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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

#301

Post by fjsolwmv »

saturdaysaint wrote: post #79
WhitneyLand wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with that advice is that is makes too much sense. In otherwords, most people would agree with it, but then comes the hard part. Fundamentally transforming default thinking patterns that have been etched deeply through years of habit and experience. Why leave out step 2? Can advice on step 1 be helpful without a plan for step 2?

Fundamentally transforming default thinking patterns that have been etched deeply through years of habit and experience. ...and hundreds of thousands of years of evolution. We are hard wired to spend an inordinate amount of time and attention on averting losses of all kinds, often to a degree that confounds any sort of cost/benefit analysis.

Not really. Young people are naturally adventurous, and old people are naturally cautious. It's a balance of life stages that works really well for society in aggregate.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#302

Post by ssharp »

cozzyd wrote: post #213
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.

When you get into rural areas, you often times see houses that are built on roads that are 45-55 mph speed limits. They're main through ways but people build on them, often times either farms or former farms that were lotted off.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#303

Post by caseysoftware »

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…

I have two toddlers and that's visceral.

I'm sorry. That's awful. That's beyond awful. There are no words.

I travel a ton for work and take the earliest flight out in the morning so I can tuck them in the night before. Then I get back late so I'm there when they wake up the next morning. Physically painful but worth it.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#304

Post by Broken_Hippo »

pixl97 wrote: post #189
Broken_Hippo wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Haha. Very possible, but also depends if people feel inconvenienced enough to be angry afterwards. If it also improves traffic flow, it might be a win most ways.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#305

Post by seanmcdirmid »

joosters wrote: post #200
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, m…

But again, the civil liability will be on companies, who are even further removed from the direct, visceral experience of killing a person. Like you, I'm sure that there was an insurance company paying out some money for funeral costs in the original accident. To the insurers, it will be business as usual, they have been doing this for many years. My guess is, the pressure for advances in road safety over the years h…

Civil liability will be on company bottom lines (or their insurers), yes you can't put a price on life but you can punish non-criminal negligence financially. The insurers make their money by raising premiums on those who are higher risk, so there is still a financial disincentive to not screw it up.

Civil negligence can turn into criminal negligence when deception is involved (see VW).

Self driving cars are the ultimate in road safety though, I mean, you cannot encode them to willfully disobey traffic laws (or doing so would be criminal negligence). Pretty sure they will initially be fleet vehicles anyways. The death rate will surely go down, no one with any credibility is predicting otherwise, but there will always people berating the few deaths that remain.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#307

Post by fjsolwmv »

magic_beans wrote: post #260
Mithaldu wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It was not the driver's fault in this case. The child ran right into a residential road with a high speed limit. The road should not have had such a high speed limit, should have had speed bumps, and possible the little boy's parents should have had a fence. Punishing the driver in this case doesn't fix the problem at all.

Punishing the driver would make drivers join with residents in fighting for speed control. The current state is a huge privilege for drivers at the expenses of pedestrians, because drivers aren't required to care about safety.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#308

Post by mcguire »

bckygldstn wrote: post #242
mcguire wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And SC had the highest. Couldn't find comparable numbers for the rest of the EU.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#309

Post by petters »

samch wrote: post #296
jfoucher wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Of course no one says that on their deathbed. Many people on their deathbeds have been retired for more than 20 years.

People in their 20s often care about their career. People in their 80s often do not. Who's right? It's often a trade-off. The goal is not to be happy on your deathbed; it's to be happy throughout life.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#310

Post by seanmcdirmid »

luckroy wrote: post #194
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

45 is a speed zone if the normal speed is 60 or 70. I just got done traveling on US 395 through most of California, and we would typically speed zone down to 45, then 40, then 35....around houses. I’m sure there are actually well defined rules about this in California. Regardless, living on a highway is not prime real estate.

Sounds like CA and IA work differently. 45 is the speed limit for that highway because it's windy. On the straighter roads, the limit is usually 50-55. However, there are still no speed zones (as you call them) for small clusters of houses.

The whole west works different I think. I mean, who in their right mind would build their house right next to the highway (without a fairly long highway) if they didn't have to? As long as you have the land, you would build it 50-100 meters back!

The only time I see otherwise is if mountains or rivers are involved, or there is density (in which case it is sure to be zoned!).

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