5 ms·

It doesn't help that vehicular manslaughter is basically not punished at all in the US. You can run over a pedestrian or cyclist due to inattention or dangerous

by jgeada 3y ago

It doesn't help that vehicular manslaughter is basically not punished at all in the US. You can run over a pedestrian or cyclist due to inattention or dangerous driving and get away with a no-jail sentence of community service of 60 days or so. The incentives are all aligned to maximize vehicle use and minimize any inconvenience to incompetent vehicle owners, regardless of the death toll.

sleepybrett 3y ago
+ civil penalties from the family of the slaughtered.
jplrssn 3y ago
I agree that is outrageous. But I'd imagine most people don't consider the survivability of pedestrians in a collision when they buy a car, since people generally overestimate their driving ability and underestimate their likelihood of ending up in an accident. So harsher penalties might not improve car designs much.
- alamortsubite 3y ago
  If harsher penalties were adopted only in the case of killing or injuring someone, perhaps not, but if we made fines for all moving violations proportional to vehicle weight, people might suddenly be more thoughtful.
- snthd 3y ago
  You're on to something there - apply the penalties to manufacturers.
  - rsynnott 3y ago
    It is arguably weird that no-one has successfully taken this approach; _in general_, if you make a thing, and then knowingly make a less safe version of a thing, and it kills someone due to your changes, then, well, you'll want a good lawyer. But cars do seem to be treated as something of a special case; all the responsibility is on the operator, even as the product is made knowingly more dangerous to bystanders.
- NegativeLatency 3y ago
  I think some people do consider it (although possibly from the wrong angle and not very deeply) otherwise you wouldn't see stuff like massively lifted trucks, who's purpose is to look "aggressive" and "scary" to make the person inside feel better about themself.
  - mikrotikker 3y ago
    Can confirm I got just a 2" body lift on my truck and it feels... Empowering. I want to go higher now so I'll be buying a 2" lifted suspension kit, nothing crazy like the 4" my friend is going for (his truck looks amazing with it). Unfortunately it won't fit in my shed then so I need to build a carport before I do that. The pedestrians are safe(ish). For now.
    - Symbiote 3y ago
      The pedestrians are already in danger since you're driving a truck.
      - mikrotikker 3y ago
        That's why I said safe-ish
  - mordechai9000 3y ago
    I think the noise and the image are designed to impress other drivers safely cocooned within their own vehicles. You don't even need to modify the stock vehicles to get this effect. When I have no protective shell around me, even standard passenger cars seem to be aggressive and hostile.
- ajuc 3y ago
  Doesn't matter how they estimate their chances. What matters is that if the penalty is significantly higher - then insurance will go up and there will be incentive to buy cars safer for pedestrians.
  - jplrssn 3y ago
    Insurance won't get you out of jail or pay your fine for you. But your point is valid for civil damages, like getting sued by the family of the pedestrian you just killed with your truck. I wonder how much of an effect those hypothetical lawsuits have on downstream insurance premiums — anecdotally, it hasn't stopped the F-150 being the most popular car in North America.
TedDoesntTalk 3y ago
Vehicular manslaughter: California: A felony vehicular manslaughter conviction is punishable by 2, 4 or 6 years in state prison. Colorado: Under Colorado law, vehicular manslaughter in the second degree is considered a Class 4 felony, as outlined in Colorado Revised Statutes Section 18-3-106. The potential penalties for this offense include imprisonment for a term ranging from 2 to 6 years and a fine between $2,000 and $500,000
- itslennysfault 3y ago
  Those laws exist, but if it is a legitimate accident, and the person doesn't have a criminal history otherwise it is very likely that they walk away without any jail time.
  - stickfigure 3y ago
    You want people thrown in jail for accidents where negligence was not involved? Do you drive at all? You could be a perfect driver, fully sober and alert, and one moment's distraction can easily kill. Maybe a sudden glare in the window, or your misbehaving kid in the backseat throws something. It happens every day. I don't see any social good to be gained from jailing people when negligence isn't involved. Human beings have failure rates. You're talking about taking an already horrible situation and destroying more lives and families.
    - vwcx 3y ago
