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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

#351

Post by CalRobert »

rev_bird wrote: post #332
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…

>In British civil law, the driver is always culpable in an accident involving a minor, even if sober and below the speed limit, which I was. This seems like a weird construct, particularly given that minors do such stupid things. Two of them, together, literally ran into traffic, and the default is "blame traffic"?

Blaming traffic is appropriate.

For most of history it was very normal for people to run in to the street. It was a place for horses, carts, donkeys, people, and livestock, and more than that, it was a place for socializing _and_ transport _and_ commerce.

Then, a few wealthy folks showed up in their automobiles and said "GET OUT OF MY WAY OR I WILL KILL YOU" and oddly, we sided with them.

https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2012/04/invention-jay... has more.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#352

Post by jacquesm »

rdiddly wrote: post #328
jacquesm wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ne…

You're on the right track trying to be safe, but in the Kubler-Ross sense it's a lot like the "bargaining" phase of grief or loss. "I can still have my car if I check the tires and drive sober etc." What this article shows is that you still have a nonzero chance of killing someone anyway. (Which you knew already.) Where I'm going further is to say, no, it's not an "accident" in my book - you chose to travel by the de…

It looks to me as if you have missed out on the last 100 years or so of social developments. If you want to go back to an age before cars then that is fine by me but no amount of guilt tripping language is going to make that happen. I cycle where and when I can, I drive when I have to. In fact, I would be highly surprised if you biked more than I do, which - incidentally - got me rather severely injured a while ago. That - by my book - is as good as it gets. If you feel that ´your standard´ is the one that everybody should live by then here is some news for you: not everybody is you. I´d feel tremendously conceited if I felt that other people should live by my standards.

Instead, let´s try to live within the law by the rules set by society, accept that life is risk and will never be risk free, no matter what rules we decide to live by and let´s strive to make society incrementally better rather than to pretend to live a life that is ´better´ by our own standards and to recognize that for every item that is better in our lives there are probably plenty left in which they are still worse.

In other words, get off your high horse, and recognize your own shortcomings rather than to ram your personal view of the right way to live down others' throats.

So, let´s campaign for more bike paths, other means of separation of traffic streams, safer vehicles for outsiders, pedestrians, bikes and occupants of other vehicles. But spare me the self-righteous holier than though attitude. It reminds me of militant vegetarians, they tend to give other vegetarians a bad image. If you are trying to make the case for cycling you are doing a piss-poor job of advocacy.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#353

Post by ecopoesis »

Steltek wrote: post #156
mattlondon wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+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…

Not to detract from your point but the US Federal government, shockingly, is incapable of passing necessary regulations and the Constitution forbids a State from passing their own versions. For instance, vehicle inspections, licensing standards, safety equipment, etc are all set at the Federal level. Cities can't forbid oversized trucking, require truck side guards, etc. Likewise, stupendous amounts of Federal and St…

Boston and Cambridge, MA have passed truck side rail laws. "Trucks over x height prohibited" and "Trucks over x weight prohibited" are common.

States and cities can do a lot, and in fact can do a lot more then the federal government because they don't have a 10th amendment restricting them.

https://www.volpe.dot.gov/our-work/truck-side-guards-resourc...

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#354

Post by alien_at_work »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #336
alien_at_work wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not bold, that's meek. Self driving cars are the bold. Public transport means travelling to somewhere I don't want to go, so I can be taken somewhere else I don't want to go but is closer to where I do want to go. I want to walk out my front door, get into an "auto Uber" or whatever, and be let out at the front door of my work.

A willingness to change your lifestyle is what is bold.

I'll change my lifestyle: to something that is more convenient, not less. If you want to go against cars, increase telecomuting, don't force even more people to a bloody train station.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#355

Post by sulam »

Mithaldu wrote: post #339
sulam wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What the hell? Did you read the story? This woman should be blamed for what was completely unpredictable? Do you realize she would be in prison for vehicular manslaughter? How about not having a 40 or 50 mph speed limit on a residential street?

