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How I learned to live again, after running a man over
- thescriptkiddie 9y agoPlease don't call it an "accident". The Associated Press recommends using the term "crash" instead. https://www.transalt.org/news/releases/9545 https://www.transalt.org/news/releases/9545
- cappsjulian 9y agowho gives a shit
- dang 9y agoPlease don't post uncivil or unsubstantive comments here, even if another comment also is. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- RickS 9y ago>avoid the word “accident” in stories about traffic crashes, saying the word “can be read as exonerating the person responsible TFA indicates that the person has indeed been exonerated.
- speg 9y agoFeatured or fucking?
- chrismcb 9y agoSo are you suggesting that it was intentional? Unless it was intentional, it was an accident. Even if someone screwed up, it was all an accident.
- btrettel 9y agoIf the cause were incompetence (unintentional), is that an accident? I don't think so. The word "accident" to me and many people seems to imply little or nothing could have been done to prevent the tragedy, not whether it was unintentional. (Note that I'm not writing about the incident in the link here, just making a general statement.)
- Crontab 9y agoTo me, accident implies intent.
- jackvalentine 9y agoWhat kind of intent?
- chrismcb 9y agoThat is the exact opposite definition of accident. An accident implies the incident was unintentional.
- Crontab 9y agoMy apology, I misspoke.
- chrismcb 9y agoAccident is basically the opposite of intentional. Accident doesn't imply anything about it being avoidable. An accident can happen due to negligence. An accident just means the incident was unintentiona, not unavoidable.
- btrettel 9y agoThe dictionary I checked doesn't agree, but I accept others use this definition.
- davidgh 9y agoThe AP recommends this so a reporter can describe the event without casting judgement on the cause of the event. This is similar to the reason why reporters say things like the “alleged” robber when there were perhaps many witnesses and maybe the individual in the report even confessed to the theft. It keeps the reporter in the position of fact rather than judgement. This is important distinction for a reporter of an event. Non-reporters are not under the same requirement to maintain a position on non-judgement.
- c22 9y agoYou're publishing your editorial content to a large number of strangers here, it is not that different from the situation of reporters. While it is true that no such requirement exists, the reasons to choose the alternate wording are still the same.
- maxxxxx 9y agoStuff like this makes me wish for self driving cars the most. I am fine with killing myself with my driving but it would be very hard to deal with killing another person. I think most of us pretty much every day sometimes don't pay attention and could potentially cause an accident. It's just pure luck getting away with these mistakes.
- denweb 9y agoIt's about white privilege not luck.
- amelius 9y ago> I am fine with killing myself with my driving but it would be very hard to deal with killing another person. This makes me wonder (without judgement) how the engineers at Tesla and Uber are mentally handling the recent events.
- maxxxxx 9y agoYou have that problem in every industry where your products can kill people. If you produce cars, medical devices, Space Shuttles or drugs there is a good chance that a mistake will kill people. There is no way around it and people have to deal with it. You only hope that you can be confident that you have done your best with the knowledge you had at the time.
- rubicon33 9y agoI know how I would handle it - We are doing work that will save lives. It will be a long, difficult road, and we will make mistakes; But when we finish this work we will be responsible for saving lives every year. This is the right thing to do, even if getting there means the loss of innocent people.
- maxxxxx 9y agoYou just have to make sure that you can prove you weren't reckless doing so and did your best to minimize risk.
- nickswan 9y ago“PTSD continues in unexpected ways. I’m still hypersensitive to noise, anxious in crowds. I cry at the tiniest prompting, often at kindness and evidence of a shared humanity.“ I would never associate ptsd with these symptoms. My daughter was diagnosed with Leukemia in May ‘17 (she’s responded well to treatment so far) and I’m susceptible to all of these - but I would never have labelled it as ptsd.
- ggm 9y agoIf you're seeing a mental health professional it's an interesting conversation to talk about labels for illness, and how people ideate around them. If this label doesn't work for you, you don't have to wear it. If you aren't seeing a mental health professional, given the stresses in your life, it's worth at least thinking about. I value time spent talking to somebody dispassionate, but interested in my mental welfare for a number of reasons. It only has upsides, as far as I am concerned.
