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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

#241

Post by gkya »

joosters wrote: post #137
gkya wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I upvoted you for the initial part of your comment, I do not support the autonomous car argument, as I can't see how an autonomous car can avoid an accident of the sort cited in the article, namely an object or a person darting in front of a vehicle moving with enough velocity to be unable to come to a stop immediately.

On a very cynical level, autonomous cars will still help. If the person in the article had been a passenger in the car when they hit the child, they would undoubtedly feel far less guilt about the incident, and their life would have been far less affected as a result.

Is this a question that has a legal answer, at least in the US where autonomous vehicles seem to be most in vogue, that what party is guilty in an autonomous vehicle accident? Because in an autonomous vehicle every person is a passenger. The only person that can be blamed at all is the pedestrian victim of the accident, no? Also, in an accident which involves two vehicles, on whom will the damages be? Certainly none of the persons in the cars, no?

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#242

Post by bckygldstn »

mcguire wrote: post #210
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.…

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.

For context, Massachusetts has the lowest fatality rate of all US states.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#243

Post by verbatim »

dm319 wrote: post #229
cozzyd wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Speed limits are not speed targets. In the UK most b-roads are 'national' speed limit (i.e. 60mph or 70mph). It is expected that the driver selects the appropriate speed for the conditions, visibility, road etc etc. Of course, we're humans, which means errors are made, people are impatient, we don't balance risk very well etc etc.

They tend to be speed targets in many places, because if you drive under (or at) the speed limit in many places, you'll get hassled by aggressive drivers behind you, creating a more dangerous situation than if you sped up instead.

(Based on my experience driving in the US, at least.)

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#244

Post by christophilus »

somebodyfree wrote: post #197
christophilus wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a similar experience yesterday when my wife related a near-kidnapping that happened in a grocery store. It seems that a pair of child-traffickers attempted to take a baby out of a shopping cart. It was a male/female duo. (Side note: NEVER leave your children unattended even for a moment. In this case, the parent was right beside the cart, moving groceries from the cart to the conveyor belt. It was a brazen act…

This did not actually happen: http://reason.com/archives/2017/10/23/ye-olde-ikea-sex-traff...

I'm glad to hear that this story was fake! I never looked it up, just heard her retelling of it.

Regardless, the story wasn't the point of my comment. The reaction I have as a dad vs pre-parenthood is the point. Where I live is the sex-trafficking capital of my state, which probably heightens my reactions, too. The problem is real and pervasive, fake news not withstanding.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#245

Post by dm319 »

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.…

I agree with the sentiment that there is something you can do about it, but Sweden has a road fatality rate of 2.8/100'000/year.

I live in the UK where we have a road fatality rate of 2.9/100'000/year. On average 1 child dies and ~60 are seriously injured every week.

I don't know how much further this accident/death rate can be decreased - but I agree that we are down a rabbit hole - is it acceptable that this happens? Obviously not. But are the population going to agree to ban cars? No.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#246

Post by alien_at_work »

chickenfries wrote: post #93
Myrmornis wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Non-parent here. I’m surprised to hear calls for a Netflix “safe space” from adults on HN rather than from whiny kids at a liberal arts college. It’s obvious that you’re sincere and that becoming a parent has affected you profoundly.

So you feel sympathy for people on HN, but not for the college students who want to be warned when they're going to read something that might depict some other kind of traumatic experience?

If you're talking about trigger warnings, this is the crux of the so called "SJW" movement: it's a bunch of emotion from ignorant people. Actual studies show that trigger warnings are actually more damaging than not having them [1] [2] [3].

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-cod...

[2] http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/cover_story/2016/09/w...

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTU3hxgr2Kc

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#247

Post by ataturk »

Two things:

1) When you become a parent you have to accept the possibility that you might lose your child(ren).

2) What makes us civilized is the guilt. Contrast the woman's experience with what happens EVERY DAY in Chicago and Minneapolis where people are shot and killed by random gunfire and the perpetrators of those heinous crimes walk away as though it were nothing at all.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#248

Post by jacquesm »

dm319 wrote: post #223
rdiddly wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I'm hoping one day we'll look back on car driving as something as horrendous as gladiatorial entertainment in Rome. In the UK we have 1 child killed and 37 seriously injured every week.

Self driving cars will not solve this problem unless they collectively decide not to drive any more.

A better solution would be to set towns and cities up in such a way that the various traffic streams are separated vertically.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#249

Post by nogridbag »

osullivj wrote: post #125

25ish years ago I was driving my Toyota MR2 along the Cowley Road in Oxford on a Sunday morning, heading for an out of town supermarket, to pick up some groceries. Two teenage girls ran out from behind a bus that was waiting at a stop on the other side of the road, right into my path. Those who've been in a road traffic accident will know that time slows down the instant you know things are out of control. I stood on…

As someone who used to love sports cars and driving, I can't wait for the day when self driving cars become a reality. I also had an incident around the same age. At the time I was driving a slightly modified Miata/MX-5 with a loud exhaust that doubled as my weekend autocross toy. The neighborhood kids used to yell "nice car!" as I drove by every day. One day I left late at night to meet some friends and I was driving around an unlit bend in the neighborhood when my headlights lit up two children laying down in the road directly in the path of my car. I don't know what I was thinking (I didn't really have time to think), but instead of braking, I just slalomed around them as if they were a cone. They couldn't have been more than foot or so from my tires. I never stopped to ask them if they were OK. I just kept driving and thinking about that moment for several hours. "What the hell were they doing laying down in the road? Was I driving too fast? Why didn't they move out of the road when they heard my loud car coming?" To make matters worse, while I was driving the average speed everyone else drives on that road, my loud exhaust probably made it seem like I was speeding. For the next several months the neighborhood kids yelled "slow down!" every time I passed them and I just cowered down in fear. Even though no one was hit or injured, that incident has stuck with me and I sometimes remember it when these stories come up and question how different my life could have been if I hit them.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#250

Post by Waterluvian »

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…

Thank you for sharing. My son is almost one and I just quit to go be with him more. I can't convert money into time with him so why am I converting time into money at such a high rate?
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