The case of Treon Moorer deserves some comment, since it's anything BUT typical.
Treon Moorer was born with a medical condition that causes her to have frequent seizures. She apparantly turned on the shower in her apartment, but turned on the hot water faucet only. Several minutes later, she either tested the water temperature or got into the shower without testing it, and had a seizure as a result of being hit by the hot water. However, when she had the seizure, she fell INTO the shower rather than onto the floor outside the shower and was further scalded by the hot water.
So, like every accident, there was no ONE single cause. Rather, you have to have a confluence of contributing factors that lead to the final outcome. First off, most people don't have seizures that render them helpless to get out of a dangerous situation. Secondly, most people will test the shower water temperature with their hand in advance to ensure they don't get burned by water who's temperature is unknown. And, finally, in this case, the woman fell into the shower rather than anywhere else on the floor.
In my case, I keep my water temperature at 130 degrees simply because if someone does scald themselves in my building, they're going to blame me for the water being too hot rather than blame themselves for not being careful. If I were living in my own house, I wouldn't have any qualms about setting the water temperature to 135 or 140. After all, we expose ourselves to much higher temperatures than that every time we boil, or cook or deep fry something, and yet most of us manage to survive our kitchens. Also, it's real easy to get food hotter than 140 degrees in a microwave, and the worst that normally happens is a burnt tongue.
I see this as just another example of litigation with a profit motive in mind.
