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> Here's also a preemptive "intention doesn't matter" because the first post I share covers that in the section "The Semantics of Intention", where it argues th

by darawk 5y ago

> Here's also a preemptive "intention doesn't matter" because the first post I share covers that in the section "The Semantics of Intention", where it argues that the decisions have already been made in both the designs of our streets and in the choices people make behind the wheel, and those have known and changeable outcomes. The argument made here isn't very good. "Traffic violence" implies intention to do violence. Intention to speed is indeed intention to incur the risk of harm, but that risk is in general quite low, whereas 'traffic violence' strongly implies direct intention to cause harm. Intention to take risks that have harm as a potential consequence is not equivalent. It may be true that 'accident' cuts too strongly in the other direction, but the correct term is clearly closer to 'accident' than it is to 'violence'.

Retric 5y ago
Putting others at risk is harm. The amount of harm was larger than expected, but that doesn’t excuse the intent to cause harm anymore than someone dying during a beating is excused because they didn’t mean it. Reckless Endangerment for example is inherently a criminal offense even if no one was injured.
- kortilla 5y ago
  No, intent matters. Intending to kill someone with a car is punished far more severely than killing someone because you were speeding and lost control.
  - Retric 5y ago
    That’s irrelevant. While attempting to kill someone is considered a worse offense their both harm.
    - Retric 5y ago
      To be more clear, the amount of harm harm intended is the only difference. Manslaughter is still illegal even if the penalty for murder is higher. The difference is simply in the degree of harm intended not in the lack of intent to cause harm. If someone dies through because say you happened to have parked a normal car in a normal parking space then that’s perfectly fine, but kill someone because you where speeding and that’s your fault.
- unishark 5y ago
  You can't have an accident without a risk of accident first. Risk and harm aren't always inherently crimes. For example a cosmetic surgeon harms people and exposes them to unnecessary risks. In contact sports people willingly subject themselves to risks of serious injury. Same when people drive on public roads. The degree of risk is critical, hence the "reckless" requirement for the crime.
  - Retric 5y ago
    The critical difference is in sport and cosmetic surgery the other party willingly puts themselves at a specific level of risk. It’s not accepted for a cosmetic surgeon to increase risk by randomly preforming a second unrelated surgery while their under without telling the patient. Similarly, nobody agrees to have people do 200 MPH on a public road, in fact all speeding is breaking the law the only thing that changes is penalties getting more severe.
    - unishark 5y ago
      It seems you missed both my points. 1. People do indeed willingly put themselves at risk by driving on a public road, which was in the same list with the cosmetic surgeon. And doing so also puts others at risk. 2. The degree of risk is what matters. Ergo while both obeying the speed limit and driving 200 mph (assuming it was possible) puts others at risk, the latter risk is considered to high a degree. It is not a fundamental choice between risk and no risk, but between unacceptably-high risk and acceptable risk.
      - Retric 5y ago
        Speeding is by definition both an unacceptable risk and illegal. Even driving the speed limit is only acceptable in ideal conditions. Driving at those speeds is illegal in rain, fog, snow, etc as it puts others at what is considered an unacceptable risk. You and many others may decide to ignore public safety and the law, but that doesn’t somehow make it safe. While you personally may feel homicide is a reasonable trade off for convince, don’t assume everyone that happens to be near a public street and who’s life your willing to sacrifice, agrees with you. The occasional person killed in their own homes might have considered it a reasonable trade off, but we can’t ask them. EX: https://www.wfft.com/content/news/Woman-in-Fort-Wayne-killed-after-car-crashes-into-house-on-McCellan-Street-573455111.html https://www.wfft.com/content/news/Woman-in-Fort-Wayne-killed...
sandworm101 5y ago
Every crash that is not deliberate is an accident. Even if from negligence (drunks) the actual crash is accidental. Ascribing intention to every mistake, turning every tragic death into a homicide, ends in dark places. We may hate the person whose mistake causes a crash. We dont make them a murderer.
- bigiain 5y ago
  > Every crash that is not deliberate is an accident. I don't agree, probably because we have different meanings and implications around the word "accident". For me at least, there's some subtle semantics surrounding the word "accident" which are at the very least unhelpful in the context of traffic incidents. There are lots of incidents which are not "accidents", they're the result of a driver choosing to do something, or choosing to not to do something. A crash shouldn't be described as "They accidentally ran a red light", or "They accidentally went too fast into a curve", or "They accidentally failed to notice the pedestrian". In those scenarios, "intention" doesn't matter, and the driver fucked up and cause the crash and should be held accountable/responsible. There's no wriggle room there for reducing the responsibility by saying "accidents happen, it wasn't my fault..." There was no "accident", there was a fuckup on someone's part. Motorcyclists here in Australia have a term "SMIDSY" - which stands for "Sorry mate, I didn't see you", which is pretty much guaranteed to be the first thing out of a driver's mouth after they've just driven straight into you. It's not that they didn't "see you", it's that they didn't bother looking, or that they looked and didn't take any notice. Those are not "accidents". They are fuckups.
  - sandworm101 5y ago
    >> In those scenarios, "intention" doesn't matter, and the driver fucked up and cause the crash and should be held accountable/responsible. There's no wriggle room there for reducing the responsibility by saying "accidents happen, it wasn't my fault..." There was no "accident", there was a fuckup on someone's part. Intention absolutely always matters. People often do drive through lights unintentionally. If that is a proximate cause of an accident they are punished for negligence, not murder. Even intentionally driving through a light is a form of negligence. The only intentional crashes happen where people use the vehicle as a weapon[1]. If you deliberately run someone down you are a murderer, whether you broke any traffic laws while doing so is irrelevant. If you kill your wife by deliberately crashing into her, the cops aren't going to write you a speeding ticket while they read you your rights. [1] There are also rare cases where crashes are deliberately caused by non-drivers. A crash resulting from someone icing a road, throwing a brick at a car from an overpass, or tampering with a vehicle are deliberate crashes even though the driver(s) involved are not at fault. But if the road is icy because of something like a broken water line, it is very possible for nobody to be responsible: a truly blameless accident.
hansvm 5y ago
> risk is in general quite low Let's phrase it differently. Suppose you have a button. If you press it you can save a total of just under 5 days over your lifetime of driving, but there's a ~1.5% chance somebody instantly dies. Do you press the button? I think most people make that choice because they don't understand how dangerous their actions are, not because they think that's an acceptable return on investment (and in that sense, you're probably right that "violence" isn't quite the right word), but the fact remains that we have a system where pedestrians can't feel safe crossing the road at a crosswalk at a stop sign in front of a stopped car, and almost all pedestrian deaths would be prevented by just not breaking traffic laws or otherwise driving recklessly. I definitely think "accident" cuts too strongly in the other direction. A brief reminder just in case anyone reading doesn't know yet and will change their driving behavior positively in response: - Blowing through stop signs kills people (if you don't have enough visibility, stop first and _then_ pull forward) - Speeding drastically increases the chance of killing pedestrians you hit; please at least slow down in residential areas? - Tailgating kills people - Texting while driving kills people

