“An iPod has been blamed for the death of an Australian woman in London,” The Age reports. “The Evening Standard newspaper quoted Ms McMillan’s best friend, Jacques Poullard, as saying she may still have been alive if she hadn’t been listening to the iPod while riding her bike. She was obsessed by that thing.'”
The Age reports, “I never said anything to her about wearing the iPod but now I think if she hadn’t had it on she might have heard the (truck). ‘I hope people will think twice about cycling while wearing headphones.'”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Personal responsibility. Common sense. Remember those concepts? They still work today. Who decided to listen to something (possibly too loudly) while biking on the road? Obviously not the iPod. Still, this tragedy presents an opportunity for a reminder: Make sure you can hear what’s going on around you if you’re listening to your iPod while doing something that might require hearing to help prevent injury.
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is this another ..”blood on Apple’s iPod hands”, story? this time it’s literally…becareful folks, use common sense….
I bought a drink from a bar and it made me piss myself. Who do I sue?
Damn them iPod thingies! I always said they were up to no good…
just to be sure i’ve got this…
if i had been hit by a car while rollerblading and listening to my Walkman then Sony would be to blame for making said Walkman capable of playing too loudly?
i’m just trying to clarify the extent of the responsiblity of Apple Computer and the responsiblity of the end user.
Ahh that’s nothing!!
How about the girl who killed her boyfriend with a iPod?
http://www.jengajam.com/r/Killed-With-iPod
Now that’s a story!
unfortunate dilemma. a lot of the things that make ipods so damn important: jogging, cycling, living through your girlfriends diatribes… can be dangerous with the little life saver. or life ender in this case.
i guess it’s one more reason to just pay the gym membership fees. mortality rates on stationary bikes are pretty low. same with treadmills. although the gym won’t fix you’re girlfriend problems (unless you find a new one while you’re there).
PS I wouldn’t bike around London streets at an aerobic pace even with unimpeded hearing, not that doing so means this woman deserved to be hit by a truck, but that is a bit stupid. I wonder where it happened. I would stick to parks and pedestrian walkways for outdoor cyclling, but maybe that’s not allowed. I don’t know.
Guns don’t kill people, iPods kill people, and so do cheeseburgers, ice cream, smoking, lack of exercise, juggling hand grenades, kicking lions in the balls, blah, blah, blah.
“Everything… Everything gives you CANCER…
Everything… Everything gives you CANCER…
There’s no cure, there’s no answer…
Everything… gives you CANCER!![b/]
-Joe Jackson
before we get any more negative comments about blaming apple, did you guys notice that NO ONE HERE BLAMED APPLE! bloody hell. So quick to talk about how everyone else is a law suit happy idiot you get on this poor dead woman’s case for something she didn’t even do. Her friend’s warning to other cyclists even said heaphones instead of iPods, being fair because this issue is caused by any portable music player. Kudos to her friends and whatever family she may have for not being irrational law suit happy douche bags. and shame on you for jumping down their throat anyway.
I wonder what band/artist she was listening too. Yep, I think they should be sued for manslaughter.
good point, jay… but just wait. there’ll be plenty of local news reporters and editors who, looking for fill for the 5:30 news, will latch onto this and will spare no expense at pointing out that the device in question was an APPLE iPOD that she was listening to and not point out that the problem was the misuse of a portable music device and not a particular product.
there’s already been such pointless lawsuits.
I see cyclists doing this all the time. For those that haven’t been to London, it isn’t a nice New World city with wide streets and a grid pattern. Traffic comes at you from all over the place, and you can’t see in all directions at once. To impede your hearing is asking for trouble.
I feel sorry for this girl, but sooner or later someone was going to die here thanks to their iPod addiction. Hopefully other cyclists will now pay heed.
In Arizona, a heavy cycling state, it is illegal to ride or drive any vehicle with headphones on. You can be ticketed as it impairs your driving/cycling ability.
It is sad that a fellow cyclist yielded to the siren song of an audio device while cycling and paid the ultimate price.
Peace be to her soul.
Natural selection.
“An iPod has been blamed for the death of an Australian woman in London,” The Age reports”
Jay, did you actually READ what the newspaper printed? Who makes the freakin’ iPod? Sony?
Im sick of hearing ‘iPod blamed”.
Thats the problem, everyone wants to blame other people, and now inanimate objects for their problems and for the things that happen in their lives.
Foregt about personal responsibility.
And how many uncountable deaths have been caused over the years by people paying attention to tuning their radio?
I remember stories like this one when the walkman craze swept through. As a cyclist I can attest to the lure of zipping along with the wind in your face and a stirring soundtrack. It is indeed a recipe for sudden impact.
That Joe Jackson quote brings to mind this one from Blues Traveler
I’m quitting cigarette smoking
It’s bad for me, but anyway
I don’t think the tv was joking
When it told me this, but anyway
The newsman said not to sit on strange toilet seats
It’s my life he’s trying to save, but anyway
I found out that I’ve got eye cancer
Too many television waves, but anyway
Does that mean deaf people can’t safely operate a bicycle too?
What if i see a good looking girl along the road and get distracted?
Or what about people so absorbed in their cell-phone conversations that they ignore eveything in their environment?
Life happens. Deal with it (or life stops happening). It’s a simple as that. Sorry if that sounds cold, but it’s the way the world works… and ignoring it for the sake of Political Correctness doesn’t improve your chances of survival.
I knew a kid that was hit by a train while eating a carrot.
Rainy Day,
In your examples, you should sue:
Your parents and/or the Doctor that birthed you
The good looking girl
The person on the cell phone, the cell phone provider, the cell phone manufacturer, and maybe even descendants of Alexander Graham Bell
At least if you’re in America that is. You know, Land of the Free, Home of the Litigious, where the words “personal” and “responsibility” seldom go hand in hand.
iPods don’t kill people – people choosing to listen to their iPods without common sense regard and attention to what’s going around them can end up dead. MDN is right on track here.
Blaming an inanimate object like the iPod for something like this is like saying a discarded cigarette is to blame for the apartment fire that killed three people – the cigarette didn’t light itself and toss itself onto the couch, now, did it?
Does anybody here remember to phonebone? It was a auditory device that rested around the neck and transmitted sound to the auditory canal via vibration of human breast plate through the skeletal system into the ear drum,. The advantage was it allowed you to listen to music but did not isolate the ears from external sounds. They used to sell through the back pages of Popular Science and Popular Mechanics. From what I understand the fidelity was reasonable. Can’t help but think a device such as this could have mitigated this and future tragedies. Some Ipod accessory maker could probably make a kill… er large sums resurrecting such a device.
iDon’t,
Absolutely priceless imagery!