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Oculus Rift co-founder killed by gang trying to escape police

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Re: Oculus Rift co-founder killed by gang trying to escape police

#271

Post by readme »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #140

This is a good reminder to always be a defensive and aware pedestrian. Just because you have the light or the right-of-way doesn't mean you are guaranteed a safe crossing of the street. Whenever I cross an intersection as a pedestrian I always look both ways (even on one way streets) and I always keep an eye on cars that are still in motion, especially those that don't appear to be slowing down. It's good to make the…

This. I am constantly asked when driving, sometimes walking, "why don't you go" -- the answer is "I'm waiting to see that everyone else has stopped first!" The same is true when crossing through an intersection in your car. Someone rolling up to the stop sign, don't go! Wait for complete stops, always.

Re: Oculus Rift co-founder killed by gang trying to escape police

#272

Post by lostlogin »

joe_the_user wrote: post #96
tnohtyp wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the article they killed a police officer and ran, if you don't pursue them how are you going to catch them? Aftersll, they did murder someone, and apparently they had warrants, so it seems reasonable to assume we dont want them out running around anymore as they sre likely to commit more fiolent crimes. Furthermore, if have a policy to not pursue, then every criminal is always going to run. The fault is…

Read more closely. "When officers went to investigate, there was a physical altercation between police and 26-year-old Gerardo Diego Ayala that ended with a fatal officer-involved shooting." The cops killed one of the suspects then pursued the rest, then a pedestrian died in the chase. But the fricken media did a great job phrasing things so the cops seemed justified, woo-hoo. See: http://blogs.ocweekly.com/navelgazi…

I'm more commenting on the number of fatalities. Given how it panned out, it was handled badly. Confrontation there and then was the wrong choice. I don't pretend to have any great solutions, but I'd like to think that any armed confrontation that occurred near me had been done with consideration for what-if scenarios. Confrontation often brings out the worst in people, and it did here.

Re: Oculus Rift co-founder killed by gang trying to escape police

#273

Post by wavefunction »

snogglethorpe wrote: post #270
malandrew wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who's been hit by a car twice (neither were my fault), it's also a good reminder that cars simply don't belong in urban areas with a sufficiently dense population. I still don't get why most American cities still don't reach a tipping point then go whole hog in making certain parts of cities pedestrian and bike only.

Cars are still often used as a sign of conspicuous consumption, especially among older people who came of age back in the "car era" (the '50s/'60s, when there was an overwhelming sense of the automobile as the "glorious future" of transportation, and before the many problems of mass car usage were clear)—and older people tend to be richer/more influential. So you get a disproportionate amount of car use by rich/influ…

There's also things like commercial deliveries, where putting a pallet on your back or trying to fit it on a bike is... unrealistic.

Re: Oculus Rift co-founder killed by gang trying to escape police

#274

Post by lostlogin »

Volpe wrote: post #114
zb wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In New Zealand the police adopted a (highly-publicised) policy of not continuing to chase people who drive away at high speed due to the danger it poses to the public, when it is trivial to just go round to their house the next day and arrest them. The consequences of this have been as follows: 1) Now everybody runs when stopped by Police. OK, not everybody , but the rate has probably tripled. 2) After the police giv…

> After the police give up the chase, a member of the public is almost invariably killed at an intersection within 30s, since the offender is still driving at high speed but there are no longer any lights and sirens to warn the public. i call BS, citation?

The non-driver occupants often aren't the person at fault. The driver is.

Re: Oculus Rift co-founder killed by gang trying to escape police

#275

Post by [deleted] »

wavefunction wrote: post #273
snogglethorpe wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cars are still often used as a sign of conspicuous consumption, especially among older people who came of age back in the "car era" (the '50s/'60s, when there was an overwhelming sense of the automobile as the "glorious future" of transportation, and before the many problems of mass car usage were clear)—and older people tend to be richer/more influential. So you get a disproportionate amount of car use by rich/influ…

There's also things like commercial deliveries, where putting a pallet on your back or trying to fit it on a bike is... unrealistic.

[deleted]

Re: Oculus Rift co-founder killed by gang trying to escape police

#276

Post by snogglethorpe »

wavefunction wrote: post #273
snogglethorpe wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cars are still often used as a sign of conspicuous consumption, especially among older people who came of age back in the "car era" (the '50s/'60s, when there was an overwhelming sense of the automobile as the "glorious future" of transportation, and before the many problems of mass car usage were clear)—and older people tend to be richer/more influential. So you get a disproportionate amount of car use by rich/influ…

There's also things like commercial deliveries, where putting a pallet on your back or trying to fit it on a bike is... unrealistic.

One needn't entirely eliminate all vehicle access, simply make it difficult or restricted, and make the bulk of the physical fabric pedestrian-oriented. Only rare trunk roads should be wide/"fast" roads.

