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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

#211

Post by Mithaldu »

usuallymatt wrote: post #202
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.

There's plenty that could've been done to prevent this. Most basic and simple would be to institute a traffic law culture in which the driver does get blame by default for hurting a pedestrian so they have pedestrians on their mind every single minute they control their car.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#212

Post by lolsal »

lasermike026 wrote: post #198

Cars are the 2nd greatest engineering blunder only second to nuclear weapons. Cars are inherently dangerous. Every time you drive you risk killing someone or yourself. We must work to eliminate cars from the world, at the very least cars driven by humans. I am completely serious. There are the pollution issues too.

You don't think the benefits that automobiles brought to the world are worth more than "2nd greatest engineering blunder"?

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#213

Post by cozzyd »

notacoward wrote: post #180

Mailboxes on the opposite side of a street with a 45-50mph speed limit? STUPID. I feel terrible for both the victim and the author, in part because tragedies like this are avoidable . This particular scenario seems pretty egregious, but even the typical line of cars parked along the side of the road - obscuring view of the sidewalk and giving pedestrians a false sense of security - is provably bad for safety. If you…

Indeed the civil engineer who allowed such an egregious speed limit is at fault here.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#214

Post by sliverstorm »

danvasquez29 wrote: post #182
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 majo…

To me, the fact that 'nothing happened' was a very much the point

Maybe nothing grand, but it's pretty hard to stomach movies that don't go anywhere at all. I come away wondering, what is the point? Why are you telling me this story?

There is no major turnaround and everything is all better moment. You learn to live

That's still 'something happened' and/or 'the movie went somewhere', and is acceptable.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#215

Post by Permit »

yumaikas wrote: post #149
phkahler wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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.

To be clear, there's a lot more to God in the Old Testament than anger, even in those instances. There's grief, especially in the flood, and in the case of Adam and Eve, God provided for their nakedness with better clothes then they had made. To say nothing of the promise and provision provided to nations throughout the Old Testament, the grace given to non-Israelites by keeping them from accidentally violating the m…

>Remembering only the anger of God in the Old Testament is a common, but incomplete reading. There is also grace there.

If someone murders another person, we don't immediately start to list out their virtues (He donated to the poor, he was a good father etc.) It is not enough for God to have done "good things", he must also have not done "bad things".

The bar for an omnipotent, all-powerful God should be higher than it is for a fallible human being, but you appear to have lowered it.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#216

Post by jacquesm »

rdiddly wrote: post #207
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?

What a nasty little comment. No, we did not all swear off cars, but we will do our damnest to drive slow in areas where children are known to be about, keep our vehicles in top shape so that when you need to swerve or do an emergency stop there are as few variables in the equation as possible, will not do drugs, will not drink and will keep our eyes on the fucking road.

By your standard we should all jump off the nearest bridge for living our lives in a way that we can not guarantee that something bad will ever happen to children, our own or someone else´s.

Attempting to guilt trip people for taking part in society is pretty low.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#217

Post by rhino369 »

ceejayoz wrote: post #172
DarronWyke wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the OP, but my take on it would be that every State is different from each other, and even within the State there's differences. Take a look at where I live, Texas. Dallas will be different than Austin which will be different than Houston. Any metropolitan area, even within the same borders, will have different culture and mindset than another. Compare that to another State and the divide only widens. Most countr…

> Most countries are fairly homogenous, which lends itself to a singular-ish mindset and culture. I see this stated a lot by folks in Europe vs. the US discussions, but having visited both I'm pretty baffled by it. Switzerland has four national languages - hop on a train for an hour or two and you may go from French to German areas. The folks in Paris would laugh at the idea that they've got the same culture as Prove…

America may be made of up people with anncestry from all over the world, but we have a very homogenous culture. The only major differences are urban, suburuban and rural, but rural people in California are pretty similar to rural people in Virigina.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#218

Post by csallen »

notacoward wrote: post #180

Mailboxes on the opposite side of a street with a 45-50mph speed limit? STUPID. I feel terrible for both the victim and the author, in part because tragedies like this are avoidable . This particular scenario seems pretty egregious, but even the typical line of cars parked along the side of the road - obscuring view of the sidewalk and giving pedestrians a false sense of security - is provably bad for safety. If you…

> even the typical line of cars parked along the side of the road - obscuring view of the sidewalk and giving pedestrians a false sense of security

There are so many intersections in San Francisco where cars are allowed to park right on the corner, completely obscuring your vision as you go to make a turn, and making it a leap of faith whether or not you'll get hit. The best you can do is slowly edge out and hope that other cars see you.

Poorly designed systems like this infuriate me almost as much as people who will happily give the system a pass and then demonize individuals who mess up because of it.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#219

Post by alien_at_work »

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…

Being careful is fine and understandable but over-protective "helicoptor" parenting is bad for the kids: it destroys their self confidence. I know a helicoptor family where their youngest daughter couldn't properly walk down stairs until she was 12. She's already broke more bones than all my kids combined.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#220

Post by jacquesm »

mikemac wrote: post #42
CodeCube wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

same ... I can't watch movies and tv shows (cop dramas and such) in which a child is victimized. When such an episode comes on, I just get really uncomfortable, and nope out to do something else.

Same here, wish there was a Netflix section for "movies where no children are harmed"

I watched ´Centennial´ when I was a kid. The images still haunt me.
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