» Consider, for example, a residential street where the speed limit is 5 mph: it’s pretty hard for anyone to get seriously injured in an accident if vehicles fo

» Consider, for example, a residential street where the speed limit is 5 mph: it’s pretty hard for anyone to get seriously injured in an accident if vehicles follow the rules. But if a car decides to barrel down the road at highway speeds, I’m not off the hook if I push you in front of the it. I can’t just say “I’m innocent, because you couldn’t have died if everyone followed the rules” and get out of it. I’d probably still be liable if I didn’t see the car coming. Just because someone may have done something illegally that made my actions worse does not absolve me from wrongdoing; it just makes it so there are two problems to deal with. This is still treating a symptom and not the root of the problem. I don't care so much about "justice" for the victim as much as I care about the systems problem. In your example, why was someone driving well over the speed limit? Could we make it less likely or even impossible to speed that much? What can we do to make these events less likely to happen in the future?