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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

#411

Post by dsnuh »

betenoire wrote: post #258
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…

> NEVER leave your children unattended even for a moment. I don't understand this approach. Alternatively, find a place to live, and a lifestyle to live, that lets your children develop without your anxiety weighing them down. You leave them unattended for hours and hours at a time while you sleep. The only difference your mind isn't racing with potential threats, it's asleep. I don't know. all kids are different, mi…

> NEVER leave your children unattended even for a moment.

Yeah, I have 4 kids, and this right here, in my opinion is the core of the current trend to overparent. Let your kids play where you played. Let them have their own life outside of your control and influence. There is something very unhealthy about the way we have started viewing children and childhood in the USA.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#412

Post by tallpapab »

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 feel for your brother and understand your fatherly fears. I have three sons. They are all fine now, but ... One got hit by a drunken driver, one broke his neck, and the other fell onto a wrought iron fence which stabbed through his skull and into his brain. All three are healthy and active. Each came so close to death. As you say, many of the largest changes are quite beyond our control. I frequently find myself having to choke back the terror to keep focus and keep moving.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#413

Post by dsnuh »

jacquesm wrote: post #364
sambe wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or does it? http://www.lancashiretelegraph.co.uk/news/15255796._I_was_to...

Good find. Have another one. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2098608/Kidnap-attem... There are plenty of these examples over the years. It is not that it does not happen, it does happen, but it is pretty rare. My point was that you can not simply dismiss all these cases out of hand as fantasy.

I dismiss all of these cases out of hand as fantasy, because the chances of this actually happening to me are as close to fantasy as being eaten by a shark while I am struck by lightning.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#414

Post by falsedan »

282883392 wrote: post #371
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.

The bus was stopped on the other side of the road, the children disembarked, went to the back of the bus, and crossed.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#415

Post by Pigo »

alien_at_work wrote: post #329
fjsolwmv wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm having trouble seeing your argument for all the straw people. I don't care what you believe, I watched her walk down my steps one step at a time, both feet stable on that step before taking the next one. Why? Because her whole life she's hearing "NO! BE CAREFUL! STEPS ARE DANGEROUS!" so of course she's terrified and has no confidence that she can do it. >meanwhile other anti-helicoptering activists argue that bre…

In my experience some parents pick certain things to be over-protective about, or catering too much to their kids. A good friend of mine introduced me to this family with a couple kids that were still not able to tie their own shoes, the youngest was 12 years old. Another friend of mine (well his wife) won't let their daughter do basically anything outside without a helmet and other pads, even jump roping. People probably think she's special needs.

I still force him to hold my hand when we're anywhere near cars, and I worry when I can't hear him. But I also look the other way when I know his step-brother is playing a little too rough with him. And I let him bang hammers in the garage when I'm working in there. I guess I'm trying to find a balance, but I'm sure I make some mistakes.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#416

Post by astura »

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.…

You have to take into consideration cultural and social factors too. In my experience people in the US drive very dangerously no matter the traffic laws.

One of the craziest encounters in my life was driving on a windy rural road and getting stuck behind a tractor. The road was so windy there was no passing zones for miles. It was frustrating, yes, but part of driving on that kind of road. Eventually a driver came behind me. Without skipping a beat he or she passed both of us (illegal) in a no passing zones (also illegal) and ON A BLIND CORNER! Nobody was coming but that driver had zero way to tell that.

My heart still jumps a little just thinking about it.

Another issue happened in Brooklyn. I was driving on a narrow residential street with cars parked on both sides going a little over 20mph. I did not feel safe going any faster as a kid could jump out between the parked cars at any time. Guy comes up behind me and just lays on the horn for a good couple blocks (it's NYC after all). Then the car passes me illegally and took off going at least 40 mph.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#417

Post by opo »

christophilus wrote: post #362
Reedx wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it's real like getting struck by lightning is real. The odds are extremely low. Everyone could let their kids walk to school and chances are nothing bad will happen. Though it may lead to those kids being a bit healthier, more independent and more confident. And less likely to die in a car crash - which is far, far more probable than kidnapping.

