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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

#371

Post by 282883392 »

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…

A self driving car would have stopped, as it is illegal to pass a stopped school bus.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#372

Post by wffurr »

jacquesm wrote: post #352
rdiddly wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

One big reason I drive as little as possible is specifically because it's dangerous to everyone around me, even though I believe myself to be a cautious driver.

40,000 deaths a year in the United States, top cause of death in every age group to 1 to 44 (killing someone with your car counts as "unintentional injury" in the CDC's reporting) is an ongoing moral tragedy of huge dimensions.

So sure, life can never be "risk free" but to equate that with the total carnage and destruction on the road, is frankly evil.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#373

Post by jessaustin »

ebikelaw wrote: post #43
weavie wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you expound on how the culture and mindset is different? I can imagine what it would be, but don't want to just jump to stereotypes..

You’re reading the cultural difference right now. The story is about a dead kid but we are invited mainly to sympathize with the perpetrator. We are also expected to take on faith the “he darted out of nowhere” narrative that is very common in fatal collisions where the victim is unable to testify. Finally, we are treated to a dose of the “it could have been any of us” windshield perspective that prevents the USA fro…

Yeah, if the child had been 7yo rather than 4yo one rather suspects he would have been accused of riding a bicycle, putting him firmly beyond the pale of what a driver in a hurry should have to worry about...

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#374

Post by wffurr »

perfmode wrote: post #235

I was hit by a car when I was 7 years old. It was a hit and run. I was thrown into the air. Luckily, I only bruised my shoulder blade. It was certainly my fault I was in the road, chasing a frisbee. I can understand why the person would have run away from the scene. I wish there was more forgiveness in society.

"Chasing a frisbee" should never put one at risk of death. The fault isn't with you; it's with the driver (going too fast to stop for a running child) and the traffic engineer (built an unsafe street next to housing / parks / etc.).

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#375

Post by lsc »

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…

I think that the lesson of the article is not that weirdos or strangers make the world a dangerous and ugly place, but that we, the regular people who vote for and move to areas with zoning densities that make public transit impractical, who commute long distances in cars, make the world a dangerous and ugly place.

Every time we get into a car, we are choosing to take a risk not only with our own life, but with the lives of everyone else near the road. I mean, we kind of choose that by continuing to live in areas where our density makes public transit less practical, but there's a lot to be said for just taking the responsibility of driving a lot more seriously, and treating driving as something risky, and taking steps to drive less.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#376

Post by dwaltrip »

JauntTrooper wrote: post #175
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…

I think the pain of loss was just as severe, and the past was just more miserable than we think. Someday our children and descendants will look back at our time period in horror at the atrocities we continue to allow happen globally. 300,000 children under 5 die every year of malaria. The extensiveness of the agony that causes is difficult to comprehend.

> I think the pain of loss was just as severe, and the past was just more miserable than we think.

Why would the pain be equivalent, despite the vastly different context: life experiences and expectations, cultural details, worldviews, etc?

To be clear, there are many aspects/phases to the pain of loss. I can imagine that the initial suffering may be very similar, but that the integration/processing of the event in subsequent months and years be significantly different.

That's not to say that, overall, it wasn't worse back then, but I'm guessing the pain from a single loss event might be noticeably different due to the vastly different context.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#377

Post by avh02 »

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…

>“You know, you’ll never hear somebody on their deathbed saying, ‘I wish I’d spent more time in the office.’

I personally agree with this sentiment and am striving towards a better work life balance, but there is at least one person who has apparently said that:

"I have only one regret... that I have not worked harder." - Henry Royce (of Rolls-Royce) - https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Henry_Royce

edit: yes yes, harder != longer

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#378

Post by wffurr »

steve_adams_86 wrote: post #121
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…

I have to agree with maxhallinan. These aren't analogous at all. One time I was riding my bike when nearly the exact same thing happened to me as this woman, only instead of a small child the person was an older man. He, looking for traffic the wrong way on a one-way street, mistakenly thought it was safe to run across the road. I was doing the speed limit (60kph) when I hit him, full force, and sent him tumbling dow…

Injuring someone that badly for a "bad call" means you were going too fast around pedestrians. There doesn't have to be a mitigating factor for you to be in the wrong, even if the pedestrian made a mistake.

We should all be safe to make mistakes trying to walk somewhere without risk of serious injury or death from our fellow road users.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#379

Post by parasubvert »

cableshaft wrote: post #331
mikemac wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

They also need one for "movies where no dogs are killed". There's a lot more movies that do that than you might expect. I know several people that get really angry when they are subjected to a movie with this in it.

There are two John Wick movies that demonstrate the height of revenge fantasies over a dead dog. :)

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#380

Post by astura »

christophilus wrote: post #178
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.

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…

>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.

Never? Come on, how far are we going to take this? Not sending them to school so you can stay home and watch for kidnappers? Never sending them to grandpa's house because grandpa might bring the kids to the grocery store and turn around for a second to pick up some carrots?

Perspective! Assuming that its not a fabricated story the risk of this sort of kidnapping is so incredibly low it might as well be zero. This sort of anxiety about it is unhealthy and unproductive. Never bring them outside because a stranger may snatch them out of a stroller? If you go to the grocery store your going to turn away for a quarter of a second to grab something off the shelf, it's a fact of life.

Relax.

One of the biggest risk to children is car crashes. In which case an equally ridiculous but much much better piece of advice is "NEVER allow your children to ride in an automobile."

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