The Act tells Coroners that they have to provide recommendations about things that could have prevented death in similar circumstances; it doesn’t ask them to weigh costs and benefits of that regulation. And that’s all fine – it should be Parliament or the bureaus that figure that stuff out. Some of the coroners seem to think that their recommendations ought be the final word rather than a policy input – they ought to be smacked back, or we ought to change the Act.

I mean, isn’t it common sense that the head of state of a country should actually live in that country, so that their interests are more or less aligned with the interests of the people who live there?

Alex, this only confirms what many of us know – the law is an ass.

It’s not so much that the law is an ass as that politicians and the media call equate legislation with law. Law is a relationship between cause and effect, legislation is public policy which may or may not be consistent with law. Also, parliament misrepresents the nature of common law by excluding the aspects of common law which are beyond its control.

With leaky homes it was the fault of a law change relaxing regulation. As if somehow some changes on paper caused 100′s of years of construction wisdom to evaporate.

Yet it seems clear that legislation can not overcome ignorance. Over the weekend we read of a couple whose toddler received a skull fracture and bleeding to the brain while at a childcare centre but were not told of it because “They [caregivers] don’t know the procedure.” and “face a bewildering array of legislation to comply with”. Excuse me but wtf?

What happened to exercising sound, responsible personal judgement?

This is all in harmony with these braindead coroner recommendations. Wishing to legislate away accidents and aberrations.

How well have rules worked in other areas? Boating…. ever heard of anyone drowning because they didn’t have the required safety gear?

Also the act imposes an obligation on a coroner to make recomendations, even if they are not listened to.

Alex, this only confirms what many of us know – the law is an ass.

Did the legislators ever hear of the saying “shit happens”?

I do not think a law degree is the be all and end all for a coroner any more than for a judge.

There are some pretty hopeless and inadequacy trained judges.

If you had been on the receiving like I have in the civil court you might see things differently.

The system is corrupt. I make a complaint about a High Court Judge to the Judicial Complaints Commissioner. It get forwarded to the Judge and he comes with story about what happened in Court that was not true. The Judicial Complaints Commissioner takes the Judges version of events and that is meant to the end of the story.

I pay my filing fees and the Judge cannot be bothered putting his direction in writing and it costs me 70 grand because he is lazy and/or incompetent. The fact that many Judge do not like people representing themselves probable played a factor.

I know there are some bloody good judges but also arrogant, unfair and a few corrupt ones.

Slow traffic nationally by 1km/hr and you increase the average time people spend in their cars by a few hours per year – say 10million human hours or about 25 human lifetimes in the shitter, actually worse than that because it tends to be cutting into free time. Would increasing speed limits by 10km/hr kill another 200 people per year? I highly doubt it.

If you require changes that cost everyone in NZ an extra $100 per year on elf and safety (probably conservative) then that sucks about $400million – which is about 1-200 deaths at typical $2-4million cost to save an extra life in the health system.

Changes to rules regarding testing of water in school pools 10 years ago in the name of the most holy health and safety saw most school pools close and a generation of children now coming through in many cases can no longer swim – lives saved=probably none, but will the arseholes who made that decision take responsibility for increased drownings in future?

Nobody can pretend that the extreme level of cones/barriers and other devices deployed in road works is cost effective. About 6 injuries a year for an additional cost that is probably in the $100′s of millions.

Every extra piece of safety equipment or modification also requires manufacturing and maintenance activities to create them. Those activities have a certain non-negligible amount of danger and death associated with them (eg driving to work to create them, commercial drivers, mining etc), so in many cases the requirement to have such additional gear will actually kill more people than it saves.

Health and safety also sucks the joy out of life by restricting and reducing our freedoms and absorbing more of our time in non-productive activities. We need to stop listening to the dickheads pushing the safety at all costs mantra, roll it back to more sane levels of 20-30 years back. Life is a risky activity that no one gets out of alive, deal with it.

Nowadays they would blame the police for not stopping her.

I note that Wellington’s mayor, who was wearing all the right stuff and lights as well, still got knocked off. And she doesn’t think much of the coroner either.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/news/8312803/Mayor-wants-driver-to-pay-for-bike-repairs

But they can create pressure situations. When a Coroner advised that a warning sign be put up when someone jumped into the Clutha and drowned the local management group felt compelled to cover their butts and put one up even though they said they doubted it would do any good. River drownnings tend to mostly be in different locations and in different situations.

And signs often do diddly squat, it was common for teenagers to jump off the Deadman Point bridge at Cromwell despite warning signs, and there was still a rope swing there last month.

Does it matter? It’s not their job to decide whether recommendations should be implemented into law. That’s for politicians and the public to decide. Apparently, according to Alex Masterley above they have an obligation under law to make recommendations – this probably explains why they make them.

I don’t really see the problem. If I am working on an IT project and go to the security guys and ask for feedback they will tell me all the things I could do to make the process as secure as possible – that is what I expect them to do. Some of these recommendations might not happen because they are not practical within the constraints of the project budget or might have unintended impacts in other areas. That’s cool – as long as the business owner understands and accepts the risks of not doing those things then we can drop them.

Maybe it’s much better to get all options and recommendations on the table and get the relevant decision maker to exclude anything they don’t deem practical or desirable rather than get a single party to try and make that decision on behalf of everybody.

DPF – Failing that, how about you talk to one of your National Party MP buddies to write up a private members bill removing from legislation the requirement on Coroners to make recommendations and they might make fewer of them. The MP who introduces it could even go for the position of “Minister Responsible for Political Correctness” or did we get rid of that made up job title with Don Brash?

Also the act imposes an obligation on a coroner to make recomendations,

Ahh, so they have to come up with some recommendations, rather than may make recommendations, that explains the quite a lot about the idiocy of some of the stuff that’s recommended…”fuck, I’ve gotta say something…I know!…high viz…”

The office of coroner is a judicial office with a judicial oath so a legal training is a pre-requisite.

Also the act imposes an obligation on a coroner to make recomendations, even if they are not listened to.

Having appeared as counsel in the odd coroners court hearing, it never ceases to amaze me how coroners cope with an exclusive diet of death and the many and varied ways it occurs.