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

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#291

Post by fjsolwmv » Tue, Jan 09, 2018, 5:20 PM UTC

SomeHacker44 wrote: post #89

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.

Yes. After becoming a father, and especially as my son has grown to a teen, I have become more and more unable to voluntarily consume media which involves the death of children. Nonetheless, I read this one, because it involves confronting this deep seated fear from a perspective I felt I could relate to.

And yet everyone loves watching Alderaan blow up.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#292

Post by bkor » Tue, Jan 09, 2018, 5:21 PM UTC

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #256

This is one of the reasons I started commuting by bike. I was hit by a car as a child and I thought I'd like to reduce the chance of that happening again. From that perspective I find it weird every time bikes come up here there's someone complaing about bikes going too fast or ignoring the rules or digging out the last time someone got killed by a bike, often a years old story. Kids getting killed by cars isn't even…

> This is one of the reasons I started commuting by bike. I was hit by a car as a child and I thought I'd like to reduce the chance of that happening again.

I commute by bicycle in the Netherlands (good infrastructure). I've been hit (all different occasions) by two cars, one scooter, one moped as well as another bicycle. In every single case I had right of way and didn't notice the other one doing something strange and unexpected. Unexpected as in: car making a right turn while I'm going straight (=right of way) without the car using their indicators or slowing down to make the turn.

It's been quite a while since the last accident, hope it stays that way. It also sometimes happens I make a mistake without this resulting in an accident. It's good that a mistake doesn't always result in an accident.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#293

Post by fjsolwmv » Tue, Jan 09, 2018, 5:22 PM UTC

alien_at_work wrote: post #219

PerfectElement wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't believe this story, unless this child has some sort of medical frailty.

Your post complains that helicopter parenting causes broken bones, meanwhile other anti-helicoptering activists argue that breaking bones is a necessary part of healthy development, that helicoptering prevents.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#294

Post by BearGoesChirp » Tue, Jan 09, 2018, 5:23 PM UTC

smitherfield wrote: post #236

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…

>Many would quicker forgive an ex convict that killed a rival gang member than someone who intentionally seriously injured a child. When has this ever not been true? People instinctively (and reasonably[1]) consider crimes to be more serious where the victim is more sympathetic or vulnerable, and vice-versa. [1] Though they might be unreasonable in their sympathies and/or assessments of vulnerability, like a misogyni…

>When has this ever not been true?

In the past before child abuse became seen as a big deal. Granted, if you hurt the child of some wealthy/powerful individual it was considered bad, but children of the poor, and especially children of single mothers were offered no where near the status they are given today.

Just look at societies where infanticide was common place to see that harming a defenseless child wasn't considered that bad an action (especially in cases where the child was showing signs of having developmental issues, I've read about there even being mythology that developmentally delayed children were treated as if the real child had been replaced by some demonic like figure who was being left to die/killed).

Or consider societies where children were effectively property of their parents (namely their father) and he could do as he liked to them?

Look at cultures where children were forced into marriages, something that would not be accepted today. Yes, people vastly overestimate how often such marriages happened (especially when at least one was young), but it was still far more tolerated when it did compared to today. Even in the last few years we have a few countries who still have laws on the book that reduced/removed punishment for a rapist if they married the victim. This historically applied even when the victim was a child (the Bible even has two passages that require such a punishment, one for when the child hasn't hit puberty (where the father can void the marriage) and one where the child has (where the father cannot void the marriage).

Or just look at a society that sacrificed children.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#295

Post by ssharp » Tue, Jan 09, 2018, 5:23 PM UTC

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…

There are lots of places where I live that are like this. It's fairly common in rural areas. I'm assuming it's designed to make mail delivery easier on the drivers.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#296

Post by samch » Tue, Jan 09, 2018, 5:23 PM UTC

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…

With respect to your comment about time spent with your child, I was in a similar boat a couple of years ago: I was weighing the implications of taking a new job that came with a significant salary increase, but aslo had the massive downside of having to be in the office and away from my family most days / evenings (60hrs per 5-day workweek). I vividly recall a conversation I had with my father who said something to the effect of, “You know, you’ll never hear somebody on their deathbed saying, ‘I wish I’d spent more time in the office.’ You do, however, hear many people lament that they didn’t spend enough time with their family.” That resonated with me deeply, and I ultimately turned that opportunity away. I’m still not making what I would’ve made there, but the mornings and evenings I’ve spent with my children have been priceless.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#297

Post by cozzyd » Tue, Jan 09, 2018, 5:23 PM UTC

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.

In the US they're more often treated like minimums

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#298

Post by sigstoat » Tue, Jan 09, 2018, 5:24 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #108

ballenf wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 possi…

> 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.

we've already got to use helicopters to flight-for-life folks from one hospital to another because it is impractical to build & staff enough of the specialized emergency medical care you might happen to need when something terrible happens.

(not to mention all the certificate-of-need crap that keeps hospital availability artificially limited.)

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#299

Post by nkrisc » Tue, Jan 09, 2018, 5:25 PM UTC

Xeoncross wrote: post #287

nkrisc wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It is impossible for men to have written the bible. It was written over ~1,500 years by about 40 different people across multiple empires and contents - yet it's unified in the story. It's over 20% prophecy, much of which was has already come to pass about nations or events (some of which features Israel). There is no book that even comes close to the complexity required for the bible to have been written.

> It is impossible for men to have written the bible.

That's quite the claim, since historical evidence sure seems to show every known biblical text was scribed by human hands.

> yet it's unified in the story

That's certainly open to interpretation, to say the least. Many of the story elements and arcs can be found in cultures that pre-date Christ.

> much of which was has already come to pass about nations or events

Over thousands of years one can find examples for any broad prophecy.

Once again we're left with nothing authoritative on the matter except the word of Man, that we're apparently expected to take on faith alone.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#300

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jan 09, 2018, 5:26 PM UTC

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.

[deleted]