4 ms·

There was an investigation and court case about the accident, as the article mentions. If the driver would have been guilty, probably he would have been punishe

There was an investigation and court case about the accident, as the article mentions. If the driver would have been guilty, probably he would have been punished. I think some pretty unfortunate situation arose, maybe the children were also not careful enough, it doesn't really matter anymore. The driver had to make a decision in a split second. Probably he already instinctively did some action by the time he got to think about the situation, and the "decision" is a rationalization of a situation he was just as well victim of, where he also didn't have any control.

jessaustin 10y ago
If the driver would have been guilty, probably he would have been punished. In USA, this assumption is usually wrong. Drivers who kill pedestrians are rarely punished, no matter what the circumstances. The only vehicular deaths that less often result in punishment are those of cyclists. Not coincidentally, we learn right at the beginning of TFA that the police report claimed the "boy was crossing the street on his bicycle" even though that was entirely a lie. This is a sort of code, written by a "normal" adult who empathizes with drivers and not with pedestrians, which other such "normal" adults can read and understand without having to think. Only extraordinary acts of driving cruelty, like killing a child in a suburban cul-de-sac or mowing down a parade, can break through the stupor of official carelessness and lead to consequences. When multiple automobiles are involved, LEOs and prosecutors can empathize with both parties, so justice isn't so uncommon.
- mikekchar 10y ago
  I'm not sure where one can find justice in this situation. People generally don't go out with the intent to kill in their car. There are many people who drive with far too little care. If I am honest, I have done it before in my life. I don't think I know a single driver who hasn't. The problem (or lack thereof, I suppose) is that there usually aren't any consequences to that lack of care. People drive terribly badly all the time and even still, death is quite uncommon. Think of the worst drivers you know. How many of them have killed people? We all need to drive much more carefully. Would harsher penalties bring that about? Perhaps. I really don't know. But I certainly would not call it justice to destroy yet another person's life in retaliation for being stupid and unlucky at the same time. One death seems unjust enough for me. Adding more misery to the pile does not make me happier. Speaking as a person who has mostly given up driving (I have driven less than once a year in the last decade), I would prefer simply to make licenses almost impossible to get. Most people are not able to take the task seriously enough, no matter what the risk, IMHO.
  - rayiner 10y ago
    > There are many people who drive with far too little care. If I am honest, I have done it before in my life. I don't think I know a single driver who hasn't. I think that's exactly the point OP is making. We have this culture of driving two-ton machines around with little care. It's so culturally institutionalized that when things inevitably go wrong, we sweep it under the rug even though we'd harshly punish a similar level of negligence in a different context.
    - jessaustin 10y ago
      Yes, that's it exactly. It's interesting for me to recognize the little "tells" that point out the contradictions we habitually ignore, that must be ignored to continue living as we live. This sort of routine police report falsehood is one of those. Of course there was no bicycle involved, they were fishing for goodness' sake. There was no bicycle at the scene, mangled in the way the boy's body was mangled. However, the cop on the scene had decided that the driver (and perhaps more importantly his employer and that employer's insurance company) should not be held responsible for driving too fast. (Can you stop when you notice children in the road? No? Then you're driving too fast!) The most effective way to ensure that irresponsibility was to place the boy beyond the pale of potential victimhood, on a bicycle. It would be interesting for a sociologist to do a study of police reports on deaths of cyclists in traffic. Whenever the report didn't include a picture of a mangled bicycle, the sociologist could interview witnesses to see if they would mention a bicycle without being prompted to do so. We might find that mischaracterizing pedestrians as cyclists is a very common thing.
  - CalRobert 10y ago
    More than punishment, road design goes a long way towards changing behaviour. When your neighbourhood's streets are designed for high speeds, people will drive at high speeds. Saying "I hit the kid accidentally", to me, seems a bit like saying "I decided to shoot my gun in random directions and accidentally hit a kid, so it's not my fault!". But I am apparently in the minority. It was most appalling when I lived and worked in LA and my coworkers would joke about murdering bicyclists without a second thought; never mind the fact that I kept my helmet on my desk and clearly cycled to work.
- yazbo_mcclure 10y ago
  This is the best comment on this thread jess

