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The day I accidentally killed a little boy

bbc.co.uk

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Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#101

Post by adventured »

tinco wrote: post #63
weavie wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you expound on how the culture and mindset is different? I can imagine what it would be, but don't want to just jump to stereotypes..

In Europe you generally have to be 18 to get your drivers license, and rigorous study is required to obtain a drivers license. 40-50 hours of driving with an instructor (depending on your talent), and a test that I as a reasonably intelligent person had to take three times to pass. Note that this makes getting your license fairly expensive (on the order of 1500 to 2000 euro), some parents save up for this like Americ…

It's infeasible for a lot of reasons.

The €1500 cost would be meaningless in the US for most people. The median parents purchase a vehicle for their children directly or otherwise assist them in acquiring one, at far greater cost. That level of license cost wouldn't have any impact for the average person.

Where those variations would have a huge impact, is for poor people, overwhelmingly black and hispanic in the US. Any attempt to implement that licensing approach would be called out as being racist or otherwise discriminatory. I'm not exaggerating or making light of it, I'm being dead serious. That's exactly what would occur. I'll leave it to others to debate whether it would in fact be racist, I'm sure some (most?) of that opinion is determined by one's position in society and how each person feels discriminated against or not.

The US has a substantial bifurcation between the top ~60% and the bottom ~40%, roughly speaking. The top 60% is overwhelmingly white + asian. The gap between access to quality driving instruction / education, the ability to pay licensing costs of €1500, etc. would separate along that division (ie white/asian and black/hispanic). It would impact poorer people in a significant way, and barely impact non poor people.

If the US were to adopt a stricter approach, to convince everyone that it was fair, it'd be necessary to put meaningful resources into providing greater driving education opportunities to poorer people, and probably adjusting the licensing cost based on household income (if your family makes $30,000 the fee is $250; if your family makes $90,000 the fee is $1500 or whatever).

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#102

Post by lr4444lr »

friedButter wrote: post #72

How do you guys feel about the sort of mob justice that happens in such cases in India? She would have been lucky to get out alive since the neighbours\police would have beaten her to a pulp, but having been punished for it, likely would not have faced so much guilt through her life right?

I doubt a mob made of the entire earth could assuage a good person's guilt for having - albeit inadvertently - killed an innocent child.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#103

Post by upofadown »

maxhallinan wrote: post #83
chris_7 wrote: post #75

If someone fires a gun randomly down the street, not aiming at anyone, but happens to hit someone, they'd certainly be arrested. Drive a multi-thousand-pound projectile down the street, kill someone, and it's just an "accident". The default needs to move to charging every driver involved in a fatal crash with manslaughter. Currently the police won't even perform basic investigative work that would make any charge pos…

>If someone fires a gun randomly down the street, not aiming at anyone, but happens to hit someone, they'd certainly be arrested. Drive a multi-thousand-pound projectile down the street, kill someone, and it's just an "accident". That is not the correct analogy for this accident. The correct analogy is "Someone runs across a live firing range." The shooters would not be charged.

… which probably should be further modified to "Someone runs across a live firing range in front of a row of houses where kids live".

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#104

Post by Xeoncross »

phkahler wrote: post #77
Xeoncross wrote: post #50

Such a sad story. > "The voice said in this very biblical, Old Testament, angry way" Is this what people consider "biblical"? An angry person? I've spent years reading the Pentateuch, writings, and new testament and I don't see this voice (I assume she means "God") as angry at all. Quite the opposite actually, as the narrative is [to the Jews] about God restoring them despite their rebellion and sin and [to the Chris…

>> Is this what people consider "biblical"? An angry person? I've spent years reading the Pentateuch, writings, and new testament... No, it's the old testament god. The one who punished Adam and Eve, the one who decided humanity was such a disgrace he flooded the world to purge them - that angry god.

Is God not able to try and judge people just as we do? If someone murders another, humanity has long believed it ok to imprison or execute them for their crimes. I fail to see how an all-knowing God is not qualified to make the same judgement.

> "Then the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. The LORD was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart.. ...and the earth was filled with violence. - Genesis 6:5-11

That aside, there are more as many acts of mercy in these stories than judgement. The idea of an "Old Testament God" and "New Testament God" is rejected by all the Jews and Christians I know.