E.g., a narrow one-lane local road fronted by stores can be 99% pedestrian during the day, but allow small vans to resupply shops during the night. Many roads around here are clearly pedestrian, but car access isn't specifically banned... it's simply that nobody in their right mind drives there most of the time, because pedestrians don't make any particular effort to move out of the way, meaning a car has to drive extremely slowly.

[And don't underestimate what you can do with other vehicles... Package deliveries here use a full range of vehicles, from big trucks, to small trucks, to motorbikes, to bicycles pulling giant trailers, to bicycles with big baskets, to guys running down the street with a box in their hand; the sheer amount of stuff a bicycle with a giant trailer can move is quite impressive...]

Re: Oculus Rift co-founder killed by gang trying to escape police

#277

Post by graue »

entropy_ wrote: post #221
dhughes wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in Canada in a small town with a fairly large (per capita) Lebanese population (Tweel, Haddad, Rashed, Jabour). We have bad drivers here but I am willing to bet we exported the behaviour to Lebanon not the other way around.

I highly doubt it. The behaviour has nothing to do with bad drivers, it's mostly because of lack of enforcement. The only thing you can get a fine for is speeding, and even then most speed traps are easy to spot. Otherwise, just do whatever the fuck you want and you won't get a fine. I'm serious, anything goes. I've seen people burn red lights right in front of police officers and get no reaction. Heck, I've seen pol…

> I've seen people burn red lights right in front of police officers and get no reaction. Heck, I've seen police cars burn red lights(for no reason, sirens weren't on, they were driving pretty slow, they just felt like it).

As another commenter says, I've seen both of these things happen in New York City (especially the second).

Re: Oculus Rift co-founder killed by gang trying to escape police

#278

Post by SiVal »

mtrimpe wrote: post #186
InclinedPlane wrote: post #140

This is a good reminder to always be a defensive and aware pedestrian. Just because you have the light or the right-of-way doesn't mean you are guaranteed a safe crossing of the street. Whenever I cross an intersection as a pedestrian I always look both ways (even on one way streets) and I always keep an eye on cars that are still in motion, especially those that don't appear to be slowing down. It's good to make the…

After being hit by a car when I was young, that's exactly how I navigate traffic as a bicyclist/pedestrian. Traffic rules create a useful abstraction but, if you want to be safe, the only non-leaky abstraction is seeing traffic as a collection of objects moving at various speeds which can optionally change acceleration or direction based on things like traffic lights / your presence / cats running across the road aft…

After living outside the US for many years, I now play the "invisible man game" even in the US. I've taught it to my kids, too.

The rules are: you imagine that you are literally invisible and find a way to cross the road that doesn't rely on the drivers' cooperation with you or the law. The drivers don't know you exist, because you are invisible.

Playing that game allowed me, for example, to jump onto the hood of a car that stopped at a red light briefly then hit the gas just as I walked in front of it. I was playing invisible man, as always, and had imagined what I would do if that guy, who was stopping, decided to take off again just as I got in front of his car. I imagined jumping onto his hood, which I did so quickly when he hit the gas that I landed on his windshield staring in at him with a grin on my face (instead of ending up under his tires.)

You can't protect yourself from everything, but playing the invisible man game each time you cross a street with traffic is a good strategy. I should add that I can't really play it if I'm on the phone, so I pause my call ("oh, um, hold on a second, I'll be right back"), play the game, and resume the call on the other side.

Re: Oculus Rift co-founder killed by gang trying to escape police

#279

Post by TwoBit »

enraged_camel wrote: post #57
jtchang wrote: post #3

It is always sad to lose someone in your community. The Oculus Rift seems like a pretty cool invention and hope things turn out well. What do you even say when stuff like this happens? He was a developer and in a way we never know when each of us will meet our ends.

A couple of weeks ago, one of the VPs in my company suddenly passed away. A day of vomiting and diarrhea, followed by hospitalization, and shortly after that, gone. He was 43 years old. Incredibly active, healthy and fit guy. He died of a very rare staph infection. By the time he was diagnosed, it was too late. I think the lesson is that life is really short, and you never know when it will end. So you better make th…

Rare staph infection you say?? Was he recently in the hospital for an unrelated reason?

Re: Oculus Rift co-founder killed by gang trying to escape police

#280

Post by Argorak »

Kequc wrote: post #267
katbyte wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

However if they had not been able to contact someone: > police is forced to tow the car in that case, if they cannot reach someone

If they cannot contact you then you have been breaking the law. Why?

You have been breaking the law before they contact you. They are just sometimes nice like that. In contrast to the

If you want to know the specific part of the traffic law: StVO § 14, 2 (safety when entering and exiting the vehicle) [http://dejure.org/gesetze/StVO/14.html]:

"Kraftfahrzeuge sind auch gegen unbefugte Benutzung zu sichern."

(Vehicles are to be protected against unauthorized use.)

Also, your insurance might not like this ;).

As I said before, the german law is much more build around responsibilities. This is one example.

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