      The burden of proof of negligence is problematic. Until we surrender additional privacy to a "more objective" monitoring system, it's too easy to murder someone with your vehicle and claim innocence. When I'm riding my bicycle in a perfectly legal way on a roadway, and a driver gets irritated and tries to clip me, it's very difficult for me to prove that they acted in malice. If they clip me and I die hitting a guardrail, it's incredibly easy for them to claim it was an accident. But that's an edge case and this type of culpability problem is common across many facets of humanity. The bigger issue may be that driving isn't treated with the seriousness it should warrant. In conditions where "sudden glare" is possible, one should drive their 4000lb vehicle at a speed that allows them to mitigate all but the most rare (freak) accident, like a 200lb alligator popping out of a manhole cover right in front of them. The human failure rate is real, but there's more we can do with process + tech + practice to mitigate it even smaller. This level of care as a driver is directly counter to what the automobile industry wants as the image of their product: an easy, convenient and essential tool to be used every day.
pclmulqdq 3y ago
This is completely false. Vehicular manslaughter carries a long sentence (2-4 years is not uncommon), especially if you are driving dangerously at the time. The driver can also get sued by the family of the person who was run over for massive damages. This all assumes, however, that the accident was actually the fault of the driver. In many cases, it's actually not their fault, in which case the lawsuit from the family goes out the window and the sentence also tends to get reduced. The cases you are thinking of probably involved a pedestrian running into the street without seeing the car or a cyclist doing something equally stupid.
- jgeada 3y ago
  https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/local/maryland/driver-hit-killed-us-diplomat-riding-bike-sentenced-150-hours-community-service-fined-2000/65-a7188ab1-f8f1-4b47-9f55-0fc2f5ba1b57 https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/local/maryland/driver-hit... https://www.bicycling.com/news/a30607392/group-ride-florida-crash-sentence/ https://www.bicycling.com/news/a30607392/group-ride-florida-... https://www.gainesville.com/story/news/crime/2019/04/16/no-contest-plea-community-service-in-cyclists-death/5423894007/ https://www.gainesville.com/story/news/crime/2019/04/16/no-c... etc etc etc
  - pclmulqdq 3y ago
    Notice that none of those are "vehicular manslaughter," which means no implication of actual criminal negligence/recklessness on behalf of the driver. You get the news story because someone died, but notice how they tend to be relatively light on detail. It takes two to tango, and bad car accidents usually have elements of fault from both parties. In the examples you gave: 1. "a traffic offense for causing serious injury or death to a vulnerable individual while operating a motor vehicle" 2. "Despite that evidence, prosecutors declined to seek criminal charges against Vanderweit, saying her carelessness didn’t amount to vehicular homicide" - "Careless driving" is a charge they give drivers when the prosecutor wants to make a quick deal and doesn't think they can prosecute anything higher. I wonder if there's more to the story here given that there were at least 13 witnesses who could explain exactly what happened... 3. "pleaded no contest to overtaking and passing a cyclist without keeping a distance of at least 3 feet"
bryanlarsen 3y ago
Studies show that the length of sentence has little impact on criminal behaviour. The likelihood of getting caught has much more impact. If everybody was guaranteed to get 60 days of community service every time they did something that could have killed a pedestrian then the behaviour would drop right off.
- dsego 3y ago
  > Studies show that the length of sentence has little impact on criminal behaviour. Is the purpose of punishment only to deter criminal behavior? How about expressing social condemnation for the committed criminal act, strengthening citizens' trust in the legal order based on the rule of law, increasing awareness of the danger of committing criminal acts and of the fairness of punishment, and enabling the perpetrator to rejoin the society.
  - singleshot_ 3y ago
    Disincentivisation of recidivism, disincentivisation of others, isolation of dangerous individuals from society, sanitized vengeance on behalf of the victim would be the ones that someone with a different political persuasion would use. I’ve added a couple of yours to my list. Yours was a thought provoking post.
  - phil21 3y ago
    I generally agree, but don't all the latter items simply in the end have the desired result of deterring future criminal behavior? If distracted driving was caught 95% of the time, and the sentence was something like 40 hours of community service (and escalated for repeat offenders in some manner), I don't think society has nearly as difficult of a moral problem on it's hands when a 19 year old kills a cyclist due to checking a text on their phone. Studies repeatedly show "random" punishments (even if harsh) are simply not very effective vs. consistent enforcement. When you drop the hammer on someone who more or less got "unlucky" that day by engaging in what amounts to otherwise normalized behavior due to lack of enforcement - it gets kind of hard to see how that can be remotely effective at accomplishing much for society beyond vengeance. While that is important, it certainly isn't everything.