I said "institute a traffic law culture", not "apply this ruling to this woman". If the entire culture is based on certain assumptions, many aspects of it change to accommodate it. For example all of the things nickspacek mentions here would be brought in in due course based on pressure from the drivers themselves: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16107645

So the next person this happens to goes to jail? You're proposing that drivers will ask for speed limits to be reduced because they don't want to fall afoul of this proposed law? Do you realize how silly that sounds?

Legal driving does not mean I have the ability to repeal basic physical laws like inertia. If you're trying to legislate cars off the road altogether, then this is probably one way to do it, but good luck with the general program.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#356

Post by jessaustin »

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.

Blame is most naturally attributed to the party that brings the 2-ton death machine to the incident. It was like that in USA, when automobiles were first introduced. The laws only changed as a result of decades of dishonest public relations and bribery on the part of the automobile industry.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#357

Post by ashelmire »

mcguire wrote: post #252
ashelmire wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sweden has about as many people as singular metro areas in the US (smaller than some). Talking about reducing road fatalities in Chicago would be a similar scale.

About 15% of Swedes live in the Stockholm urban area, about the same proportion as Texas and Florida combined.

Texas and Florida combined have 5 times the population of Sweden, twice the area, and far more roadways. Solutions are more complicated in the US due to size, population, and broad political, economic, and geographic complexity. Stop trying to equate this tiny nation with one of the most populated and largest.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#358

Post by dragonwriter »

Mithaldu wrote: post #211
usuallymatt wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> There's plenty that could've been done to prevent this

Well, for one thing, putting rural mailboxes on the same side of high-speed roadways as the houses they serve would seem to be an obvious mitigation, though it would probably have some additional mail delivery costs.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#359

Post by dsfyu404ed »

peatmoss wrote: post #47
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.…

Reducing speed limits and designing roadways to discourage high speeds. But yeah, I like to measure annual traffic fatalities in 9/11s. Here in the US, we typically do >10 of them per year. We toppled the governments of two countries, created a whole new department of our federal government, and continue to advance prosthetics at a breakneck pace to fix the men and women we send to be disfigured overseas as a respons…

>Reducing speed limits and designing roadways to discourage high speeds.

One of these works. One of these handicapps your infrastructure's capacity, reduces safety in certain conditions and has a handful of other negative externalities.

I would wager that were it not for someone following the speed limit the woman in OP's story would not have been cruising along in a line of traffic with her situational awareness diminished by limited visibility and temptation to follow the leader without giving her full attention to driving.

Traffic is safer when segregated by type (e.g. you don't ride a bike on the highway) and/or speed.

You can design roads to reduce speed but just posting a different sign has minimal positive effect so better limiting/controlling interaction between different types/speeds of traffic on roads you already have (e.g. adding sidewalks or bike lanes) works better there.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#360

Post by parasubvert »

LordKano wrote: post #341
treyfitty wrote: post #322

Ever since I became a father (2 months ago), I've been seeing the world as a dangerous and an ugly place. This is confounded with the fact that, a month ago, I came to find out that my brother was bullied in HS and was never the same. My brother has been out of high school for about 9 years now, but It took me 6 whole years to consider the possibility that something was wrong. I was in undergrad and focused on my stu…

For me, that happened when I became the father of two little girls. My radar is up whenever I am in public with my daughters. I notice if strangers look for too long in their direction or if I see someone hanging out where children are, without a child of their own. Occasionally, I'll spot another father like me. We'll lock eyes for a moment and it's clear that we recognize each other (for what we are, not necessaril…

Is that kind of paranoia productive? Especially considering we are at historically low crime rates.

A very young child needs supervision and precautions to prevent them from hurting themselves, as this article sadly shows, and even then, its blind bad luck sometimes.

But otherwise I can’t think any of my family (two young kids, 1 year and 8 years) or friends (many kids of various ages) being super cautious about their kids in public. I don’t live in the USA, mind you.

We let daycare staff care for the little ones, which includes daily walks through the downtown core. We let kids walk to school on their own when they turned 10, we let them play unsupervised outside around age 7, or go for a bike ride with neighbor kids, etc. It’s not that different from when I was growing up. Hanging out and playing the at the park is probably less of a thing, perhaps, but that’s more because of iPads and Xboxes than safety.

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