by darawk 5y ago

Retric 5y ago

Putting others at risk is harm. The amount of harm was larger than expected, but that doesn’t excuse the intent to cause harm anymore than someone dying during a beating is excused because they didn’t mean it. Reckless Endangerment for example is inherently a criminal offense even if no one was injured.

kortilla 5y ago
No, intent matters. Intending to kill someone with a car is punished far more severely than killing someone because you were speeding and lost control.
- Retric 5y ago
  That’s irrelevant. While attempting to kill someone is considered a worse offense their both harm.
  - Retric 5y ago
    To be more clear, the amount of harm harm intended is the only difference. Manslaughter is still illegal even if the penalty for murder is higher. The difference is simply in the degree of harm intended not in the lack of intent to cause harm. If someone dies through because say you happened to have parked a normal car in a normal parking space then that’s perfectly fine, but kill someone because you where speeding and that’s your fault.
unishark 5y ago
You can't have an accident without a risk of accident first. Risk and harm aren't always inherently crimes. For example a cosmetic surgeon harms people and exposes them to unnecessary risks. In contact sports people willingly subject themselves to risks of serious injury. Same when people drive on public roads. The degree of risk is critical, hence the "reckless" requirement for the crime.
- Retric 5y ago
  The critical difference is in sport and cosmetic surgery the other party willingly puts themselves at a specific level of risk. It’s not accepted for a cosmetic surgeon to increase risk by randomly preforming a second unrelated surgery while their under without telling the patient. Similarly, nobody agrees to have people do 200 MPH on a public road, in fact all speeding is breaking the law the only thing that changes is penalties getting more severe.
  - unishark 5y ago
    It seems you missed both my points. 1. People do indeed willingly put themselves at risk by driving on a public road, which was in the same list with the cosmetic surgeon. And doing so also puts others at risk. 2. The degree of risk is what matters. Ergo while both obeying the speed limit and driving 200 mph (assuming it was possible) puts others at risk, the latter risk is considered to high a degree. It is not a fundamental choice between risk and no risk, but between unacceptably-high risk and acceptable risk.
    - Retric 5y ago
      Speeding is by definition both an unacceptable risk and illegal. Even driving the speed limit is only acceptable in ideal conditions. Driving at those speeds is illegal in rain, fog, snow, etc as it puts others at what is considered an unacceptable risk. You and many others may decide to ignore public safety and the law, but that doesn’t somehow make it safe. While you personally may feel homicide is a reasonable trade off for convince, don’t assume everyone that happens to be near a public street and who’s life your willing to sacrifice, agrees with you. The occasional person killed in their own homes might have considered it a reasonable trade off, but we can’t ask them. EX: https://www.wfft.com/content/news/Woman-in-Fort-Wayne-killed-after-car-crashes-into-house-on-McCellan-Street-573455111.html https://www.wfft.com/content/news/Woman-in-Fort-Wayne-killed...

