Garage jumping?
 

So, here's the link and the story out of Orlando:
My first reaction to this story was anger. I'm pissed off that the taxpayers of Orlando are going to have to pay for protective fences to stop these morons from killing themselves. Sometimes, you've just gotta let defective genes remove themselves from the pool, you know?

I can feel an enormous rant boiling within me about the death of Common Sense....

Is there a length of fence long enough to stop morons bent on destruction?

I did stupid shit like this when I was a kid too... fence or no fence it's utterly irrelevant.

The building owners are responsible for making sure people don't jump off of the buildings????

Looking at the parents, I can understand why their son jumped off of a building. Two generations of fucking stupid.

The building owners are being sued? geez, people just amaze me sometimes

its like here when we had a rash of people (about 3 I think) threaten to jump off an interstate bridge and they stopped traffic for HOURS each time...now most overpasses you see have fences on them.

These parents need to spend a little more time talking to their kids about doing dumb shit rather than sueing people for how they handle their PRIVATE PROPERTY

I live about 40 mins from Orlando and go there to party a lot, but I've never heard of people jumping across buildings..

I agree with you.... survival of the fittest right?

Oh, I see now. The parking garages are an "attractive nuisance", and the city of Orlando is at fault.

http://www.urbanfreeflow.com/

This is what these kids were doing. It's called free running- it's like using the natural/manmade elements of your environment as a big jungle gym.

I think this comment pretty much made my day.

Don't you achieve terminal velocity after 66 feet? I'd say that kid is very lucky to be alive.

Well, 'terminal' in this case doesn't mean 'deadly'. It just means you won't fall any faster. And, I think that if you reach terminal velocity, the wind feels different, and your body relaxes, which increases your likelihood of survival.

A quick google tells me "A man has a terminal velocity of about 200 mph when curled into a ball and about 125 mph with arms and legs fully extended to catch the wind like a parachute." I don't have the time to do the math, but I don't think you would reach that rate in only 66 feet.

EDIT:
Oooooh, here's a good PDF: How Terminal is Terminal Velocity?. From this document:

This gets my day off to an amusing start.

Wow, I usually only jump off something that tall if there's a lake of water underneath me.

stupidity for stupidity's sake.

a HUGE part of free running is about knowing your limits...
you do a bigger jump when a miss is gonna drop you 5 feet and not nearly kill you once your able to do that... then you can move up...

and free running is not about huge jumps, their just one small part of it.

Wow, a news story from my very own corner of the universe makes the TFP. It's sad it's not the first time it's happened, and also that they always seem to be really stupid stories.

I can't even think of which two garages they're jumping between, though there really are only a few, and i've used most all of them at one time or another to park when I go to the clubs or bars downtown on a friday or saturday (or whenever).

It's absurd how personal responsibility has been replaced with the world being responsible for every person. These kids were being idiots. The parking garage was obviously not put there as a jungle gym. If kids are stupid enough to use it as one, then it's their fault when they get hurt, NOT the parking lot's owners. There is no way for a property owner to completely idiot-proof his property. It's high time the idiots start paying for their own mistakes rather than collecting fat checks from the rest of the world.

Really, there's little incentive to be smart anymore. The idiots get rich by doing stupid stuff while the intelligent ones look on wondering why they have to be intelligent.

These guys remind me of a dumber, less fit version of free runners.

i've heard that more than 50 percent of people die in falls of 25 feet or more.....this dude is really lucky he did not croak it here(obviously) This is one of those "who the hell was the first potential organ donor to come up with the idea that this would be fun?" deals for sure.

wow... I love how people can sue for crap like this. haha made my day(night) too.

garage jumping is cool! but not as cool as free french fries

as a matter of fact, the garage owners are required by law to erect all physical barriers within their reasonable power to prevent the injury of their patrons. I believe the legal term in tort law is "attractive nuisance." Just as everyone who has an in-ground swimming pool in my area is REQUIRED to have a 6' tall fence on their yard, the parking garages are REQUIRED to take reasonable safety precautions. no fences on the upper stories? ASKING for a lawsuit. i think everyone's reactions would have been different if a small child had somehow gotten away from a parent (as all small children have a propensity for doing) and ran off the edge of the building by mistake. the fences wouldn't just prevent garage jumping, they would also limit a large amount of risk of other accidents occuring.

i applaud the mother for making the city of Orlando responsible for this. Lord knows they'd find her responsible if a small child drowned in her backyard pool if she didn't have a fence.--it's happened. it is a matter of tort law, and pretty basic tort law at that. the city and the company should have put up barriers from the get-go when the garages were erected--for their patron's protection from harm and their protection from liability. it's dumb on their part not to have done so sooner, and now they will pay the price. thankfully no one died from their negligence of the LAW.

Yes, because if you live by the law, you'll never get hurt, it's like a failsafe, you don't even have to use common sense anymore?

"Garage jumping is a dangerous new trend" -- trend - 4: the popular taste at a given time...I found this in the dictionary.

What...is this cool!? I am not that old but what the fuck!?!

And they are going to sue....shit...my old man would have grabbed me by the ear and dragged me to the garage manager...made me apologize and say I was lucky to be alive.

Funny thing is, is that I am not surprised anymore by 1) the kid's action...I mean a few years ago kids thought it was cool to lie on the median of the road. 2) his luck in surviving...people get lucky all the time. 3) his parent's intent to sue...someone got million or so because he spilt some friggin' hot coffee.

I read recently an article about no-fault malpractice insurance or something in Sweden where you can't sue for punitive damages and get only so much depending on a scale of severity etc. They should do something similiar in the States for stupid acts such as this. Just my 2 cents worth.

