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The day I accidentally killed a little boy

bbc.co.uk

461–470 of 683 posts

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#461

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 can relate to your story, but from your brothers side. Being bullied changes you, forever, and for the negative. Children can, and are, cruel to each other, and adults don't always step in. It can easily become a tolerated form of torture.

I learned from that. I won't tolerate no amount of bullying, shaming, or excluding of an individual of groups I take care of or am part of. If they'd care it is not difficult for adults to stop bullying of kids by kids.

Even in your peer group it isn't always difficult to block bullying. If you are open, direct, loud, and confrontential enough against the transgressors, they usually stop. Though, care must be taken to not bully themselves.

I think that those that bully have themselves been hurt before or have other issues, and bullying is just a way to deal with. So, having that in mind can make it easier to deescalate these situations.

It becomes even more difficult if you finally decide to open up about how hurt you are, and you are brushed away, and not taken seriously.

As weird as it sounds, it helps to read a comment like yours to see that there are people that care, so thank you for sharing.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#462

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.…

It's obvious you kind of think I'm right, by your use of the term "guilt" regarding your use of a car, and the use of "good" regarding riding a bike often. Not everyone is me, that's painfully obvious... but you and I agree at least. The guilt you indicate represents that which is highest and best within you - the desire to protect & preserve human life. Stop fighting it, which includes trying to turn it outward and blame me, the messenger. The conflict you feel when you get behind the wheel is that you might do this very thing to someone else. I recommend avoiding it, simple as that. If you can't or won't do that, that's for you to work out, not me.

Is it safe for me to assume you were injured by someone who chose to drive a car, and not merely by your riding of the bike? I mean the latter does happen (more so in a recreation context than basic transportation I would venture). But the point is, you have the right to choose to ride a bike and the right to do it without undue risk of injury from someone else's infringement on your safety. Particularly if their reasons for doing so consist of nothing more than the typical list of trivial reasons I tend to hear that go into a decision to drive a car to get somewhere. Some of these, especially from people who are curious about other ways, tend to center around apprehension and doubt about problems that have been solved many times over. (But in an hour of network TV you'll see probably 20 commercials for cars, and none for, let's say, waterproof garment bags with hooks on them for transporting business suits wrinkle-free on a bike's rack.)

The one major, non-trivial reason to use a car of course, is the deeply ironic fact that on the bike, you might get killed or injured by other people who decided to use the car instead. Or never even consciously thought about it at all, and just went along because of conformity and marketing. Well it's okay, I'm sure wherever they were headed was real important. They "had to" drive. And life is risk, after all... with most of the risk being shouldered by the cyclist, not them. Anyway no humorless PC vegan transgendered (throw that in there) caricature is gonna jam their standards down that person's brave and stalwart individualistic throat, that's for sure.

No wait it was ram. Sorry, I've seen that one many times, so it's not very memorable. To me it's usually cause for optimism, since it means the person has moved past the initial death threats and namecalling and moved into fantasizing to avoid confronting their own doubts about the real issue. To that effort: How likely is it really, that driving your car means you're a brave comic-book hero crusader fighting for individual freedom against a tyrannical horde of standards-rammers? (A horde that even in a place like Portland OR is something like 5% of the population, tops.) You don't think maybe driving cars, like 95% of people and every TV commercial tells you to, at great personal expense, isn't conforming meekly to a standard set by others?

My decision to ride a bike has more to do with habit (25 years like I said) and not really giving a shit if I get killed, which is a peculiar species of bravery that I know most people don't share. So I don't call it a standard for people to live up to. It's actually a result of surviving trauma, which I have in common with this woman who killed the boy. Most people, who've done no such thing, tend to be more like "Oh God what about my precious, precious life!" Well what about it? You deserve a non-deadly street then, if it's so precious.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#463
post #404

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'…

> 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.

New father here...do you feel comfortable talking about what life skills / experiences you missed?, so I can (try to) avoid making the same mistakes?

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#464
post #403
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.

I had a glancing blow at 70 mph with a car doing a similar speed coming the other way. I was in the last mile of a cross country drive and was thinking of getting to the pub. It was the bit of road I knew best.

I drove a couple of times after that, but the screaming kids in the back of the other car was enough for me.

Now I cycle everywhere. Or get the train. I was not prosecuted or anything but I didn't want to almost kill anyone (and their family) ever again.

I consider myself lucky.

Point being: cycling is good too.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#466
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.

Not quite a Netflix category, but there's https://www.doesthedogdie.com/ tracks a few other things in addition to dog deaths.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#467
post #444
post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that the message was about how humans deal with tragedy, and as a technical community we often neglect that - but it is also correct to have the technical discussion. Two things greatly increased the probability of a fatal incident in this case: 1. Mailbox across the street from the home: If the mailbox was on the same side of the street as the home, there would be less cause to cross the street. 2. High spee…

"The road started out as freeway but quickly became a rural highway, one lane in each direction. The speed limit was 45 or 50mph, fairly fast for that kind of road, it was quite busy and I was in a line of cars doing the speed limit." I'd be hard pressed to call a rural area a residential neighborhood.

> "I passed a little outpost of houses whose mailboxes were on the opposite side of the street."

I used to live on a road like this, it's not exactly a neighborhood like in most cities (so "residential neighborhood" may not have been accurate) - it's a linear neighborhood along the road. We were lucky enough to have our mailbox at the end of our driveway, not across the street; if our mailbox had been across the street, it would have been unsafe to walk and get the mail.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#468

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…

You should make sure your kids can defend and counter attack. Not only physically, but using their brain and resources such as authority figures and the police.

Maybe you view the world as peaceful and rosy, and that's a good view to have, but always have a fallback.

Speak softly but carry a big stick, you know.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#469

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.

In the USA (and perhaps Canada), yes, but it's not illegal here in the UK (inferred since the British Oxford has a Cowley Road, which is a busy radial route).

The advice given to children here is "don't cross at the front of a bus, always behind it". That and "look right, left, and right again".

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#470
post #375

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 l…

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