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Why drivers in China intentionally kill the pedestrians they hit

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Re: Why drivers in China intentionally kill the pedestrians they hit

#201

Post by boyaka »

chaostheory wrote: post #162
gkanai wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last name first has nothing to do with trust. Japan is one of the highest-trust societies in the world (see crime stats) and last name comes first. I live in China and have lived 13 years in Japan so I know what I am talking about.

The order of the last name shows the importance of your family over yourself. Family is far more important over there because it better shields you from society, while simultaneously contributing to the ills of society, i.e. too much self interest vs concern for the whole society; leading to a very difficult to break circular pattern of corruption. Yes Japan is very different from China if not most of Asia. It's also…

The family name lineage is definitely important in Japan as well. Just look at all the Japanese companies named after their founder's family names e.g. Toyota (Toyoda), Mazda (Matsuda), Honda. Also, their main form of religion, Shinto, is basically the worship of ancestors.

Re: Why drivers in China intentionally kill the pedestrians they hit

#202

Post by tsotha »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #5
dmm wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When a pedestrian or cyclist is killed by a car in the US, so long as the driver is not drunk and does not leave the scene, the driver will almost never face criminal penalties. What we call car accidents are considered an unavoidable part of life to be resolved by civil courts and insurance payouts. I'd say say the US has a cultural mess regarding cars too.

Its crazy to me that California requires so little coverage, on the order of 30k. If you wipe out the sole bread winner of a household, they can expect to make something like 1yr or less of replaced income. In other countries, say canada, insurance minimum can be 1M .

The fact that you don't have a lot of insurance doesn't mean you're not liable for damages. If you hit someone with $30k insurance in CA and the court awards them $1M, you still owe $970,000.

Re: Why drivers in China intentionally kill the pedestrians they hit

#203

Post by lawnchair_larry »

ojbyrne wrote: post #146
sandworm101 wrote: post #49

Forgetting the laws, what sort of people can so casually kill like this? There are basic human instincts not to hurt people. Armies have to train soldiers to ignore these feelings because without training most won't kill even under combat situations. So when I see someone kill so casually I have to believe that they have rehearsed the scenario in their head beforehand. That means a large number of chinese people driv…

People who drive cars. There's a long standing history in the US where once you put somebody behind the wheel of a car, there's an increased disdain for people not in cars, and risks are commonly taken that threaten pedestrians and cyclists and other drivers. This just seems like a logical progression of cars in the US to cars in China.

I'll never understand you crazies who thinks cars and their drivers are evil. Try driving one sometime - you'll notice no urge to run over people.

Re: Why drivers in China intentionally kill the pedestrians they hit

#205

Post by maaku »

barry-cotter wrote: post #178
maaku wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a book called "on killing" that you should read.

The book is based on research that was flat made up by S.L.A. Marshall. There is no evidence he ever collected the data he used to spread that myth. On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society, Dave Grossman Quote From Wikipedia The book is based on SLA Marshall's studies from World War II, which proposed that contrary to popular perception,[1] the majority of soldiers in war do not ever…

Marshall is not the only source of data in the book.

Re: Why drivers in China intentionally kill the pedestrians they hit

#206

Post by seanmcdirmid »

maaku wrote: post #204
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but China was technically third-world (non-aligned) at that point.

Or it was 2nd world (non-free).

Albania was communist but was classic third-world given its rejection of the USSR. China would have been under the same umbrella in the 70s. Of course, now the cold war is over and the term doesn't make much sense in its original context.

Re: Why drivers in China intentionally kill the pedestrians they hit

#208

Post by developer1 »

guardiangod wrote: post #185
Xcelerate wrote: post #77

I could not finish this article. I have read about and seen a lot of disturbing things, but this bothers me far more than any horror movie or shock film ever could. The situation exposed in this article evidences something really fundamental about human nature: the banality of evil. That someone could run over a toddler and then reverse back and forth over them just so they only have to pay $50,000 instead of $400,00…

Yes it's sickening, and also broadly understood to be a logical thing to do in China. Let's play the devil's advocate and understand the motive behind it- The average annual wage of a Chinese citizen is $7,500 USD, whereas the average annual wage of an American is $45,000. Which means that $400,000 is worth 400,000 x 45,000 / 7,500 = $2,400,000 . And that's only over 23 years so far. You have to keep paying until the…

This. Frankly I don't understand these people who "don't get it". We're talking about the difference between moving on with your life with a guilty conscience, vs. having your entire life financially ruined due to injuring someone. I make $80k per year. If my country mandated > $100k per year for injuring someone, that's literally the rest of my life destroyed. I could not financially recover for the rest of my life. Ever. For what? An honest accident in which someone's leg is broken and they feign permanent disability?

Imagine you broke someone's leg. Would you rather kill the person and pay $1000, or spend the rest of your life in prison? Letting the person live and paying them $1000 isn't an option. You either get away scott-free, or ruin your life. I can completely understand a culture in which the reality of the consequences makes people choose the lesser punishment.

The solution isn't to increase the punishment for killing someone on the street. The solution is to abolish the ridiculous costs associated with merely injuring someone, especially if that injury comes from an accident.

Of course what's absolutely a joke is people acting all aghast about another country's culture from behind their white picket fences. You do realize that if you were born in their country, you would have the exact same perspective? What the fuck is with this high and mighty bullshit? Your upbringing in a privileged society doesn't make you better than those from less privileged societies, it just makes you privileged. Be thankful your day-to-day routine doesn't involve having to worry about the possibility of having to kill someone in order to keep your pristine life intact.

Re: Why drivers in China intentionally kill the pedestrians they hit

#209

Post by dang »

paulhauggis wrote: post #78
bottled_poe wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People a down-voting because the comment uses an appeal-to-emotion to vilify an entire culture.

Found the asshole that down voted it.

> Found the asshole

We've asked you many times to abide by the HN guidelines when commenting here. Instead you've been breaking them worse. Since you won't follow the rules, I've banned your account. If you don't want to be banned, you can always email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.

Re: Why drivers in China intentionally kill the pedestrians they hit

#210

Post by dang »

lawnchair_larry wrote: post #203
ojbyrne wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who drive cars. There's a long standing history in the US where once you put somebody behind the wheel of a car, there's an increased disdain for people not in cars, and risks are commonly taken that threaten pedestrians and cyclists and other drivers. This just seems like a logical progression of cars in the US to cars in China.

I'll never understand you crazies who thinks cars and their drivers are evil. Try driving one sometime - you'll notice no urge to run over people.

> you crazies

Personal attacks are not allowed on HN, regardless of how wrong you think someone is.

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