sandworm101 5y ago

Every crash that is not deliberate is an accident. Even if from negligence (drunks) the actual crash is accidental. Ascribing intention to every mistake, turning every tragic death into a homicide, ends in dark places. We may hate the person whose mistake causes a crash. We dont make them a murderer.

bigiain 5y ago
> Every crash that is not deliberate is an accident. I don't agree, probably because we have different meanings and implications around the word "accident". For me at least, there's some subtle semantics surrounding the word "accident" which are at the very least unhelpful in the context of traffic incidents. There are lots of incidents which are not "accidents", they're the result of a driver choosing to do something, or choosing to not to do something. A crash shouldn't be described as "They accidentally ran a red light", or "They accidentally went too fast into a curve", or "They accidentally failed to notice the pedestrian". In those scenarios, "intention" doesn't matter, and the driver fucked up and cause the crash and should be held accountable/responsible. There's no wriggle room there for reducing the responsibility by saying "accidents happen, it wasn't my fault..." There was no "accident", there was a fuckup on someone's part. Motorcyclists here in Australia have a term "SMIDSY" - which stands for "Sorry mate, I didn't see you", which is pretty much guaranteed to be the first thing out of a driver's mouth after they've just driven straight into you. It's not that they didn't "see you", it's that they didn't bother looking, or that they looked and didn't take any notice. Those are not "accidents". They are fuckups.
- sandworm101 5y ago
  >> In those scenarios, "intention" doesn't matter, and the driver fucked up and cause the crash and should be held accountable/responsible. There's no wriggle room there for reducing the responsibility by saying "accidents happen, it wasn't my fault..." There was no "accident", there was a fuckup on someone's part. Intention absolutely always matters. People often do drive through lights unintentionally. If that is a proximate cause of an accident they are punished for negligence, not murder. Even intentionally driving through a light is a form of negligence. The only intentional crashes happen where people use the vehicle as a weapon[1]. If you deliberately run someone down you are a murderer, whether you broke any traffic laws while doing so is irrelevant. If you kill your wife by deliberately crashing into her, the cops aren't going to write you a speeding ticket while they read you your rights. [1] There are also rare cases where crashes are deliberately caused by non-drivers. A crash resulting from someone icing a road, throwing a brick at a car from an overpass, or tampering with a vehicle are deliberate crashes even though the driver(s) involved are not at fault. But if the road is icy because of something like a broken water line, it is very possible for nobody to be responsible: a truly blameless accident.

hansvm 5y ago

> risk is in general quite low Let's phrase it differently. Suppose you have a button. If you press it you can save a total of just under 5 days over your lifetime of driving, but there's a ~1.5% chance somebody instantly dies. Do you press the button? I think most people make that choice because they don't understand how dangerous their actions are, not because they think that's an acceptable return on investment (and in that sense, you're probably right that "violence" isn't quite the right word), but the fact remains that we have a system where pedestrians can't feel safe crossing the road at a crosswalk at a stop sign in front of a stopped car, and almost all pedestrian deaths would be prevented by just not breaking traffic laws or otherwise driving recklessly. I definitely think "accident" cuts too strongly in the other direction. A brief reminder just in case anyone reading doesn't know yet and will change their driving behavior positively in response: - Blowing through stop signs kills people (if you don't have enough visibility, stop first and _then_ pull forward) - Speeding drastically increases the chance of killing pedestrians you hit; please at least slow down in residential areas? - Tailgating kills people - Texting while driving kills people