The victim mentality

On Sunday a 16 year old kid was killed in the Netherlands in a freak accident.  Karim Saoudy was coming back from a fun day with his classmates.  He was on a double decker bus, sitting on the upper level.  He stuck his head out the roof hatch in order to videotape the trip.  But then the bus passed through a tunnel, Karim was hit and died of his injuries.

It's a sad story, and an accident which could have been prevented.

Ramazan Bal, one of his friends, was interviewed on the news, and said what I think is the essence of the victim mentality.  There was no escort on the upper level of the bus, only below.  

"If that person had traveled above, than nobody, I think, would have dared to open the hatch.  On that moment it didn't occur to any of us to say that it was dangerous.  We were all so full of the fun day."

According to Ramazan, they knew it was a dangerous thing to do.  What they were missing, apparently, was not the sense to know that they should refrain from something dangerous, but the adult who would tell them so.

Source: AD.nl (Dutch)

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