Here’s a head-scratcher: what do you do if you accidentally run headfirst into a wall at a museum, hurting yourself quite badly in the process?
If you answered “slink away as fast as your broken body will carry you, never to speak of it again”, I’d hazard a guess that you’d find yourself in the majority.
If you answered “sue the museum, of course”, then you might get along swell with Dean Smith, a man who did exactly that – both the running into a wall bit, and the suing bit.
At Melbourne‘s Scienceworks museum there is an interactive exhibit where you can race a virtual version of 400m Olympic gold medallist Cathy Freeman on a 10m dual-lane track.
That’s where Smith did himself some mischief in June last year, after, he admits, getting “a bit competitive“.
He spoke to Fairfax about the incident, which left him with crushed and fractured vertebrae, a fractured occipital bone and rib, and a loss of feeling in his arms, hands and fingers. He’d had one warm-up go, and then:
“All these little things made me think I could beat her, I got a bit competitive, thinking ‘I can take on Cathy Freeman.“I realised I couldn’t stop after the finishing line. I thought ‘what am I going to hit?’, I couldn’t see it because it was all so dark.“Then when I was 30cm from the wall I saw what was going to stop me.”
The museum has declined to comment due to the active legal proceedings, but Smith’s lawyer, Nick Korkliniewski, told Fairfax:
“Mr Smith was enticed to run as fast as he could in a poorly lit exhibit with only a very short stopping distance at the end of the race, no warnings or appropriate signage.”
Although he seems to be on the road to recovery, Smith says he still feels pain in his neck and back, and he hasn’t worked since the accident. The case is still ongoing.
In the meantime, visitors to Scienceworks: you probably cannot beat Cathy Freeman. For the sake of your spine, please don’t try.
sorry, couldn’t resist
Source: The Age.
Image: Getty.
