Have you ever been in an emergency situation? I haven’t; but in simulated emergencies there is often a thing or two you overlook. Maybe you picked out a landing site and for whatever reason didn’t notice it was unsuitable until you were committed to it. It happens.
I’m not a mind-reader, but I can guess what happens in a pilot’s mind who elects to land on a freeway. In an airplane, you need a long straight place to put down. If not an airport, then another long stretch of concrete looks like a viable option. How about a freeway? Cars are moving along at 70 mph. You see a gap. A Cessna lands at around 65 mph. You could merge right in and the following cars will stop. Since you’re slower than the cars ahead, they won’t get hit. Is it a good plan? If it’s a choice of trying to merge into traffic or putting down on someone’s house or a crowded schoolyard, it seems so.
But there are variables. What happens if you honk your horn at someone? Have you ever swooped your car into another lane right behind someone? Have you seen what happens if there’s a cop on the road? People hit their brakes. Now, your plan is to merge into traffic. It should work. You’re feet from touchdown, when the driver(s) of the car(s) ahead of you see(s) you in his rearview mirror. Naturally if someone is gaining on him, he slams on his brakes. Your plane hits the car. Is it your fault? It was a perfectly workable plan. Had the person in front of you not stopped, you wouldn’t have hit.
What if they freeway is crowded? You have a choice of hitting the crowded school, or you give the freeway your best shot. The goal is to save your own life, while simultaneously trying not to hurt anyone on the ground.
As Burns wrote, “The best-laid plans of mice and men aft gang agley.” Life presents choices, and often the choices are all bad. It’s called “the horns of a delimma” or “the lesser of two evils” or “damned if you do and damned if you don’t”. The only option you don’t have is the option not to choose an option. If you choose Plan A, then you’re criticized for not choosing Plan B; and vice versa.
What about the bus? Suppose the driver refused to drive and the man killed her? How do we know that it would not have turned into a different kind of hostage situation, where he would kill the passengers one-by-one? And then a SWAT team takes over and there is collateral damage? If the driver refused to drive, then many more people might have been killed. But we don’t know. There is no way to know. The driver was given a bad choice: To certainly (in her mind) be killed, or to drive. While a collision might have been considered likely had the driver been in a state to consider it, the likelihood of a fatal collision is not a foregone conclusion. All the driver knew was that if she drove, she would live a few more minutes. She made a choice. That choice took the life of a bystander. Is it her fault? Would she have hit the mini-van if she hadn’t been forced to drive? I don’t think so.
Maybe it was the mini-van driver’s fault. If she had been more attentive, she may not have put herself in a position to be hit. If she had taken appropriate evasive action, she could have removed herself from the situation. After all, aren’t people trained to be attentive, defensive, and to “leave themselves an ‘out’”? If she did not pay attention to the training, then it’s her own fault she got dead.
Or maybe it’s God’s fault. He could have prevented it.
Or maybe it’s just bad luck. “Men’s courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead,” said Scrooge. “But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change.” If the mini-van driver had not gone out for that drive… If the hijacker had not gone over to the house of the man he shot… if a certain passenger had not been lat catching the bus, or had not ridden at all that day… If, if, if…
Sometimes bad things happen.
The only one at fault for the death of the mini-van driver is the hijacker.