jessaustin 10y ago

If the driver would have been guilty, probably he would have been punished. In USA, this assumption is usually wrong. Drivers who kill pedestrians are rarely punished, no matter what the circumstances. The only vehicular deaths that less often result in punishment are those of cyclists. Not coincidentally, we learn right at the beginning of TFA that the police report claimed the "boy was crossing the street on his bicycle" even though that was entirely a lie. This is a sort of code, written by a "normal" adult who empathizes with drivers and not with pedestrians, which other such "normal" adults can read and understand without having to think. Only extraordinary acts of driving cruelty, like killing a child in a suburban cul-de-sac or mowing down a parade, can break through the stupor of official carelessness and lead to consequences. When multiple automobiles are involved, LEOs and prosecutors can empathize with both parties, so justice isn't so uncommon.

mikekchar 10y ago
I'm not sure where one can find justice in this situation. People generally don't go out with the intent to kill in their car. There are many people who drive with far too little care. If I am honest, I have done it before in my life. I don't think I know a single driver who hasn't. The problem (or lack thereof, I suppose) is that there usually aren't any consequences to that lack of care. People drive terribly badly all the time and even still, death is quite uncommon. Think of the worst drivers you know. How many of them have killed people? We all need to drive much more carefully. Would harsher penalties bring that about? Perhaps. I really don't know. But I certainly would not call it justice to destroy yet another person's life in retaliation for being stupid and unlucky at the same time. One death seems unjust enough for me. Adding more misery to the pile does not make me happier. Speaking as a person who has mostly given up driving (I have driven less than once a year in the last decade), I would prefer simply to make licenses almost impossible to get. Most people are not able to take the task seriously enough, no matter what the risk, IMHO.
- rayiner 10y ago
  > There are many people who drive with far too little care. If I am honest, I have done it before in my life. I don't think I know a single driver who hasn't. I think that's exactly the point OP is making. We have this culture of driving two-ton machines around with little care. It's so culturally institutionalized that when things inevitably go wrong, we sweep it under the rug even though we'd harshly punish a similar level of negligence in a different context.
  - jessaustin 10y ago
    Yes, that's it exactly. It's interesting for me to recognize the little "tells" that point out the contradictions we habitually ignore, that must be ignored to continue living as we live. This sort of routine police report falsehood is one of those. Of course there was no bicycle involved, they were fishing for goodness' sake. There was no bicycle at the scene, mangled in the way the boy's body was mangled. However, the cop on the scene had decided that the driver (and perhaps more importantly his employer and that employer's insurance company) should not be held responsible for driving too fast. (Can you stop when you notice children in the road? No? Then you're driving too fast!) The most effective way to ensure that irresponsibility was to place the boy beyond the pale of potential victimhood, on a bicycle. It would be interesting for a sociologist to do a study of police reports on deaths of cyclists in traffic. Whenever the report didn't include a picture of a mangled bicycle, the sociologist could interview witnesses to see if they would mention a bicycle without being prompted to do so. We might find that mischaracterizing pedestrians as cyclists is a very common thing.
- CalRobert 10y ago
  More than punishment, road design goes a long way towards changing behaviour. When your neighbourhood's streets are designed for high speeds, people will drive at high speeds. Saying "I hit the kid accidentally", to me, seems a bit like saying "I decided to shoot my gun in random directions and accidentally hit a kid, so it's not my fault!". But I am apparently in the minority. It was most appalling when I lived and worked in LA and my coworkers would joke about murdering bicyclists without a second thought; never mind the fact that I kept my helmet on my desk and clearly cycled to work.
yazbo_mcclure 10y ago
This is the best comment on this thread jess