- dbasedweeb 9y agoA fever, muscle pain, and cough are symptoms of a lot of different diseases, right? Same here, although minus the disease. Grieving, acute stress, homesickness, depression and anxiety and a lot more share the common symptoms described. PTSD does too, but that’s not all that defines it. Intrusive thoughts, flashbacks, hyper vigilance, emotional outbursts, vivid and disturbing dreams, and all of this over a period of months is suggestive of PTSD. If you check out some of the diagnostic manuals, you’ll find a common theme is a list of symptoms, and instruction that a certain number need to be present over a given time frame. So a cough for a few days suggests a cold, while a cough and high fever for a week suggest something else, and coughing up blood suggests something dire. See what I mean?
- ilovecars2 9y ago> I turned left on to the main road, and began to move up through the gears. That’s when a car coming towards me flashed its lights. This used to happen to me a lot in the Mini. So much that a couple of years earlier I’d taken it back to BMW to get it checked; yes, my headlights were wrongly adjusted and I had inadvertently been annoying other drivers. So when this driver flashed, I instinctively flashed back: “No, those aren’t my main beams – these are, see?” > The time between my flash and the impact was infinitesimal. I’m having a hard time understanding the crash as there is so much information absent from the article. What kind of main road was this? Was it in a town or a A road between two towns? Was it designed for pedestrian usage (there are lots of A roads in the U.K which are not designed for pedestrian usage. These roads are often known as BYPASS roads and are designed to keep motor vehicles out of town centres). Was it street lit? Given the fact that the other driver flashed him I would think not? What was the speed limit? Was it appropriate for the road?
- derekp7 9y agoHere's the spot where I believe he got on A148 based on the description (heading east out of Holt, turned right around the bend where the road joins A148) https://www.google.com/maps/search/holt/@52.9119877,1.1145028,17.72z https://www.google.com/maps/search/holt/@52.9119877,1.114502... I used streetview to follow along the road, it is a 2-lane that has sporadic houses and somewhat wooded, there is a sidewalk on the left side or the road. Speed limit signs say 30 km/h (so just under 20 Mph). After the residential area (1.3 km), it opens up to mostly farm field for another 1.5 km, then it hits another residential spot. So the description of "just winding through the gears" would put it probably at the end of the first group of houses, where it makes sense that residents would be walking (there is a payphone and a bus shelter in the middle of that stretch of road).
- ryanjshaw 9y agoIt says the victim, Rawson, had just exited a bus, and the driver was ramping up in gears - shortly after the left turn off the A148, as a bend begins to straighten out, there is a hidden bus stop on the left side of the road: https://www.google.com/maps/@52.9118915,1.1132237,3a,75y,231.32h,71.39t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sab0dRvemBgfxooE54GYnbQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656 https://www.google.com/maps/@52.9118915,1.1132237,3a,75y,231... There doesn't appear to be any obvious lighting in the area; it may be the oncoming driver flashed because they could see Rawson was in the road and realised the oncoming driver wouldn't have seen him, having just come around the bend.
- tmnvix 9y agoThe number of comments on that article along the lines of "this happened to me / my family member" is illuminating. I think as individuals we don't have a good understanding of just how harmful motor vehicles are. This is even though most people know of someone that was killed or maimed before adulthood. Like suicide, I think the consequences of motor vehicle crashes are mostly hidden. This doesn't only apply to the fatal crashes. I'm sure people that are maimed tend to venture into the public domain less often than the able-bodied. If they were more visible, we might be more aware of the carnage that happens on our roadways. I think there will come a time when the idea of guiding a couple of tonnes of metal at speeds of up to 70km/h within a metre or two of pedestrians will seem absurd.
- JKCalhoun 9y agoIt is already absurd. I'm not sure why we, as a society, allowed cars to take over our "pedestrianways". I suppose it was gradual — only a few cars at first, traveling relatively slowly back then.
- ryanjshaw 9y agoYou may be interested in the following article, 'The forgotten history of how automakers invented the crime of "jaywalking"': https://www.vox.com/2015/1/15/7551873/jaywalking-history https://www.vox.com/2015/1/15/7551873/jaywalking-history
- awat 9y agoInteresting read, I didn’t realize the jay in jay walking was a slight.
- dleslie 9y agoIt probably doesn't help that the auto industry employs a tremendous amount of Americans, from assembly to distribution and maintenance, and is a major source of advertisement funding for other industries that rely on such.
- geebee 9y ago
- ljlkjlasjkd 9y agoIt's my wish that someday speed limit is strictly enforced. Instead here, the norm is for people to go 10 to 15 mph over speed limit. If you don't speed, you will receive harassment from the vehicle behind -- flashing of lights, honking, or tail-gating.