Used car: $12,000
Fine for vehicular manslaughter: $1000
Daddy’s influence with the DA: Priceless
http://www.news-gazette.com/news/local/2006/11/30/woman_is_sentenced_for_bicyclists_death
In case of tl;dr, chick is too busy downloading ImPoRtAnT ringtones rather than driving her car. Ends up that she smears a guy riding his bicycle and makes him a candidate for Ogri^H^H^H^H LiveLeak.
From looking at her MySpace page, not provided for fear of bannage, she seems to be pretty remoseless too!!!
I think manslaughter for $1000 and 6 months probation would probably be more accurate, unless you’re suggesting she was deliberatly trying to kill him. I don’t see any reason to think her parents pulled strings with a DA, either. In the interests of not getting a banning, njcultist, could you email me with her myspace page link? MSN address is in my profile.
Not saying this isn’t a horrible thing - just saying you don’t really need to embellish it to make it a horrible thing.
I can’t view your profile because I am a lowly guest. Maybe you can be crafty or something or just email me at yahoo? ProTip: my username isn’t different.
Is there any reason this incident stands out?
It is a horrible thing, but it is a very, very common thing, depressingly so. Men and women of all ages take too lightly the responsibility of moving tons of metal and fiberglass, and all too often the punishment for such irresponsibility is laughable. I applaud the Nassau County jurors who recently convicted a drunk driver of second degree murder for driving the wrong way on a parkway. The justice of that conviction stands out, but is far too rare.
Chick killed someone. Gets a slap on the wrist that Mumsy and Dodsy can easily pay. Now she can go post about how she loves Jesus on MySpace so much that she sent Matt to meet him first. Outrageous and disgusting. They should’ve made an example of this twat.
Exactly.
The prevailing attitude seems to be “Well, she’s learned a lesson, and the knowledge that she took another person’s life with her irresponsible behavior is punishment enough.”
That’s bullshit. I realize that driving is an inherently dangerous activity, and that some accidents truly are accidents. But in cases like this, when the person is doing something that is clearly counterproductive to the safe operation of the automobile, the punishment should be greater.
Maybe somebody from Illinois can help me out. I don’t understand this:
State’s Attorney Julia Rietz made the call not to lodge any more serious charge than improper lane usage against Stark, saying that the legal definition of recklessness, to sustain reckless homicide or reckless driving, did not fit her actions.
What the fuck? The driver was downloading ringtones to her cellphone, and ran so far off the rode that she hit the victim with the driver’s side of her car. How can than that not meet the definition of recklessness? A freakin second year law student oughta be able to figure out some way to charge her with more than “improper lane usage”. If I was prosecuting, I’d be tempted to charge Depraved Heart Murder, but would probably accept a plea to vehicular manslaughter, with jail time to serve. If the bitch was dumb enough to go to trial, a jury is going to eat her alive.
rode?? Ouch. Double dumbass on Oakie. Been a long week.
Surely the family has some civil recourse here?
A wrongful death suit will probably be filed, and I’d expect the insurance company will eventually offer the policy limits to settle.
In Japan, they prosecute people for professional neglegence for accidents. She would have easily gotten at least one year in prison.
Nobody here has ever had a near miss because they’re attention was diverted by something silly while driving? I remember fiddling with the radio many years ago and almost plowing into the car in front of me because traffic came to a standstill on the freeway. I had to go onto the shoulder to avoid hitting anyone. People make mistakes and so long as we have millions of people driving every day this will continue to happen.
Marc
That’s absoilutely true. I think it’s silly to propose execution for people who essentially make mistakes; the sentence in this case was excessively lenient, but there’s no point destroying someone’s life over it.
What concerns me, however, is not the one mistake, but the three previous serious traffic violations in one year. THREE violations in one year is an astonishing level of irresponsibility. I’ve been driving for 18 years and in that span of time I have three speeding tickets, all spaced about five or six years apart. I’m not an overly cautious driver or particularly skilled but I seem to be able to avoid getting a huge mess o’ tickets. Most people I know get tickets on very rare occasions indeed. To get two speeding tickets and a red light violation in one year you need to be an awful driver.
