The day I accidentally killed a little boy • Hacker News Board

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#501

Post by feral » Tue, Jan 09, 2018, 9:33 PM UTC

treyfitty wrote: post #493

jotm wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Resorti…

Being bullied sucks. I will teach my kids to use any tools available to stop them being bullied. If resorting to authority solves the problem, then thats great. That's how you deal with bullies, by using whatever works; not by following some arbitrary code about doing things yourself, or not tattling etc. (Note though I live in Ireland where involving the police sounds pretty bizarre/extreme).

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#502

Post by dumbneurologist » Tue, Jan 09, 2018, 9:33 PM UTC

kelchm wrote: post #174

bryanlarsen wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.…

Except reducing speed limits really don't change the speed at which people drive. https://priceonomics.com/is-every-speed-limit-too-low/

the other reply is correct, but i had a hard time understanding the point without a concrete example: making the roads narrower with visual cues regarding your speed causes people to slow down.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#503

Post by drewm1980 » Tue, Jan 09, 2018, 9:35 PM UTC

magic_beans wrote: post #260

Mithaldu wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's plenty that could've been done to prevent this. Most basic and simple would be to institute a traffic law culture in which the driver does get blame by default for hurting a pedestrian so they have pedestrians on their mind every single minute they control their car.

It was not the driver's fault in this case. The child ran right into a residential road with a high speed limit. The road should not have had such a high speed limit, should have had speed bumps, and possible the little boy's parents should have had a fence. Punishing the driver in this case doesn't fix the problem at all.

Revoking the driver's license permanently will reduce the chance of her killing another child do zero. It's not punishment, it's prevention. We should be telling drivers who injure people "don't worry, this horrible thing will never happen to you again, because driving is no longer a part of your role in society."

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#504

Post by 24gttghh » Tue, Jan 09, 2018, 9:36 PM UTC

falsedan wrote: post #420

24gttghh wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'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.

No struggle at all: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/09/26/4950747...

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#505

Post by PhasmaFelis » Tue, Jan 09, 2018, 9:43 PM UTC

dsnuh wrote: post #487

dsnuh wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi, please don't take this the wrong way, but as a father and stepfather to 4, I find this so sad. Have you considered therapy? It may help with this anxiety so that you can learn to let go a little and enjoy the ride. I know this is just a single comment you made on a website, but if this response of anxiety and fear really your view on raising your child at the point of 2 months experience, I can tell you it only g…

Some general advice to fight the pressure to be a perfect parent to a perfect child - 1. Forget the term "playdate". Don't schedule your kids' time to play with other children. I know it sounds strange, but adults used to have adult lives and people would just go visit each other. Their kids would play together while the adults did their thing. 2. Don't post pictures of your kid all the time on social media. No one r…

> 2. Don't post pictures of your kid all the time on social media. No one really cares. Sorry. Send those pictures to your parents or friends directly.

For many people, social media is how you send things to parents and friends. It's more straightforward than managing an email list, and needn't be any less real a connection.

I don't deny that ubiquitous social media is deforming our interactions, but I think a lot of people don't understand why Facebook et al got so popular in the first place. It's not just email for idiots. It's a tremendously useful tool for maintaining connections with a large and changing group.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#506

Post by ebcode » Tue, Jan 09, 2018, 9:47 PM UTC

dm319 wrote: post #223

rdiddly wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And all of you saying "same here" because your children are so precious, you all swore off driving cars, right? Because other people's children are precious?

I'm hoping one day we'll look back on car driving as something as horrendous as gladiatorial entertainment in Rome. In the UK we have 1 child killed and 37 seriously injured every week.

I believe you're right about that looking back. One of the safest developments in car culture has been the round-a-bout. Of course that works so well because it physically prevents the collisions that would otherwise happen in the centers of intersections. My hope is that we will extend that idea to all roads everywhere, and that future generations will physically separate roads intended for cars from roads intended for cyclists and pedestrians. Burying them underground but w/ ventilation for the exhaust, for example.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#507

Post by dsnuh » Tue, Jan 09, 2018, 9:51 PM UTC

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #505

dsnuh wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some general advice to fight the pressure to be a perfect parent to a perfect child - 1. Forget the term "playdate". Don't schedule your kids' time to play with other children. I know it sounds strange, but adults used to have adult lives and people would just go visit each other. Their kids would play together while the adults did their thing. 2. Don't post pictures of your kid all the time on social media. No one r…

> 2. Don't post pictures of your kid all the time on social media. No one really cares. Sorry. Send those pictures to your parents or friends directly. For many people, social media is how you send things to parents and friends. It's more straightforward than managing an email list, and needn't be any less real a connection. I don't deny that ubiquitous social media is deforming our interactions, but I think a lot of…

Use whatever app or medium you choose, my advice was simply that sending directly to specific people is a better than flooding your IG or FB with photos of junior every day.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#508

Post by PhasmaFelis » Tue, Jan 09, 2018, 9:53 PM UTC

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.

You're right that this wasn't the author's argument, but it is a very important lesson to take away. There will always be accidents where the driver is not at fault, but it's worth taking the opportunity to think about how road design and car culture make those accidents more likely, and what we as a society can do to reduce them.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#509

Post by luckroy » Tue, Jan 09, 2018, 9:53 PM UTC

falsedan wrote: post #433

luckroy wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps you've never been on rural roads that also have houses? There are many places where a 50+ mph speed limit is appropriate even though there are little clusters of houses dotted along the route. It's not practical to lower the speed limit for every house that has children.

> It's not practical to lower the speed limit for every house that has children. Yes it is. Do you mean, it would make driving more inconvenient, since drivers would have to slow down when they passed?

It's not just inconvenience, although that is part of it. The transportation department would have a huge added burden by needing a way to determine which houses have children, a lot more signage to mark the designated slowdown areas, extra workers to make the adjustments as families move around, a way to update various mapping/GPS systems, etc. The number of passing zones would be drastically reduced. Jake braking would be a nuisance for those houses with children. And there are probably more side effects that I can't think of immediately.

I don't disagree with any intention of improving safety, but there are pragmatic reasons we shouldn't unconditionally implement reduced speed limits around children.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#510

Post by rnd33 » Tue, Jan 09, 2018, 9:53 PM UTC

Xeoncross wrote: post #497

nkrisc wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 earl…

> I was referring to men coming up with the idea and colluding over a millennia.

How do you reconcile with the fact that there are hundreds of texts and stories that have selectively excluded by human hands to create what we today call the bible?

If my priest gives me a bible and tells me "This is the word of God", but admits that over the last 2000 years there have been several councils were certain texts and stories were added and removed, and that archaeologists have found previously unknown gospels not included in the bible, what am I supposed to think?