This is inappropriate in MPSIMS. Warning issued.
twickster, MPSIMS moderator
My bad, I would have been better to say “I am surprised and hurt that you would misrepresent my previous post in this manner”, and then we would all have been happy.
I am* so* going to steal that. 
Yes, I agree that 4 seconds is an insanely long time to have your hands off the wheel, especially at highway speeds. I just think that “20 seconds” is probably an exaggeration. Not really that relevant to the discussion, I guess.
You cannot - I offer it to you freely as a gift. Use it in good health.
I am surprised and hurt that you would misrepresent my previous post in this manner…oh, er, Never Mind.
Thank you.
Suey McSuerson was in the car while all this crap was going on, sitting quietly by while someone sticks his feet in the drivers face. In my book, that pretty much means he consented to whatever happened to him after that. What the heck did he think would happen? Jerks, both of them. Sorry for the girls injuries, though. That whole experience must have been harrowing.
Oh, and silently condoning sexual harassment, or even encouraging it, while having plenty of opportunity to stop it? You deserve whatever is coming to you.
Ah, so sometimes it is OK to blame the victim. You’re neither the idiot driver who didn’t stop the car to fix a wardrobe malfunction and kick out the asshole who caused it, nor the douchebag who interfered with the driver’s concentration, but because you didn’t step up and take charge of the situation, whatever happens to you is your own fault! :rolleyes:
It’s not inconsistency so much as it’s either/or.
If you want to keep the blame where it belongs, it’s all on the dead guy. If you want to blame someone other than him for not stopping him earlier, then by all means spread some blame to the other folks. I prefer the former, but you can opt for the latter.
I’m not blaming him for the accident, I’m calling him a jerk who deserved it. There is a difference.
And you know what? Yes, sometimes, it is okay to blame the person who got hurt. If you enter a hard-hat zone without a hard-hat and a brick falls on your head, that’s your fault. If you go through the windshield because you didn’t wear a seat-belt, that is your fault. If you juggle lit sticks of dynamite, and they blow you to smithereens, well, whose fault is it? There are all sorts of situations where people are nobodies victim but their own. That’s not the case here though, Suey is a genuine victim of Foot-boy, who is to blame. Suey is also a jerk, and could have acted better.
The reason it is not appropriate to “blame the victim” of rape and sexual assault is the only reason you got raped is because someone decided to rape you, not something you did or didn’t do. 100% blame on perp, 0% on the victim. But congrats on the worlds most strained rape analogy ever.
Gotta say that’s way down my own list of possible problems while driving.
No, I want to keep the blame where it belongs; some on the dead guy, some on the driver whose course of action on having her control of her vehicle impaired should have been to stop; none of it on some third party who for some reason is supposed to be a more mature adult than the person with a ticket to be in charge of a ton of motorised metal.
Possibly Suey McSuerson could have acted differently. You know what? It doesn’t matter. If you’re a passenger in my car then the buck for your safety stops with me - unless someone actually renders me incapable of stopping the car in an emergency. But until either having your vision impaired or your tits exposed stops you applying your foot to the brake pedal, I’m having trouble accepting that this is the case here.
It’s interesting that you immediately associate victim-blaming with rape. Did I mention rape? I don’t believe I did. But your argument for why it’s not appropriate to blame victims of rape seems to me to be 100% circular, for that matter. Victims of murder or robbery or assault, on the other hand, I guess we’re OK with looking at what they did or didn’t do?
Right back at you, sweetie. Did I mention robbery or murder? No? Well then.
I did mention assault - sexual assault, granted - and only to mention that the victim is 100% blameless. So…nice weather we’re having?
Since you dragged in rape (sorry, calling you “sweetie” would be too much of a stretch) I thought perhaps we ought to see if the principle extended any further - you seemed at pains to point out why rape is always 100% the perp’s fault, as though this didn’t generalise to other crimes of violence.
It’s odd, I mean, I’m supposed to be the unreconstructed sexist around here, but I’m not the one who’s arguing that young women are too childish to be held responsible the way we expect adults to be. :dubious:
You’re the one who started using the language of rape (“blame the victim”) where it really doesn’t apply. Then you stretched it by bringing up murder and robbery. We are discussin traffic safety, where it definately is apropriate to blame the victim sometimes, since the person hurt or killed is also sometimes the one responsible for the accident, as in this case. Victims of rape, robbery or murder, on the other hand, should not be blamed, because it is impossible to bring on yourself. Those crimes rely on someone making a decission to commit them. Therefore, that someone is responsible. Apples and Oranges.
Not so sure about the facts, myself. Mr. Out-Of-Control was sitting in the back seat behind the driver, but the reported case doesn’t say where Suey was sitting. All it said is that there were 4 occupants. If Suey was sitting next to the driver, there wasn’t a whole lot he could have done to stop the other guy pulling on the driver’s Bikini. The case doesn’t say whether Suey was yelling at the other guy to knock it off, or encouraging him.
In any event, I would not read too much into the fact that he’s suing her without knowing about their respective insurance situation - it could well be that his insurance company is suing hers, without much input from him, with subrogated claims.
I don’t know if it’s true in New York, but in most states, after an accident people are automatically given breathalyzer tests and if she refused it or had a blood-alcohol level above .08, I’m sure it would have shown up.
Anyway, I’m definitely a bit surprised at people criticizing her for wearing a bikini while driving. That’s never struck me as a particularly high-risk behavior.
I just wanted to thank the people who linked to the court documents that revealed vastly more about the case than the original tabloid article.
At the same time, we should remember that the jury heard a lot more than we did and they clearly found her claim more credible than the claim of the person suing her.
Do juries always make the right decision?
Of course not, but there’s something more than a little obnoxious about people who(at least prior to the additional links) were implicitly claiming the jury was wrong based strictly on a rather thin article from a tabloid.
Yeah, now I think of it, I believe the breathalyzer thing is true in the UK as well.
I mean, I can accept that the girl didn’t handle the situation well, and I can also accept the argument that the passenger’s behaviour would have suggested that further outbreaks of assholery were a distinct possibility. But the idea that it’s inherently dangerous to drive while wearing a bikini top because, you know, men just can’t help but rip those things off at the earliest opportunity? I don’t buy it.