What this case illustrates, to my mind, is that the penalties for repeat offenses in short periods of time for traffic violations are exceedingly light. One ticket is one thing, but three in a year is a clear indication of reckless behaviour; really, you have to be a genuinely atrocious driver to get caught that often. Penalties for subsequent traffic violations in such a short span of time should become increasingly hefty; a third violation in a year should, frankly, result in very heavy fines and licence suspension.
Or drive an awful lot. When I had a job that caused me to drive 25,000 + miles a year I got three tickets in about two years. When I worked two miles from home I got one tivket in about six or seven years. Maybe we shold look at tickets per mile in addition to tickets per year.
Oops, forget my question. Does anyone recall an elected official in a orthern state, one of the Dakotas I think, who while driving under the influence hit a gut on a motorcycle and killed him, yet just got probation? I think he may have been a state judge or something.
I think, though, that we also need to do is make clear to people that they need to pay attention when driving, that there are some activities that simply do not mix with guiding an automobile, and that if you have an accident as a result of such activities, you will face a greater penalty.
It may be that we need a different definition of what constitutes a “mistake.” Oversteering in a turn, or misapplying the brake and going into a skid, might reasonably constitute mistakes. Failing to notice a red light or a stop sign probably even qualify. But downloading ringtones on a cellphone while driving is not, in the same sense of the word, a mistake. It is negligence, it is a practice which all reasonable people can agree is likely to lead to an accident.
Basically, for me, it’s the difference between concentrating on the task (driving) and still making a mistake, on the one hand, and trying to do something else while driving, on the other. If, while in command of the car, you engage in an activity—especially one that uses one of both of your hands, and leads you to take your eye off the road—that is not part of the driving process, then you bear a heavier burden of responsibility for any driving error you make as a result of your divided attention.
I realize that there are some grey areas here. Does holding a cellphone to your ear with one hand increase your liability? Yes, in my opinion. What if you’re using a hands-free cellphone? Well, that a bit different, although some studies show that this still reduces attentiveness.
But, while there might be some grey areas, i don’t think scrolling through your cellphone menus and downloading ringtones is one of them.
I agree with pretty much all of this.
You’re thinking of Bill Janklow from South Dakota. We discussed his case here.
I drive a whole lot. Eight to ten hour one-way drives are something I do quite often. Sorry, but if you’ve gotten two tickets, you should be driving a lot slower, and there’s no reason to run a red light (as the woman cited in the OP has done.)
My wife puts a solid 15-20,000 miles on the car every year and in the eight years I have known her has gotten one ticket.
If you just got unlucky, well, it happens, but IMHO a third ticket should still carry a very hefty penalty and a license suspension. In your case this might well have sucked and sucked hard, but if you think about it, maybe you’d have been driving more carefully if you knew that was the inevitable penalty. And such a system would hopefully scare a lot of REALLY bad drivers, like the criminal in the OP, into realizing their bad behaviour.
Got a strange result searching for this. I searched her name (first and last name provided in the linked article). There were six pages of users with that name (10? per page).
When I narrowed in down to within 10 miles of 61801 (zip for Urbana, IL), I got the message “MySpace has found 1 Result” followed by “Showing 1 of 1”.
However, underneath “Showing 1 of 1” the page was blank- not showing the actual result.
Searching through to six pages of users with that name, there was only one in all of IL, a 31yr old in Chicago. Of the two users who were 19yrs old one was in WV (listing a WV highschool), the other was in TX (listing a TX highschool). Neither said much about Jesus.
Seems she has put some kind of block on her account to be kept out of searches.
As for her father’s influence with the DA, it either comes from an uncited source or the OP has pulled it out of his ass.
Also, for my own benefit, is the OP engaging in hip “leet speak”, or are there coding problems? I’m confused by:
and
So it’s okay to destroy someone else’s life for $1000? She didn’t even get community service! The woman needs to be taught a lesson that will last a lifetime. A lesson that is “Giggle! I’m a girl! I can get away with anything. LOL, learn to drive hippie!”
The use of ^H^H^H^H is old school. When one would use backspace using raw terminal the character would come out as ^H. It’s used to show a correction usually in a humorous context.
tl;dr is hardly “leet speek” as you put it. Too long; didn’t read. More of an acronym.
th15 iz l33+ sp33k d@w6