Through his mailing list
Red Rock Eater in late 1999,
Phil Agre shared the
surprising (to me) news that the
National Park Service has discovered a serious problem: increasing numbers of visitors to the
Grand Canyon FALL IN. The number of people who fall into the canyon (per year, I
guess) is rising more rapidly than the total number of visitors...
The best theory the Park Service has come up with, is that Americans live their lives in a cloud of what Tsarren just called stupid consumer warnings, which they tend to ignore, and that because a lot of harmful stuff does in fact get taken off the market, they assume nothing they encounter could possibly be dangerous. So when they see a warning sign on the edge of the canyon they just ignore it and walk right in.