by jgeada 3y ago

sleepybrett 3y ago

+ civil penalties from the family of the slaughtered.

jplrssn 3y ago

I agree that is outrageous. But I'd imagine most people don't consider the survivability of pedestrians in a collision when they buy a car, since people generally overestimate their driving ability and underestimate their likelihood of ending up in an accident. So harsher penalties might not improve car designs much.

alamortsubite 3y ago
If harsher penalties were adopted only in the case of killing or injuring someone, perhaps not, but if we made fines for all moving violations proportional to vehicle weight, people might suddenly be more thoughtful.
snthd 3y ago
You're on to something there - apply the penalties to manufacturers.
- rsynnott 3y ago
  It is arguably weird that no-one has successfully taken this approach; _in general_, if you make a thing, and then knowingly make a less safe version of a thing, and it kills someone due to your changes, then, well, you'll want a good lawyer. But cars do seem to be treated as something of a special case; all the responsibility is on the operator, even as the product is made knowingly more dangerous to bystanders.
NegativeLatency 3y ago
I think some people do consider it (although possibly from the wrong angle and not very deeply) otherwise you wouldn't see stuff like massively lifted trucks, who's purpose is to look "aggressive" and "scary" to make the person inside feel better about themself.
- mikrotikker 3y ago
  Can confirm I got just a 2" body lift on my truck and it feels... Empowering. I want to go higher now so I'll be buying a 2" lifted suspension kit, nothing crazy like the 4" my friend is going for (his truck looks amazing with it). Unfortunately it won't fit in my shed then so I need to build a carport before I do that. The pedestrians are safe(ish). For now.
  - Symbiote 3y ago
    The pedestrians are already in danger since you're driving a truck.
    - mikrotikker 3y ago
      That's why I said safe-ish
- mordechai9000 3y ago
  I think the noise and the image are designed to impress other drivers safely cocooned within their own vehicles. You don't even need to modify the stock vehicles to get this effect. When I have no protective shell around me, even standard passenger cars seem to be aggressive and hostile.
ajuc 3y ago
Doesn't matter how they estimate their chances. What matters is that if the penalty is significantly higher - then insurance will go up and there will be incentive to buy cars safer for pedestrians.
- jplrssn 3y ago
  Insurance won't get you out of jail or pay your fine for you. But your point is valid for civil damages, like getting sued by the family of the pedestrian you just killed with your truck. I wonder how much of an effect those hypothetical lawsuits have on downstream insurance premiums — anecdotally, it hasn't stopped the F-150 being the most popular car in North America.

TedDoesntTalk 3y ago

Vehicular manslaughter: California: A felony vehicular manslaughter conviction is punishable by 2, 4 or 6 years in state prison. Colorado: Under Colorado law, vehicular manslaughter in the second degree is considered a Class 4 felony, as outlined in Colorado Revised Statutes Section 18-3-106. The potential penalties for this offense include imprisonment for a term ranging from 2 to 6 years and a fine between $2,000 and $500,000

itslennysfault 3y ago
Those laws exist, but if it is a legitimate accident, and the person doesn't have a criminal history otherwise it is very likely that they walk away without any jail time.
- stickfigure 3y ago
  You want people thrown in jail for accidents where negligence was not involved? Do you drive at all? You could be a perfect driver, fully sober and alert, and one moment's distraction can easily kill. Maybe a sudden glare in the window, or your misbehaving kid in the backseat throws something. It happens every day. I don't see any social good to be gained from jailing people when negligence isn't involved. Human beings have failure rates. You're talking about taking an already horrible situation and destroying more lives and families.
  - vwcx 3y ago
    The burden of proof of negligence is problematic. Until we surrender additional privacy to a "more objective" monitoring system, it's too easy to murder someone with your vehicle and claim innocence. When I'm riding my bicycle in a perfectly legal way on a roadway, and a driver gets irritated and tries to clip me, it's very difficult for me to prove that they acted in malice. If they clip me and I die hitting a guardrail, it's incredibly easy for them to claim it was an accident. But that's an edge case and this type of culpability problem is common across many facets of humanity. The bigger issue may be that driving isn't treated with the seriousness it should warrant. In conditions where "sudden glare" is possible, one should drive their 4000lb vehicle at a speed that allows them to mitigate all but the most rare (freak) accident, like a 200lb alligator popping out of a manhole cover right in front of them. The human failure rate is real, but there's more we can do with process + tech + practice to mitigate it even smaller. This level of care as a driver is directly counter to what the automobile industry wants as the image of their product: an easy, convenient and essential tool to be used every day.

