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Comment by throwmamatrain | Hacker News Reader

It's obvious you've never been to a place that has a wall of tripods setup. It doesn't have to do with being stabbed by a tripod, it has to do with a human taking up way more space than they should be in a crowded area. You're free to take up as much space as you like, but if you don't like people being upset at you (rightfully so?) then don't?

Let's take your tripping argument at it's face value, does tripping + trains sound like a good idea?

The better take is, if you don't like the rules you can simply leave.

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> t doesn't have to do with being stabbed by a tripod, it has to do with a human taking up way more space than they should be

That was not the argument that was put forth.

> does tripping + trains sound like a good idea?

Yes, I've often seen people trip and fly 6 metres through the air in front of a train.

> The better take is, if you don't like the rules you can simply leave.

That's just a silly discussion stopper. As I already said in my previous comment, there are many more possible options than a "strict rule of no tripods". These kind of sites exist for people to enjoy their hobby and heritage, and the smart and empathic course of action is to enable that for as many people as possible, and if that includes tripods, then so be it, and that should be accommodated as best as possible. "Strictly no tripods", finger-wagging, and rulebook-thumping is unconstructive at best.

The original comment wasn't about if tripods should be allowed or not but people using them despite not being allowed.

Have you been to that place? Because it sounds to me that you want to solve the issue of people breaking rules by allowing them in the first place, when you might not even know any specifics of the environment where it's applied?

People using tripods are less likely to be aware of their surroundings than those who are holding their cameras -- think about it -- if you're using a tripod, you're probably peering into the viewfinder and hyperfocused on fine-tuning intricate settings on your camera to set up your tripod shot, right? If you're holding the camera in your hands, you at least have a part of your brain focusing on making sure you don't drop it or it doesn't get bumped out of your hands.

People like to complain about "health and safety gone mad" but there's usually a psychological component to blanket-banning things. It's usually the path of least resistance.

That sounds like an extremely flimsy post-hoc explanation to me.

> People like to complain about "health and safety gone mad" but there's usually a psychological component to blanket-banning things. It's usually the path of least resistance.

That doesn't mean it's the right thing to do, or even that it's the sensible thing to do.

In addition, after having lived in several different countries, I found that the extreme institutional distrust of everyone to act even vaguely sensible is rather specific to the UK, as is the almost gleeful willingness of the British people to enforce these kind of rules on others even in the most pedantic of circumstances. Other countries with fairly strong Health & Safety cultures – mostly UK-infuenced countries like Ireland or NZ – also have some tendencies, but people also tend to be more flexible and apply at least some judgement in specific cases, which is much rarer in the UK.

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