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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

#421

Post by gnicholas »

hnaccy wrote: post #402
LordKano wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Having you head on a swivel for would-be child snatchers at all times seems like irrational paranoia. I imagine it's the deceptively mundane that is the true danger, automobiles being the most obvious.

This is true. The number of child abductions by strangers in the U.S. is extraordinarily low—in the neighborhood of 100 per year [1, 2]. There are lots of abductions, of course, but nearly all of them are by family members, acquaintances of the family, or other non-strangers.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/five-myths-about-mis... http://reason.com/blog/2017/03/31/kidnapping-stats

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#422

Post by Pigo »

whistlerbrk wrote: post #262
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.

Same. I never truly understood fear and dread until my daughter arrived. I went from being a rather fearless person to seeing the true danger in the world everywhere.

While in college I used to run electric in houses that were being built. The old guys liked me because I'd hang from rafters upside down to reach lights, even when there were no floors yet and you could see 2 or 3 stories into the basement. The thought of falling never once entered into my mind, and I remember thinking they were lame for being so afraid.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#423

Post by gnicholas »

dwaltrip wrote: post #366
betenoire wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

My understanding, and what I remember from some brief research, is that kidnappings by strangers are incredibly rare. This would mean that the widespread fear we see nowadays is very disproportionate, and likely due to a variety of other social factors and not some actual underlying danger. Can anyone provide a quick corroboration/correction on this?

You are correct—it's around 100 stranger abductions per year in the U.S.

http://reason.com/blog/2017/03/31/kidnapping-stats https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/five-myths-about-mis...

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#424

Post by mcguire »

smitherfield wrote: post #276
bckygldstn wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For context, Massachusetts has the lowest fatality rate of all US states.

Wow. As a Massachusetts driver, I would not have expected that. I've traveled pretty extensively within the US and Europe and I (and many, many others) consider Massachusetts, or at least the Boston metro area, to have the worst drivers. Three possible explanations for the low fatality rate: - Bars, nightclubs and stores that sell alcohol must close by 2 AM, plus our other state and local alcohol sales regulations (p…

Another explanation:

- You are demonstrating the difference between anecdotes and data. Massachusetts' drivers aren't worse than than those elsewhere.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#426

Post by jf »

kohanz wrote: post #20
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 can totally relate to your feeling. I became a father about 4 years ago and all of a sudden stories like this one, or a sick child, took on extra meaning. I either couldn't read them or I did and it would touch me deeply and affect my mood for a long time. It's unimaginable. Since then, two close friends have lost their children under tragic circumstances. You can't really put it into words what you'll feel for the…

> I became a father about 4 years ago and all of a sudden stories like this one, or a sick child, took on extra meaning.

I often think of how Tycho from Penny Arcade describes this phenomena: "Children carve something out of you, a place for themselves; people can twist the knife in that spot, and it just bleeds and bleeds."

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#427

Post by [deleted] »

mnm1 wrote: post #404
leonroy wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excellent points. There was an article where the author interviewed a bunch of kids a few decades back and examined how they played and then revisited them 20 years later to see how their kids played. The original group of kids played across a very large area (something like a couple square miles of woodland) and roamed across their hometowns with little oversight. Two decades later their children by comparison were…

My parents also placed perceived (by them) safety above everything else when I was a teenager. I missed out on a lot of things in life and am still missing out on things due to never having learned essential life skills and never having had essential experiences. I still resent them for that and so does my sister. Sometimes, I think parents only think of themselves, as strange as that might sound in this context. It'…

[deleted]

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#428

Post by falsedan »

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…

> I was doing the speed limit (60kph)

That's recklessly fast for a vehicle people are far less likely to hear, see, or be familiar with judging the speed of. Could he had seen you, and figured you were compent enough to slow down & avoid slamming into him?

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#429

Post by jablan »

Aloha wrote: post #403
lsc wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 l…

I don't think this is the argument the author of the article was trying to send at all. This accident could have just as easily happened in a dense urban core, as it could have in suburbia. The message was something else - sometimes, bad things just happen to people, and there is little you can do about it other than move on, and learn from the experiences.

The likelihood of death is proportional to speed [1], and the speed is lower in the urban cores. The math is super simple, and let's stop trying to justify bad urbanistic (essentially, political) decisions blaming it on the bad fate instead. [1] http://www.copenhagenize.com/2012/11/the-85th-percentile-fol...

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#430

Post by Steltek »

ecopoesis wrote: post #353
Steltek wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Boston and Cambridge have required municipal trucks to have side rails. They can't compel anyone else to follow through. That's a tiny fraction of trucking that we see.
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