pclmulqdq 3y ago

This is completely false. Vehicular manslaughter carries a long sentence (2-4 years is not uncommon), especially if you are driving dangerously at the time. The driver can also get sued by the family of the person who was run over for massive damages. This all assumes, however, that the accident was actually the fault of the driver. In many cases, it's actually not their fault, in which case the lawsuit from the family goes out the window and the sentence also tends to get reduced. The cases you are thinking of probably involved a pedestrian running into the street without seeing the car or a cyclist doing something equally stupid.

jgeada 3y ago
https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/local/maryland/driver-hit-killed-us-diplomat-riding-bike-sentenced-150-hours-community-service-fined-2000/65-a7188ab1-f8f1-4b47-9f55-0fc2f5ba1b57 https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/local/maryland/driver-hit... https://www.bicycling.com/news/a30607392/group-ride-florida-crash-sentence/ https://www.bicycling.com/news/a30607392/group-ride-florida-... https://www.gainesville.com/story/news/crime/2019/04/16/no-contest-plea-community-service-in-cyclists-death/5423894007/ https://www.gainesville.com/story/news/crime/2019/04/16/no-c... etc etc etc
- pclmulqdq 3y ago
  Notice that none of those are "vehicular manslaughter," which means no implication of actual criminal negligence/recklessness on behalf of the driver. You get the news story because someone died, but notice how they tend to be relatively light on detail. It takes two to tango, and bad car accidents usually have elements of fault from both parties. In the examples you gave: 1. "a traffic offense for causing serious injury or death to a vulnerable individual while operating a motor vehicle" 2. "Despite that evidence, prosecutors declined to seek criminal charges against Vanderweit, saying her carelessness didn’t amount to vehicular homicide" - "Careless driving" is a charge they give drivers when the prosecutor wants to make a quick deal and doesn't think they can prosecute anything higher. I wonder if there's more to the story here given that there were at least 13 witnesses who could explain exactly what happened... 3. "pleaded no contest to overtaking and passing a cyclist without keeping a distance of at least 3 feet"

bryanlarsen 3y ago

Studies show that the length of sentence has little impact on criminal behaviour. The likelihood of getting caught has much more impact. If everybody was guaranteed to get 60 days of community service every time they did something that could have killed a pedestrian then the behaviour would drop right off.

dsego 3y ago
> Studies show that the length of sentence has little impact on criminal behaviour. Is the purpose of punishment only to deter criminal behavior? How about expressing social condemnation for the committed criminal act, strengthening citizens' trust in the legal order based on the rule of law, increasing awareness of the danger of committing criminal acts and of the fairness of punishment, and enabling the perpetrator to rejoin the society.
- singleshot_ 3y ago
  Disincentivisation of recidivism, disincentivisation of others, isolation of dangerous individuals from society, sanitized vengeance on behalf of the victim would be the ones that someone with a different political persuasion would use. I’ve added a couple of yours to my list. Yours was a thought provoking post.
- phil21 3y ago
  I generally agree, but don't all the latter items simply in the end have the desired result of deterring future criminal behavior? If distracted driving was caught 95% of the time, and the sentence was something like 40 hours of community service (and escalated for repeat offenders in some manner), I don't think society has nearly as difficult of a moral problem on it's hands when a 19 year old kills a cyclist due to checking a text on their phone. Studies repeatedly show "random" punishments (even if harsh) are simply not very effective vs. consistent enforcement. When you drop the hammer on someone who more or less got "unlucky" that day by engaging in what amounts to otherwise normalized behavior due to lack of enforcement - it gets kind of hard to see how that can be remotely effective at accomplishing much for society beyond vengeance. While that is important, it certainly isn't everything.