The issue that’s being missed here IMO is that of calling the police and “hoping they got taken to jail”.
Was it irresponsible? Yes.
Does it warrrant calling the cops and getting your panties in bunch? Emphatically no.
Diane, my deepest sympathies, but do you think your parents should have been arrested and taken to jail for not making him wear a helmet? Would you have been offended if the neighbors called the cops and your parents were arrested?
Should she be sent to jail for letting her kids roam around in the car? No.
Should she be stopped, and given a ticket? Yes. Why? Because it’s illegal to let 4 year old kids roam around in the car. It’s also illegal to go 90 mph on an interstate. And it’s probably better to realize just why those things are stupid from a trooper giving you a ticket than from having to watch the paramedics scrape you child up off the pavement. Nightingale saw a potentially dangerous, fatal, and illegal situation, so she called the cops. Perfectly justified.
actually, there are always gray areas. duh.
draw your own continuum - or:
Builds and races his own planes
races proven designs
builds own designs, hires test pilots
flies proven designs
hires people to design, build planes
builds TWA (not without risk)
has nothing to do with airplanes
lumberjack
punch-press operator
firefighter
cop
desk jockey
recluse
recluse with food tasters
recluse with bodyguards and tasters
etc.
Where is your comfort point?
(for the advanced class: where is your comfort point for your (real or hypothetical) kids?
Actually, 50 feet isn’t an unsafe distance from which to be following a car going 90 mph. If this site: http://www.skytran.net/old/09Safety/02sfty.htm is correct in assuming that the best deceleration due to braking in a car, under ideal conditions, is 1 g, or 32 ft/sec, that means that the relative speed between the cars after the .5 seconds it takes Nightingale to begin braking is only 12.16 ft/sec.
Assuming that both cars now decelerate at the same rate (since they have both started braking), that differential will remain the same until the second car stops, which will take 4.125 seconds (time=velocity/acceleration). 12.16 ft/sec * 4.125 sec = 50.16 ft.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems like Nightingale could have followed the car at a safe distance and still been able to see the plate.
-Henry
As has already been pointed out, some people’s “comfort point” is far beyond that which society as a whole is comfortable with. Just because you would be comfortable letting your kids hang out the sunroof as you race along at 90 mph, does not mean that the rest of us who are not comfortable with it are wrong. We at least have the forces of law and reason behind us – it’s illegal, and it’s dumb, because your kids could get hurt or killed. Behind your argument there’s – well, there’s sort of your personally held opinion that such actions are perfectly okay, but as far as I can tell there’s not much else.
uh, Henry -
the tailgater rammed the tailgatee at .38 sec - you still think that’s safe?
the speed at which the wreckage de-accelerates seems secondary…
did you lose your sign already?
or, find a buddy, go out on a deserted highway, and try the experiment - 90 mph, 50’ separation, full brakes, no warning…
let us know how it goes?
god, we’ve got a lot of ignorance to fight…
Eleusis,
You’re missing the most important point, which is DRIVING IN A CAR AT 90 MPH WHILE LETTING YOUR TODDLER HANG OUT OF THE SUNROOF IS NOT THE SAME AS LETTING YOUR CHILD RIDE A BIKE WITHOUT A HELMET ON A QUIET RESIDENTIAL STREET!! Jesus.
Quit making comparisons where comparison’s don’t exist. They are in two different classes all together. You too, are stuck in the black and white camp.
Ah hem. All better.
Oh and Jester: thanks for the bagel…yummy.
Jodi
I have already stated that 90 mph while passing another car is not an acceptable place to let the kids play in the slipstream.
Others are demanding that kids never, ever be allowed loose in a car.
The issue is, again:
where is the line?
do you never, ever take a risk?
(and, tailgating the person with the free-range kids is worse than allowing the kids to free-range - the tailgater increases the risk of accident much more that does the driver who lets the kids out of their seats)
The line, for me, and for the law, is this: if your kids are in the car, they should be buckled up. If they are too small to fit in the regular seat, they should be in a car seat. If they are small enough to sit in the front seat without the airbag being a hazard, they should be in the back. Driving with unrestrained children in the car, at any speed, on any road, in any condition, is an unnecessary risk with little to no actual benefit. Therefore, if the kid is in the car, they should be buckled up.
How is that not clear?
