Ill advised risky activity: at what point do we hold parents accountable? (e.g feeding wild deer)

[Tabarnak]

Richmond Park deer warning as families seen touching animals - BBC News

Unbelievably stupid behaviour. And I would say negligent. Children have been badly injured by deer e.g Deer attack: Girl, 7, gored by stag in London's Bushy Park - BBC News

Also recently a Mountain Rescue Team was called to England's highest mountain, Scafell Pike, because a child had become dangerously cold and wet , risking hypothermia. My Dc said 'isn't that negligence?' . Is it? To take a child to an altitude where the temperature is significantly colder than in the car park, on a very long uphill walk, into rain and mist, and with inadequate clothing.

Is it just stupidity and inexperience? Or negligence?

How did people get so idiotic and lacking in common sense?

Some people do seem to be just astounding thick! I'm really not sure where the line comes for negligence - the Scafell pike one maybe, depending on the details. In those two cases it seems likely the parents just didn't have a scooby-doo about the dangers they were walking into rather than intentionally neglecting their kids? Or maybe they just didnt care. The deer touchers appear to be trying to have a nice family day out but forgot to pack basic critical thinking in their picnic basket! That seems slightly more forgivable/less outright negligent than some of the things i see parents regularly doing like driving with their kids not strapped in and hanging their whole upper bodies out the car window, toddlers around pools with no supervision, really quite young kids just playing totally alone at the park, and kids with limitless unfettered access to the interent allowed to chat away with strangers. I feel like these ones are driven by selfishness and/or laziness, because it's just too much hassle to spend the effort needed to supervise their child adequately. It's surprising some parents manage to get their children safely into adulthood.

It's astonishing but people will do almost anything for a good photo.

I think spur of the moment lapses in judgement are probably understandable. Eg the deer one. Hopefully they thought about it more later and realised it was stupid.

The ones involving planning, ie not a quick lapse of judgement, are less comprehensible. Watersports without buoyancy aids or checking the forecast and tides. Mountain climbing in flip-flops. That kind of thing. I wouldn't prosecute, but I would make them do a mandatory safety course.

Yes - there's the adult with the camera, behind the deer.

I think 'a good picture' and everyone making 'content' is behind a lot of stupidity / inexperience too. The Lake District fells are full of people who have seen Striding Edge or Sharp Edge on TikTok or Insta, or heard of Scafell Pike for the first time and think 'yeah I can do that and get those pictures' when they have barely walked across a park before, cannot read a map, and have no idea what clothing or equipment they might need.

I picked up the 2025 Annual Report booklet from one of the Mountain Rescue Teams when making a donation to support them. MOST of the call outs were for people who were lost, cold, had 'lost their shoes and couldn't walk down' 'dog got hot and refused to walk further' and other entirely avoidable incidents. In the past the call outs have been for accidents such as falls resulting in injuries etc, that can happen to anyone however well equipped and responsible.

Hundreds and hundreds of hours of volunteer time.

See it on TikTok or Insta - off you go!

We were less aware of the foolish things people did in the past as there'd have been no footage.

Perhaps it's the constant taking of pictures and selfies that people seemed compelled to do with their phones which has led to this?

In the old days often by the time I had setup my tripod, applied light-sensitive emulsion to the glass plate and arranged the black fabric cover over my head any deer would have moved on...

There was a case in the Alps where the boyfriend was found responsible for a woman's death due to incompetence, so there would be precedence

This was completely different though. More akin to parents taking their children up Ben Nevis and leaving them in the snow to die, and not even bothering to summon assistance.

I see the group of deer like that and all I think of is “FENTONNNNNNN!!!!!”

Someone mentioned taking ill-dressed children up hold though. I see it as similar, mostly because children can't consent in the first place or be responsible for any preparations, so the responsibility with the parents is greater