I agree with your sentiment. It's more common than lightning strikes, though still super remote. But I'm not planning on sending my kids out to play in thunderstorms, and I'm not planning on leaving them unattended in public places until they're of a certain age. Walking to school is an interesting scenario. I hate the car, so I'd probably walk with them or ride bikes together. Side story: My dad had a friend who was…

>...It's more common than lightning strikes, though still super remote.

It doesn't look that way:

>...During the study year, there were an estimated 115 stereotypical kidnappings, defined as abductions perpetrated by a stranger or slight acquaintance and involving a child who was transported 50 or more miles, detained overnight, held for ransom or with the intent to keep the child permanently, or killed.

http://www.unh.edu/ccrc/pdf/MC19.pdf

So, 115 children were abducted by strangers that year.

The national weather service estimates that 300 people are hit by lightning a year.

http://www.lightningsafety.noaa.gov/odds.shtml

Like you said, it's hard for people to overcome emotional biases.

As a comparison, sharing a bed with a baby (which many people think is safe) is implicated in thousands of deaths a year:

>...After analyzing data on 8,207 infant deaths from 24 states that occurred between 2004 and 2012, researchers determined that nearly 74 percent of deaths in babies younger than 4 months occurred in a bed-sharing situation, according to the study published Monday in Pediatrics.

>Among older infants – those aged 4 months to 364 days – the rate was slightly lower at nearly 59 percent.

https://www.today.com/health/co-sleeping-linked-infant-death...

As another comparison, over 1,600 children under 15 years of age die each year in car accidents.

http://asirt.org/initiatives/informing-road-users/road-safet...

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#418

Post by nerpderp83 »

alien_at_work wrote: post #254
Pxtl wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why our priorities are so backwards. We deprive our kids of the simple adventurousness of childhood, but at the same time we structure our lives in ways where speeding auto traffic is functionally unavoidable. That's like locking the liquor cabinet but not the cabinet where you keep the rat poison. Or like filing down the sharp edges on a hand grenade. Children need to live in an environment where they can hav…

Absolutely agree. And I admit that I display a bit of helicoptor myself when moving cars are within a distance reachable by my youngest.

Safety around cars has nothing to do with helicopter parenting.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#419

Post by katastic »

I know a friend of the family from decades ago when I was a child. The father of the family had some alcohol but wasn't plastered. On the way home he drive like he did thousands of times before, a girl darted out in front of him. He couldn't stop in time and she died.

He went to jail for years. His family was almost destroyed. His wife had no college education and had to work multiple jobs at minimum wage to support her three kids. Once he got out, nobody would hire him and he had tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of dollars (or more) that he owes the family of the dead daughter.

At no point am I trying to argue he wasn't responsible for killing that girl. But watching a "normal" family with a completely "normal" father be completely destroyed makes me wonder if this is what justice is supposed to look like.

Thousands of dollars aren't going to bring that little girl back to life, but they could have gone to not ruining his three daughters lives. Is sending them into poverty instead of college, a kind of blood debt, the solution?

And shouldn't we make a distinction for "justice" between bad people who never learn from their mistakes, and good people who make one horrific mistake that 99% of us would have "lucked out of" in a near miss?

I honestly don't know. All I know is that society loves to label people as monsters, and I think it's to make us feel safe about ourselves. "They're" the monsters, the outliers, so we have nothing to fear about our own actions. We're nothing like them. We have nothing in common... until we take that one road we took a thousand times before...

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#420

Post by falsedan »

24gttghh wrote: post #48
jackhack wrote: post #4

Well written - it shares a glimpse of the grief of an accidental death and the impact on two families. This is but a small glimpse of what many soldiers suffer ('shellshock') after being required to deliberately kill. A good reminder to have compassion for those around us. Everyone carries burdens. Some much greater than ours.

'shell-shock' is literally the aftereffects of a concussive blast rattling your brain around in your skull; itself is usually diagnosed under the broader umbrella of PTSD, which one might also end up with after having to kill another person.

Think you'd struggle to find many people who've suffered a concussion from an accident then going on to develop PTSD.
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