That should read “If they are too small to sit in the front seat without the airbag being a hazard they should sit in the back.” my apologies.
thank you for sharing.
what about pogo sticks? too risky for the little ones?
IRC, the pogo sticks have pics of kiddies wearing pads and helmets. You know, preventative measures to keep em from going
or at least too much.
No laws saying they gotta wear them, but wouldn’t it make sense to wanna protect your kiddies from potential pain?
nice going with the character string - Vb doesn’t break…
how do expect the child to learn consequences if it is always insulated?
you’re raising a generation who is gonna spill McDonald’s coffee on themselves, and demand that the world be punished for their own incompetance.
or just lock them up in padded cells and never, ever let them out - that should be good protection, right?
At 90 miles an hour? Surely there are safer places to take risks…
Oh bullshit. If nothing else, the tailing wouldn’t happen if not for the situation created by the driver with children.
And finally:
Are you quite done with your argumentos ad absurdibus?
[sub]Think I got that right…[/sub]
No, I’m not.
I’m saying do-gooder liberal bigheads could do better channelling their energy elsewhere.
Get a fucking life for christ’s sake!
Is this all you have to do with your time???
Did the children die? No? Then shut the fuck up!
The next time I see your children in direct sunlight without sunscreen, I’m calling child fucking protective services on your ass.
(how’s that for grey area?)
First of all, I was not one of the posters who said the driver should be hauled off to jail. However, if a neighbor would have called the cops (not sure why because riding a bike without a helmet is not against the law where I live although riding without a seatbelt is), it might have clicked something on in their brain and he would be alive today.
I can assure you that in their hindsight, they wish someone - cops, neighbors, man in the moon - had smacked them upside the head and woke them up to the danger.
Physician . . . .
Way to completely NOT answer either of my questions, Diane.
HEATHEN –
Oh, I don’t know. But if you are admitting that the actual situation under discussion was “not acceptable,” then it appears we can agree we draw that line somewhere before we get to that point. So what, again, was your problem with the OP?
Every time you walk out of your house you take a risk. The question is not whether we can eliminate all risk – we obviously cannot, not and continue to live any semblance of lives – but whether we can eliminate a certain amount of risk by only incurring an acceptable amount of restraint to ourselves. As I have already said, it seems to me that the CBA involved in auto restraints obviously mitigates in favor of having them – in favor of disallowing the “risk” of unrestrained driving/riding to the extent we legally can (especially where children are concerned – because the benefit – thousands more surviving crashes per year – clearly outweighs the cost – the negligible “enjoyment” of being able to move about your car freely.
I don’t know about that, and I decline to take your word for it. I would be seriously surprised if tailgating for the length of time it takes to write down a license plate number, and then dropping back, results overall in anything like the same numbers of dead kids as allowing them to “free-range”. Further, as I also already pointed out, that is an apples and orange comparison, because even if tailgating increases the risk of an accident unacceptably, that has nothing to do with the wisdom and safety of failing to buckle up your kids. If the thesis is “Action A was stupid!” – and that was the OP’er’s thesis here – then the response “You did Action B, and that was stupid too!” – is not actually all that responsive.
And what about pogo sticks, anyway? Do they have anything to do with kids being let loose in cars? The idea that “learning consequences” has any possible relevance in the context of traffic accidents is, of course, laughable.
ELEUSIS –
Sorry to have to state the obvious, but isn’t after the children die a little late in the day to speak up? As for that, children die every day – hundreds of them – because their parents don’t buckle them up, because they just know they’re not going to get in a wreck.
And you post didn’t dip a toe into any gray area. You, like HAPPY HEATHEN, have whipped all the way over to the other end of the danger spectrum – pogo sticks, sunscreen – and now by implication argue that the same standard must apply to such innocuous activities as apply to ones that are manifestly more dangerous – like riding in a speeding car. I think it should be obvious why that argument doesn’t work: If the risks are not the same, the analysis will not be the same, either.
'scuse me? I did answer. Go back and read it again.
In case I wasn’t clear, I would be pissed if they were arrested for not making him wear a helmet because it isn’t against the law.
No, they would be grateful (especially in hindsight) had a nosy neighbor reminded them of the dangers of not wearing a helmet even on a quiet residential street.
Let me know if you still don’t understand what I am telling you and I will dumb it down even further. M’kay?