The New Testament is rejected by most Jews. Yet, even without this "merciful God" of the NT, we can see from the Old Testament writings that they regard God as one whos' "Loving kindness and mercy endures forever".

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#105

Post by toyg »

chris_7 wrote: post #75

If someone fires a gun randomly down the street, not aiming at anyone, but happens to hit someone, they'd certainly be arrested. Drive a multi-thousand-pound projectile down the street, kill someone, and it's just an "accident". The default needs to move to charging every driver involved in a fatal crash with manslaughter. Currently the police won't even perform basic investigative work that would make any charge pos…

This young woman wasn’t speeding. Throwing her in jail would have done nothing but increase the amount of suffering in this world. She is being punished every day of her life as it is.

In Italy they have introduced the crime of “automobilistic manslaughter”. It made no difference whatsoever. Nobody wakes up thinking “Today I’ll drive fast and maybe kill someone”, and nobody drives thinking “oh I must be careful or I’ll murder someone”. People just go from A to B as fast as possible. There is only so much fear of the Law you can put into them, and it doesn’t work at all when the triggering event (death) is so huge that most brains simply cannot process it or imagine it.

What really makes a difference is trying to build an environment where people don’t drive at all, or they do in segregated roads away from pedestrian traffic, as well has having speed bumps and so on.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#106

Post by warent »

chris_7 wrote: post #75

If someone fires a gun randomly down the street, not aiming at anyone, but happens to hit someone, they'd certainly be arrested. Drive a multi-thousand-pound projectile down the street, kill someone, and it's just an "accident". The default needs to move to charging every driver involved in a fatal crash with manslaughter. Currently the police won't even perform basic investigative work that would make any charge pos…

That doesn't make sense. She was within the speed limit and if you go too far below it then you can be ticketed. Arguably, your proposal would also encourage more hit-and-runs as well.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#108

Post by TeMPOraL »

ballenf wrote: post #74
oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #3

You have to feel terribly sad for everyone involved here. The only place the blame can rest is humanity's desire to mix very fast, solid vehicles with very slow, squishy pedestrians in the same spaces. We're way too far down that rabbit-hole to address it, but hopefully self-driving cars (and less polluting cars, too) will start to reverse the damage done by the automobile, in the not-too distant future.

No innovation can survive one-sided scrutiny of this type: you should at least factor in the number of children saved because of the availability of fast-moving vehicles to get them timely help. Given the steady rise of childhood life expectancies during our fall down this "rabbit hole", your logic breaks down pretty catastrophically. At least without more support than comparing the relative squishiness of these two…

That's a surprisingly good point, and it's the first time I've seen it brought up in discussions about car accidents here.

I wonder if there are statistics out there estimating the amount of lives saved thanks to quick response enabled by cars (e.g. ambulances).

OTOH, this can get quickly confounded with the second-order impact of cars - e.g. that medical facilities would be closer to people were it not for the possibility to deliver them there by car.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#109

Post by lr4444lr »

peatmoss wrote: post #96
dudul wrote: post #25

"The lead officer came and told me that they were not arresting me - there was no indication that I was negligent or distracted or impaired in any way - but he gave me a little lecture saying, "This child died, that's a terrible thing, you need to make sure that you never do this again."" Was I the only one shocked by this? I mean, a little kid died and she's not arrested at least to conduct an investigation? How did…

Not sure why this is being downvoted. Whether you agree with the values expressed or not, it is a fact that people who kill people with their car rarely face any sort of legal repercussion. And yeah, I don’t think the fragility of the agent of death is a reason not to conduct even a cursory investigation into whether there might have been factors related to the crash. Was there anything in the car that might indictat…

It's being downvoted because there is no reason to arrest the person. "They looked for skid marks on the road and took some measurements", and presumably they concluded there was no foul play.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#110

Post by upofadown »

friedButter wrote: post #72

How do you guys feel about the sort of mob justice that happens in such cases in India? She would have been lucky to get out alive since the neighbours\police would have beaten her to a pulp, but having been punished for it, likely would not have faced so much guilt through her life right?

It would depend on any reasons for that mob justice. If the authorities (the courts?) could be expected to take no action in any case or in a corrupt way then street justice might be the only justice available.
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