The day I accidentally killed a little boy • Hacker News Board

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#181

Post by seanmcdirmid » Tue, Jan 09, 2018, 4:04 PM UTC

joosters wrote: post #163

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has that ever happened before in the American or other western legal system? It seems highly unlikely that no one would be assigned blame. Heck, we already have cars driven for us (taxis) and the blame for an accident is attributed to the driver, that wouldn’t change if the driver was a computer, the legal syste, wouldn’t simply shutdown.

Well, it happened in the original article. The driver was not charged with killing someone. Even if blame is cast, in the autonomous future that blame would be upon a company, or multiple companies, whose legal departments will spend great effort diverting the blame onto other people or other companies. No one individual will be charged with killing someone, and no one person will have a death on their conscience.

You are conveniently leaving out civil liability. Yes, the self driving car won’t be put in jail because it didn’t have a murderous intent or wasn’t criminally negligent (e.g. drunk). But damn, if it kills someone, at least the insurance company will have to pay up (as it most definitely did in this case); kill more than a few people with your self driving car and you can bet there will be a recall, well, lawsuits, massive hits to financial performance, and so on. Death has consequences.

It really is the same with doctor malpractice, the doctor doesn’t go to jail because their patient died because they made a mistake. Transforming civil negligence into criminal negligence as you seem to be hinting at would be a horrible system.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#182

Post by danvasquez29 » Tue, Jan 09, 2018, 4:05 PM UTC

jordanmoconnor wrote: post #2

I once worked a summer job at a state park in Western, NY. One of the employees there was a leather-skinned rough type that mostly kept to himself. One day, I'm not sure how it was brought up, he remarked to me that he once killed a 22 year-old man in a construction accident when he was operating a large crane. It rocked his world, and he was never the same. I can't imagine living with that amount of regret and anxie…

I really enjoyed (maybe not the best word...appreciated) the film "Manchester By the Sea" for reasons that this story reminds me of. My wife and some friends who have seen it said it was 'boring' and that 'nothing happened'. To me, the fact that 'nothing happened' was a very much the point; There was no grand character arc because for most people you just don't ever come back from an event like that. There is no major turnaround and everything is all better moment. You learn to live and maybe find some areas of your life that don't quite suck 24/7 if you can, but that may be all that's possible. I found it to be a very 'real' human story that isn't often told well.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#183

Post by zuppy » Tue, Jan 09, 2018, 4:05 PM UTC

asow92 wrote: post #147

lylejohnson wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I'm not trying to be snarky, but I still don't see it.

It is, because enough people upvoted it. If you don't agree, flag it. If enough people do that, it will be removed, if not, it means it belongs here.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#184

Post by mcguire » Tue, Jan 09, 2018, 4:06 PM UTC

Steltek wrote: post #156

mattlondon wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1 This seems to be a common excuse from people in the US "Oh yeah - well - of course you could do in such a small place - the US is just too big for to happen!" I looked up some stats for the inevitable "But the US is bigger than that! We simply cannot solve this problem!" replies. The EU is pretty big too, but the fatality rate is half of that in the US despite being of comparable land-area. US road fatalities per…

Not to detract from your point but the US Federal government, shockingly, is incapable of passing necessary regulations and the Constitution forbids a State from passing their own versions. For instance, vehicle inspections, licensing standards, safety equipment, etc are all set at the Federal level. Cities can't forbid oversized trucking, require truck side guards, etc. Likewise, stupendous amounts of Federal and St…

Vehicle inspections, at least, differ between states; AL doesn't currently require one annually. California has long had much stronger environmental regulations.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#185

Post by baxtr » Tue, Jan 09, 2018, 4:06 PM UTC

BearGoesChirp wrote: post #155

All the people talking about being unable to handle/comprehend the death of their child, and especially the one line of conversations about the impact of losing one child when you have many more, made me think about something. For most of human history, losing some children was expected. Child mortality rates for most of our history have been abysmal. As species, what impact did that have on us? Child abuse has a lon…

My mother lost one of her siblings (a small boy of 4) 65 years ago. She still talks about it and becomes very sad. I think life was just much much crueler and a lot lot worse than it is today.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#186

