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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

#491

Post by thomastjeffery »

drewm1980 wrote: post #473
androck1 wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lesson of this article is that unfortunate things, that come with a lifetime of grief, happen to good people. And perhaps more importantly, that empathy and understanding are incredibly powerful. It is true that we should take "the responsibility of driving a lot more seriously, and treating driving as something risky" but treating this as a story about driving less broadly misses the point.

I agree with you about how the article is written, but "bad things happen to good people" isn't an idea that will save lives. "Find a way to stop driving, because it IS your fault if you kill someone with your automobile" is. She chose to drive, killed someone as a direct result of her decision, and then chose to continue driving. She was surround by car culture enablers (her dad immediately fixing the car instead of…

This obsession with finding fault is a significant part of the stress this woman has dealt with.

It is terrible that a child did not get to live his life, and there is nothing we can do in hindsight to bring that opportunity back to him.

It is also terrible to torture this woman over a flaw in the system. She was paying attention, and driving the speed limit. She was not at fault. Her actions could not be changed to lower the likelihood of her accidentally killing another child. Only the surrounding circumstances can be changed.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#492

Post by dsnuh »

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…

>Occasionally, I'll spot another father like me.

Can you expand? What type of father are you?

Honestly, you'd do better to be more vigilant of bees and mosquitoes, both of which are much more likely to kill or harm your child than a stranger abducting them.

Try not to worry so much. ;)

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#493

Post by treyfitty »

jotm wrote: post #468
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…

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.

The one thing I resented the most about my peers growing up was that they always tattled and brought their problems to someone else. Kids should learn how to deal with conflict on their own. Deferring to authority and police is a sure fire way to perpetuate the notion of “don’t worry. You’re special. There’s people to take care of you.”

People get bullied all the time. Even as adults, just in different forms. Resorting to authority early on is not the best solution.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#494

Post by mulmen »

jablan wrote: post #429
Aloha wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Even if your claim is true it's still not the point of the article.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#495

Post by mjevans »

Aloha wrote: post #444
csours wrote: 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 agree, it's a very poor design, likely dating from an era when high speed was a big noisy horse drawn carriage.

The proper engineering solution to this is to have an angled turn-off on to a side road (either perpendicular or parallel) which /is/ limited to a "safe residential speed".

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#496

Post by lostlogin »

misiti3780 wrote: post #450
lostlogin wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until recently babies weren’t even destined for heaven, they went to limbo. It took an update being in 2007 for this feature to be added. The people who come up with this crap hardly ease suffering. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1549439/The-Pope-e...

heaven and limbo are christians concepts - if you are not a christian/catholic[1] (aka 6/7 of the world) and you find out a child dies, you presumably dont even give these things a second thought. http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/20...

I was replying to a comment discussing heaven. But even without that it’s about a billion people and the HN crowd are not representative of world population. It would be interesting to see the demographics...

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#497

Post by Xeoncross »

nkrisc wrote: post #299
Xeoncross wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is impossible for men to have written the bible. It was written over ~1,500 years by about 40 different people across multiple empires and contents - yet it's unified in the story. It's over 20% prophecy, much of which was has already come to pass about nations or events (some of which features Israel). There is no book that even comes close to the complexity required for the bible to have been written.

> It is impossible for men to have written the bible. That's quite the claim, since historical evidence sure seems to show every known biblical text was scribed by human hands. > yet it's unified in the story That's certainly open to interpretation, to say the least. Many of the story elements and arcs can be found in cultures that pre-date Christ. > much of which was has already come to pass about nations or events…

> show every known biblical text was scribed by human hands

Yes, the bible itself claims this (2 Peter 1:21). I was referring to men coming up with the idea and colluding over a millennia.

> Many of the story elements and arcs can be found in cultures that pre-date Christ.

That is because everything in the New Testament (including Christ's life) was an extension of what had already be told for thousands of years earlier.

> Over thousands of years one can find examples for any broad prophecy.

These aren't broad prophecies. They are specific accounts of events such as the destruction method of Tarshish by a Greek commander (Alexander the great) or the name of a future Persian King who would command the rebuilding of the temple (Darius the Persian) or the return of Israel as a nation after Daniels 69 weeks had elapsed, etc...

The most extensive prophecies are focused on Jesus himself and what he would do and how he would die (Isaiah 53, etc..).

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#498

Post by drewm1980 »

jacquesm wrote: post #208
PerfectElement wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here. I cringe when I see the common HN rhetoric that parents now a days are over-protective. Go say that to parents who lost a child and now live in regret. Kids are unpredictable. I remember being 7 years old and waiting with my mom to cross a busy street. For some reason that today is unknown to me, I decided to just run across the street as soon as the lights turned yellow. I almost got hit and my mom almost…

A little girl cycled of the pavement a while ago, just as I was passing, good brakes and no traffic from the other side. Very close call and I have not yet gotten over it yet, nightmares and daily thoughts about it. I am pretty sure her mom also remembers it vividly. Kids can be totally unpredictable like that and how it all ends is hugely dependent on circumstance.

You're a good person; listen to your subconscious! You can't change the unpredictability of kids, but you ~can stop driving, and model good non-driving behavior for your kids and the other people around you.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#499

Post by m4x »

drewm1980 wrote: post #473
androck1 wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lesson of this article is that unfortunate things, that come with a lifetime of grief, happen to good people. And perhaps more importantly, that empathy and understanding are incredibly powerful. It is true that we should take "the responsibility of driving a lot more seriously, and treating driving as something risky" but treating this as a story about driving less broadly misses the point.

I agree with you about how the article is written, but "bad things happen to good people" isn't an idea that will save lives. "Find a way to stop driving, because it IS your fault if you kill someone with your automobile" is. She chose to drive, killed someone as a direct result of her decision, and then chose to continue driving. She was surround by car culture enablers (her dad immediately fixing the car instead of…

This is very insensitive. Driving a car is a practical necessity for most people, and genuine accidents do happen.

I don't know how you can possibly think it's appropriate to tell somebody who is suffering through the grief of accidentally killing a child that "it IS your fault".

Striving to drive less is a great thing to do for many reasons, but the vast majority of people will still be required to drive regularly. Some of those people will have genuine accidents. We don't currently live in a world where it is possible to completely prevent traffic accidents (which, for the record, are also occasionally caused by cyclists and frequently caused by pedestrians)

It is inevitable that some people will be involved in tragic accidents, and your comment does nothing to prevent that. It just makes life worse for the people in that situation

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#500

Post by rnd33 »

Xeoncross wrote: post #104
phkahler wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Is this what people consider "biblical"? An angry person? I've spent years reading the Pentateuch, writings, and new testament... No, it's the old testament god. The one who punished Adam and Eve, the one who decided humanity was such a disgrace he flooded the world to purge them - that angry god.

Is God not able to try and judge people just as we do? If someone murders another, humanity has long believed it ok to imprison or execute them for their crimes. I fail to see how an all-knowing God is not qualified to make the same judgement. > "Then the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. The LORD was sorry that He…

> The idea of an "Old Testament God" and "New Testament God" is rejected by all the Jews and Christians I know.

How many Jews and Christians do you know? How many theologians do you know?

I could just as easily state that it is abundantly clear that the Old Testament and the New Testament are written by completely different people at completely different points in time.

Are you saying that all acts of cruelty by God in the OT are acts of judgement? And what kind of judgement is that? The story about Sodom and Gomorrah basically tells us that:

A) Any kind of sin can be punishable by death. B) Collective punishment is OK, including innocent men, women and children.

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