On Seatbelts, Eggshell Skulls and Attractive Nuisances

While eating lunch with the guys here at the office today, the subject of seatbelts and who is responsible for passengers wearing them came up. We got into an argument about whether it is the driver's responsibility or the passenger's responsibility. Only one way to solve this argument - walk over the court house and ask the librarian!

After a great deal of research we concluded it is the driver's responsibility to provide correct equipment to each passenger, and the passenger's responsibility to use it. However this also opened up the concept of standard of care, which is a rule used in negligence cases to determine what level of care a reasonable person would or should provide to another in a given situation. This is all new to me, I had no idea old English law would consider what an average person would do - what what do you think an average person is like when it comes to caring for others?

Consider for example the eggshell skull doctrine, a rule by which an injury caused to someone who is medically predisposed to injuries by someone that had no previous knowledge of the condition and using force that would not normally injure someone is still considered negligence on the part of the attacker. Or the attractive nuisance doctrine, wherein a landowner is responsible for injuries to children who are trespassing if the children are trespassing because something on the property is attractive to children. It kind of makes sense but suddenly I'm feeling a little heavier from all this responsibility.

And here I thought it was a simple matter of go when green and stop when red. Oh no, you have to worry about cleaning up all that broken glass next to the pile of old candy boxes too.