To outsiders, the US legal system can sometimes be every bit as baffling as its gun laws. Both, in their different ways, are underpinned by a sense of entitlement. The prevailing mood among American litigants, egged on by fee-seeking lawyers, is that when something goes wrong, someone, preferably a big corporation with deep pockets, has to be held responsible.

Thus, the family of a child killed in a car crash have been seeking to sue computer-giant Apple. This was because the driver of the vehicle that smashed into the back of the family car was making a video call using Apple’s proprietary FaceTime technology. Apple was alleged to be responsible because it had developed, but not included in its program, a patch that would have disabled FaceTime when the phone was in motion. One good reason for this was that cab or bus passengers might well have wanted to make a video call. The company understandably took the view that any reasonable driver would not attempt to use the program while in charge of a vehicle.

It may actually just have been a way of expressing their grief, rather than the hope of winning a huge award from the world’s wealthiest company that motivated the family. But then they might as well have also sued the automaker that produced both cars, at the very least for not installing automatic-braking technology on the vehicle that hit the other car.

As it was, the US court threw out the claim, making the point that it was not the FaceTime program but the user that had brought about the tragedy. This is the point on which the powerful US gun lobby and the court coincided. It is the argument of the National Rifle Association that it is not guns that kill people but the people with guns. Very clearly it is not mobile phones that kill people but idiots who use them when all their attention is required elsewhere, most obviously when they are driving.

But American courts are not always so commonsensical. Some 20 years ago, a female passenger was choking on a piece of food on an internal US flight. All efforts to expel the item failed. The crew found a doctor onboard who, using a plastic cutlery knife, performed a tracheotomy and saved the woman’s life. She later sued the doctor for performing an operation she had not authorized which had caused her to have a disfiguring neck scar. In a judgment that still stuns many, the jury found for the woman and awarded her substantial damages. Ever since this insane decision, doctors will have been reluctant to reveal their presence on airline flights.

More generally, the unwillingness of people to take responsibility for their own actions is not necessarily confined to the US and is actually often officially encouraged. The constant references to traffic “accidents” suggests that a road smash had absolutely nothing to do with the appalling driving of any of those involved. As we know to our terrible cost here in the Kingdom, which has one of the world’s highest road fatality figures, crashes are caused by human or technical failures that could have easily been avoided.

The FaceTiming man who caused the death of that child was the only one to blame. Trying to incriminate others only diminishes the enormity of his deadly stupidity.