy.

Is this a terribly tragic situation? Absolutely. Could it have been prevented? Maybe. If you read the first article, you will see that before this accident, a very similar one happened in almost the same spot. The occupants of that vehicle were all wearing seat belts and survived the accident.

I honestly do not understand why people always try to blame someone else for their mistakes. I understand it must be horribly hard for the friends and family of the two people who died in the accident to come to terms with the fact that their loved ones are gone, let alone that it was their own recklessness that caused their deaths. But I do not understand blaming county officials for not doing something more on the roads. Instead, use their tragic deaths as an opportunity to promote wearing seat belts (seriously?! who doesn't wear a seat belt?!) and safer driving in hazardous weather conditions. It just makes me really mad that someone wants to place the blame other than where it actually lies...