SXSW: Not that America's overly litigious or anything

The death of a person you love because of a drunk driver is a terrible thing. And it's one of those rare occasions when it's easy to apportion blame - the person who got wasted and drove a car into a crowd, right?

Apparently not.

The family of one of the victims of the drunk driver at SXSW is suing, erm, the festival organisers for not making their festival dickwad-in-a-car proof:

Among several wrongful deaths lawsuits was one by the family of Steven Craenmehr, a Dutch music executive who was riding a bike when struck. His widow and mother allege that SXSW organizers skimped on traffic safeguards while packing people downtown to hear more than 2,000 bands.

"A festival organizer or traffic design consultant of ordinary intelligence would have anticipated the danger," the lawsuit says.

Oh, yeah, they're also suing the City Of Austin for not making its streets able to cope with tanked-up drivers.

The courts, naturally, will decide on the validity of this case, but... seriously? Somehow SXSW and the City Of Austin has to wrap the event in so much bubblewrap and prophylactic that they should be able to guarantee that nothing bad will happen there ever?

To lose a relative in awful circumstances is unimaginably horrible. Spitting out a bunch of lawsuits at anyone who happened to be vaguely connected to the death doesn't do much by way of legacy, though.