Post by Xeoncross » Tue, Jan 09, 2018, 4:07 PM UTC

ajuc wrote: post #133

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…

Well, half the Old Testament is one tribe murdering another, and God either doesn't care, or support one side (usually the victorious one - if it's Jews it's because they were nice, if it's not Jews it's because Jews were sinful at that particular moment :) ). He tells Saul (if I remember correctly) to murder subjugated people, women and children included, so at that moment to any sane person God is actually acting a…

> half the Old Testament is one tribe murdering another

That hasn't changed, it's only gotten worse. A huge percentage of this world kills, riots, and is violent. Is God supposed to handcuff everyone?

God's primary purpose isn't to keep everyone safe in a little sealed box where they can't hurt anything. However, one day he will put an end to to sin and evil once and for all. The reason he doesn't is that he continues to extend mercy to as many people as he knows will take it before that time comes.

(Also, tribe is the wrong word. Many of these countries/civilizations had millions of people in them with wars being fought between armies of hundreds of thousands of soldiers.)

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#187

Post by saiya-jin » Tue, Jan 09, 2018, 4:08 PM UTC

peatmoss wrote: post #47

bryanlarsen wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"We're way too far down that rabbit-hole to address it" That's BS. Sweden has essentially zero pedestrian fatalities annually, and its overall traffic fatality rate is well under a quarter that of the US. There are two main components: reducing speed limits and spending money on infrastructure. Both of these are anathema in the US, but the refusal to do so is borderline criminal, IMO. http://www.visionzeroinitiative.…

Reducing speed limits and designing roadways to discourage high speeds. But yeah, I like to measure annual traffic fatalities in 9/11s. Here in the US, we typically do >10 of them per year. We toppled the governments of two countries, created a whole new department of our federal government, and continue to advance prosthetics at a breakneck pace to fix the men and women we send to be disfigured overseas as a respons…

yes the usual effect of panic when one plane falls but complete ignorance when thousands die on roads every year, and many more end up crippled for rest of their lives.

as for war efforts, it is a very good business to few. they are few relative to the rest of the country, but their influence on politics is profound, hence the result.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#188

Post by upofadown » Tue, Jan 09, 2018, 4:08 PM UTC

toyg wrote: post #105

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’…

The post you are responding do does not say anything about throwing anyone in jail, just that there should be an automatic charge of manslaughter. Then the courts would decide...

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#189

Post by pixl97 » Tue, Jan 09, 2018, 4:08 PM UTC

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #26

bitexploder wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just back of the envelope math here, but I think it will cost the US a significant amount more dollars per fatality reduction. We have a huge number more cars and a very different culture and driving mindset. One relative small country with a pretty singular culture and a much, much smaller amount of roads is just going to have an easier time addressing the issue. It is still worth pursuing, but the scale of…

Save for the interstate highway infrastructure, most roads are done at the state or county level anyway. If you simply start doing this stuff a roads are upgraded (some can be done now and might bring in money), you aren't really spending lots more. You can change the driving culture and mindset, starting by designing roads that generally cause folks to drive slower, implemented at next upgrade. You can more strictly…

> Broken_Hippo 1 hour ago [-]

Save for the interstate highway infrastructure, most roads are done at the state or county level anyway. If you simply start doing this stuff a roads are upgraded (some can be done now and might bring in money), you aren't really spending lots more. You can change the driving culture and mindset, starting by designing roads that generally cause folks to drive slower, implemented at next upgrade

You mean you can get voted out of office for implementing these policies.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#190

Post by jasonswett » Tue, Jan 09, 2018, 4:09 PM UTC

BearGoesChirp wrote: post #155

All the people talking about being unable to handle/comprehend the death of their child, and especially the one line of conversations about the impact of losing one child when you have many more, made me think about something. For most of human history, losing some children was expected. Child mortality rates for most of our history have been abysmal. As species, what impact did that have on us? Child abuse has a lon…

Steven Pinker's book The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined addresses most of this stuff. Super interesting book. Seems like things were super horrible in the past. It seems that most people think the world is getting worse and more dangerous over time but the opposite is true.