It's *your* responsibility

One of the most apparently innocuous aspects of the weekly grocery shop is something I find really irritating and makes me keenly aware on a regular basis what a topsy-turvy world we've created for ourselves.

It's the warning on the travelator between the ground and first floor levels at Asda Trafford.

A model of high technology, Asda have installed detectors at the top and bottom of each travelator and, when anyone comes within range, the detectors initiate a recorded woman's voice saying "Approaching landing level; please take care." The detectors are finely tuned and can distinguish people standing only a few inches apart. The message is played for each person detected and when walking around that end of the store there is an almost constant background noise of "Approaching landing level; please take care...Approaching landing level; please take care...Approaching landing level; please take care."

How much money it cost to install I have no idea, but Asda clearly believed it was money well spent to ensure that not only had they done everything possible to avoid a customer falling off the end of the moving walkway and suing them for negligence, but also each individual customer would, as far as possible, hear their own personal message. But negligence? Like it's not their own responsibility, having stepped onto the device, to maintain sufficient awareness of where they are to know when the end is nigh.

Not so very long ago, it would have been sufficient to install a (silent!) sign saying something like "end of travelator approaching - face forward." Indeed airports still seem to manage perfectly well with this simple measure - I have not yet heard a verbal warning in an airport and I hope I never do. And of course, before the advent of such signs we had something called "common sense" which imbued everyone with the ability to face the right way, watch out for the end of an escalator or travelator, and step off it on their own like real grown up people. What's more, if they tripped up off the end, they would most likely have thought "stupid me," got up and walked on.

In recent years we've heard a lot about "human rights" but not much about human responsibilities. Like taking responsibility for your own actions and not looking for someone else to blame when something happens to you that you should have foreseen, or could have avoided with a bit of thought. I despair sometimes, wondering how today's kids will survive growing up in a "warning environment" where they are never expected to fend, or even think, for themselves. Where they learn to expect to be told what to do at every step of every process. Like when the landing level is approaching.