Gandhi?
Just like protesters who block access to abortion clinics are inconveniencing women.
Protest can be legitimate (as this one was) but that right doesn’t always supersede others’ rights to travel.
I agree. The thing is, we’re talking about misdemeanor-level offenses that should be dealt with by bringing in the police to remove the protesters.
My point is, such protesting is not a capital crime, and shouldn’t be treated as one by vigilante motorists.
He was just doing what Fox News told him to do, and they wouldn’t tell anyone to do anything illegal would they?
Homer Simpson.
So… you are saying that women have the right to drive into crowds of Operation Rescue protesters, and you will support them doing that?
Sweet.
Are you under the impression that women who are blocked from access to abortion clinics are allowed to just charge right through the blocking anti-abortion protesters? On the contrary, one of anti-abortion protesters’ strategies is to feign being violently attacked if somebody so much as brushes against them, and sometimes they sue.
Only police officers are allowed to physically remove anti-abortion protesters violating court orders about blocking clinic access. Clinic visitors don’t have the right to charge into protesters and risk harming them in the name of some “right to travel” to use the clinic.
Similarly, drivers don’t have the right to drive into protesters blocking the road, even if the protesters are not legally supposed to be there.
Good point. That’s your spot in line damn it. Should probably tailgate the car in front of you to really show that guy he can’t get over in front of you, too. That’ll teach him.
Look, I’m guilty of doing this too sometimes. I’ll bet we all are. But I’m willing to look back at it and acknowledge how petty and childish and entitled the whole thing is. And try to be better next time.
Think of the next level of carnage we’ll bring with the advent of flying cars.
Yeah I flew through them, they were just hovering there, blocking traffic.
Well, if it is a scheduled visit, no. If it is a medical emergency? Hell yes.
Let’s put it this way: there was no point at which there were not people either (a) standing directly in front of him, and only a few feet away at most, or (b) on the hood of his car because he was driving into the place where they’d been standing.
At one point there’s a guy leaning on the hood of the car with his feet on the ground directly in front of the car. And the driver keeps moving his car forward. (ETA: between 19 and 24 seconds into the video.)
Either the driver was completely oblivious to what was directly in front of him, or he was trying to harm someone.
I don’t think he was literally thinking, “I’m going to hurt those protesters!” I think his intent was more like these assholes who threw rocks off of an overpass, but probably didn’t actually do that with the specific intent murder someone.
It can be frustrating when someone is in your way, even infuriating. But you CANNOT push them with your car, even if you are filled with a sense of righteousness.
Sadly, this is not the only instance lately of people assuming that they CAN, in fact, threaten and assault inconvenient strangers with 2,000 pounds of metal.
May 1, 2017, Durham, North Carolina
Jul. 10, 2016, Carbondale, Illinois
I’ve chosen to exclude a few murkier cases (such as Berkley, California) where it’s not clear to me if people jumped onto the cars in question before the driver reacted. I pored through Google search results until I ran out of time.
What all these cases cited here, at least, have in common is that the driver appears to be content with the status quo and angry at people protesting on behalf of the weak, disadvantaged, and minorities. I didn’t cherry-pick the Google search results except to exclude cases where the provocation wasn’t clear (which had the statistically unfortunate effect of excluding a Breitbart cite, although by excluding it I seem to be supporting Breitbart’s position that the driver might have been justified).
Is it possible the protesters thought this yahoo driving through their crowd was pulling a Charlottesville? Because if I was in a crowd marching* I’d presume that’s what this moron was doing. Which IMHO makes their reaction non-assholish.
*Marching at a reasonable pace is IMHO a very different matter than standing or sitting in the street blocking traffic. Contrary to what many people believe, pedestrians aren’t an obstruction to traffic, they are themselves traffic. :rolleyes: And a large enough crowd of people walking in the same direction – whether in a protest march, or merely people leaving a large parade or festival and walking to a train station as I’ve seen dozens of times here in Chicago – will overflow the sidewalks and end up in the street.
This is completely incorrect. It’s perfectly possible and likely that the driver was aware that the guy was there and willing/capable of walking at an extremely low speed.
If you actually think he was trying to hurt somebody, why didn’t he? It’d be pretty amazing to drive a car through a crowd of people you’re actively trying to hurt without doing so, especially with someone directly in front of the car. There’s an obvious reason why he didn’t hurt anyone, which the police officer readily identified.
Can’t forget Charlottesville.
The obvious explanation was that he was trying to hurt someone in a way that he could blame it on their failure to move out of his way.
If the failure of Person A to hurt Person B is due to Person B’s decision to evade Person A’s deliberately-aimed weapon, I still regard that as an attempt by Person A to hurt Person B.
YMMV and apparently does. But if that’s the basis of our disagreement, I doubt we have much to say to each other on this subject.
“Guy”? It was a crowd.
He may not have been intending to harm someone, but driving a car into a crowd has the risk of hurting someone, so he certainly didn’t care. That doesn’t really make him any better.
Yeah, I’m pretty sure that Sailboat can’t forget Charlottesville.
No, I’m not under that impression? What makes you think I am?
My point is that blocking traffic is not simply inconveniencing others, it can also be a violation of their rights. I’m not sure why you and others jump from that point to the assumption that the remedy should be the violation of even more rights.