Yes, I realize that it doesn't mean you are going to die. In fact, deadly doesn't mean that you are 100% fucked. It means it's a good possibility however. I sure as fuck wouldn't want to hit the ground after obtaining terminal velocity, would you?

Thanks for the info. I got the 66 feet number from a friend. Now I'll have to give him shit for telling lies.

I've got no problem with free running. Different strokes, you know? However, if you fall and bust your ass doing something you chose to do, don't you DARE call your lawyer and make me pay for it through tax dollars, you doodle fuck!!!

Have the balls to own up to your own responsibility and admit you fucked up. My cash should have no part in it whatsoever.

no, but the point is the company should have already had them in place--it's a matter of keeping themselves covered and providing safety to ALL their patrons, not just the daringly idiotic ones.

Homeowners and building owners are held responsible for the safety of people who are on their property. That's a legal maxim that's been held for decades. Like I said, the fences would also be in place to prevent other accidents such as runaway small children. Having dealt with small children in a dangerous (to them) environment teaching them to swim, and monitoring others as I lifeguarded, I've seen time and again how easy it is for children to slip away from their parents, and run themselves right off the edge of something (in this case, the side of the pool) without regard to what's underneath. I think alot of you would agree that if it were a small child that had run off the side accidentally, the company would be responsible--that's because they are. Them not having fences up around their upper stories to prevent people access to a major hazard (6-8 story drops) to their health is an active form of negligence, and odds are they will be held accountable. One of the largest aspects of consumer law and tort law is public safety, and lacking those fences both the company and the City of Orlando disregarded everyone's safety.

Additionally, refer back to my example of the backyard swimming pool. If a person has one, they are required to do everything within reason to secure that pool from outside parties that could accidentally do themselves harm. Generally, this means things such as locked gates and fences above the average persons height. If the government will hold private citizens to certain standards regarding attractive nuisances, why should we not expect to hold the government (in this case the city) and companies to the same standards? Is it that terribly unreasonable?

Fences, warning labels, owners/operator's manuals for cars/large equipemnt, and many other things are placed on this earth for no other reason than to guarantee the general person safety. Any company or public authority that decides that their money is worth more than the health of the general public doesn't deserve to be in business or governing.

I don't think a mere fence would have stopped those morons. They should have a decent fence, but they should not be held responsible for some stupid kid jumping off the building.
Now, if he had fallen on some innocent passer-by, that would have been a very interesting (and tragic) case!

rat:

trust me, I'm not saying you're not right about the law, or ethics of companies. And I can agree with your example of the pool... What disgusts me, is the fact that the father actually thinks he's entitled to sue somebody over what his son wittingly and willingly did.

A bit of personal responsibility would go a long way.

If it's the law, then fences should be put up, but these kids would have gotten their way no matter what you put up

From what I understand here, the attorney is the one that's filing the lawsuit against the companies to fix the problem, doesn't sound like he's going for a settlement for the boys lack of common sense.

If anyone thinks I'm wrong feel free to tell me so, this is just what I got from reading the article.

Oh, I missed that. I thought it was the parents initiating the lawsuit.
The important thing is that it's not the jumpers that are taking legal action. Sure it was a stupid risk, they knew that and took it anyway. That's their call. Protecting against accidents is reasonable, but it's impossible to protect people from themselves when they make a conscious decision to do something dangerous. No one should be obligated to try to do so either, unless those actions endager others (and I don't think there was a reasonable risk of that, in this case).

my ponit isn't just the fact that the company and city are required to put up fences, but that they should have prior to the first of these instances. it's negligence on their part, and tolerance of negligence that endangers the public isn't something i have a whole lot of.

additionally, these are kids we're talking about doing idiotic things. it's not exactly like they're of the maturity level to make the most informed of decisions. hell, when i was 13-14, i know i was jumping off of rooves and out of treehouses and such. was it intelligent? no. was it something that alot of us did without contemplating potential injury? yep. some people are inherrently more prone to risk-taking, some more prone to risk-aversion. those prone to risk-aversion tend to classify those prone to risk-taking as "idiots." that last part is simply an observation of tendencies, not a judgement on either party.

I can see your point rat, but they got away somehow without having them. That means not only should they put them in place, but something needs to be put into work to require all buildings in that area to have the same 'barriers' put around their buildings, not just the ones in question and not just the ones already built. That's something that would make a whole lot more sense, to make it a law for all of these types of buildings, and part of a final building inspection...plain and simple, can't 'operate' a building like these without a full inspection, and this should be part of the required tasks to pass that inspection. Along with what is already taking place.

I don't know the legal terminology for what I'm trying to say, and might be too tired to make sense, but hopefully someone gets the idea.

-I think what is happening is a good thing, because these situations need to change for the better (not to keep the jumpers off, but to make this place and others safer). And I think that this is a precaution that should be required by all buildings of this type, and those who's top story are open to the public.

I totally agree with you. Any tard can jump from building to building, but it takes skill and training to complete these moves with accuracy and safety. Even so a lot of it is dangerous- and of course the most dangerous/daring moves are the ones videotaped, and emulated.

btw not sure of this should have been a pm, but what is up with the free french fries? every post!



as for the kid, amazing that he is not dead, but to sue the building owner. just sad. i'll think i'll go stab myself with a kitchen knife and sue because it was so sharpe....lovely.

He's gone, don't worry about him.

"...you've just gotta let defective genes remove themselves from the pool..."

I wholeheartedly concur.

cheers! was getting annoying.

Too bad we don't have a Florida tag.

I guess this means when our friends jump off a bridge, we will all jump too.

This is the one of the stupidest things I ever heard. Do people not take danger seriously anymore?
I know if I did something like that as a kid, if the fall didn't kill me, my father would have for being too stupid to live.