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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

#201

Post by nkrisc »

Xeoncross wrote: post #186
ajuc wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 continue…

A huge percentage? I reckon the vast majority of individual people alive today are pretty peaceful.

God's primary purpose is as a tool for the religious ruling elite to exert control over the followers. Do Man's desires align with God's will, or does God's will conveniently align with Man's desires? Seems we always have only Man's word on the matter.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#202

Post by usuallymatt »

Pigo wrote: post #7

I can barely bring myself to read stories like this now. I never really thought about it before my son was born, but there's always this dread you live with in the back of your mind. This little helpless person has your life in it's hands. The world and fate is trying to take them out, and if they succeed you'd never recover. You can learn to live with pain, but I don't believe you ever get over something like that.

Same for me. I read stuff like this and always picture it happening to my kids. It somehow makes it worse in this instance that it's a complete accident that no one could have done anything to prevent it. I'm much more sensitive and squeamish since having kids.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#203

Post by bryanlarsen »

kelchm wrote: post #174
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.…

Except reducing speed limits really don't change the speed at which people drive. https://priceonomics.com/is-every-speed-limit-too-low/

Changing the number on a sign doesn't work, but enforcement, designing roads for appropriate speeds, and providing separated infrastructure for pedestrians and cyclists does.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#204

Post by tombrossman »

adventured wrote: post #192
kmm wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The relevant statistic is fatalities per billion vehicle-kilometers, which attempts to even out that discrepancy, and leads to the same conclusion. Using this metric, the US still has twice the fatality rate than the UK. > In the EU it's half that. I'd like to see a source on that. I think the average American drives about 30% more.

The link/pdf below says 13,000km per driver in the EU. Other sources indicate 11,000km or 12,000km. Any of those work reasonably for this comparison. https://www.adac.de/_mmm/pdf/fi_nutzen_pkw-verkehrs_europa_f... The US figure is around 22,000km per person for 2017. In Sweden for example it's closer to 12,000km per person. There's a dramatic gulf between the distance driven in the US and most everywhere else. The pa…

I agree that fatalities can be expected to rise as miles driven rise, however these two data points are not so closely linked. For example, driving ten miles in western Kansas on I-70 at midday is not the same as driving ten miles in a metropolitan area filled with shopping centers, with the sun low on the horizon ahead of you and a dirty windshield.

There are many, many variables which complicate the study of traffic safety and my hat is off to any traffic engineers able to deliver meaningful results. It does happen, but it's far more complicated than tracking per capita miles driven (not that you were making this specific argument, just pointing out the obvious).

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#205

Post by jacquesm »

jfoucher wrote: post #173
Pigo wrote: post #7

I can barely bring myself to read stories like this now. I never really thought about it before my son was born, but there's always this dread you live with in the back of your mind. This little helpless person has your life in it's hands. The world and fate is trying to take them out, and if they succeed you'd never recover. You can learn to live with pain, but I don't believe you ever get over something like that.

Haven't read the story yet, don't know if I will. I just wanted to reply to your comment with a personal anecdote. My eldest son died in an accident when he was about 2 ½ years old. The dread wasn't there before. I didn't think anything like that would happen to me. You do learn to live with the pain, even I sometimes cry for what would have been futile reasons. But I still couldn't bring myself to enter the church a…

Man that hurts. Strength to you.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#206

Post by lovehashbrowns »

I was dating this girl with a very young daughter. We were gonna go out on a date, so the daughter went with my ex's brother and sister. The sister knew how to drive, the brother was 16 years old and didn't know how to drive. So he ended up driving somehow, hoping to get some practice. He lost control driving on a straight highway with no traffic in either direction, hit a light pole, and the daughter (not wearing a seatbelt) went head-first into the back of the seat. Traumatic brain injury+coma, eventually she was let go off of life support and passed away.

I've always felt that, if I were capable of really hurting someone, it would be that brother. I still feel really angry about it, x years later.

Anyway, I can't imagine what that brother and sister are feeling about all this, even x years later. I don't understand why it would make me happier if I knew they were suffering from it. But at least this story helps me feel guilty about feeling that way.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#207

Post by rdiddly »

Pigo wrote: post #7

I can barely bring myself to read stories like this now. I never really thought about it before my son was born, but there's always this dread you live with in the back of your mind. This little helpless person has your life in it's hands. The world and fate is trying to take them out, and if they succeed you'd never recover. You can learn to live with pain, but I don't believe you ever get over something like that.

And all of you saying "same here" because your children are so precious, you all swore off driving cars, right? Because other people's children are precious?

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#208

Post by jacquesm »

PerfectElement wrote: post #191
Pigo wrote: post #7

I can barely bring myself to read stories like this now. I never really thought about it before my son was born, but there's always this dread you live with in the back of your mind. This little helpless person has your life in it's hands. The world and fate is trying to take them out, and if they succeed you'd never recover. You can learn to live with pain, but I don't believe you ever get over something like that.

Same here. I cringe when I see the common HN rhetoric that parents now a days are over-protective. Go say that to parents who lost a child and now live in regret. Kids are unpredictable. I remember being 7 years old and waiting with my mom to cross a busy street. For some reason that today is unknown to me, I decided to just run across the street as soon as the lights turned yellow. I almost got hit and my mom almost…

A little girl cycled of the pavement a while ago, just as I was passing, good brakes and no traffic from the other side. Very close call and I have not yet gotten over it yet, nightmares and daily thoughts about it. I am pretty sure her mom also remembers it vividly. Kids can be totally unpredictable like that and how it all ends is hugely dependent on circumstance.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#209

Post by sliverstorm »

mattlondon wrote: post #117
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.…

+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…

The US is certainly too big for some things. But it's definitely not a good argument when we're talking about urban & suburban street design. How big the US is or isn't, means nothing when we're talking about how best to lay out a 5 mile by 5 mile plot of land for a town.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#210

Post by mcguire »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #6
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.

"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.…

Sweden's traffic fatality rate (3.5 / 10^9 vehicle km; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...) is roughly comparable to that of Massachusetts (3.25 / 10^9 v. km; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_safety_in_the_U...). (Sorry, I couldn't find pedestrian numbers.) On the other hand, the Czech Republic is worse than South Carolina.
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