I see no difference between intentionally killing someone and intentionally driving inattentively resulting in someone dying. Unintentionally driving inattentively is not different from intentionally driving inattentively. Watch the fucking road.
The difference might be 10 years in prison compared to a life sentence, for starters.
While I understand the point you are making, I believe most people would not come to the conclusion.
For a decade, my primary, all but exclusive, transportation was a bicycle. I find it very difficult to forgive irresponsible motorists.
Sure, I’d agree that negligently inattentive drivers and deliberate committers of vehicular murder are both culpable, and both responsible for the harm they inflict on others.
But I would never agree that there’s literally no difference between their actions, or the degrees of their guilt.
In some cases I might disagree, and in some cases I think negligence may actually be worse than intent, because the person just doesn’t care what happens or to whom. It’s more important to return that text or to take another bite of that burger than it is to pay attention to directing the path and speed of a ton or two of heavy metal.
I’m not suggesting that every accident due to momentary inattention is as bad as that. But I’m pretty sure some are.
And I’ve been hit twice by a car while cycling, so I am in no way diminishing the issue or the inattentive driver’s responsibility. But to equate inattention to malicious intent is wrong both morally and legally. Inattentive driving is a real and growing problem, but a broad brush approach to all vehicular accidents doesn’t address the issue.
as long as we let just any old asshole have a DL
I often feel like it’s way too easy to get a DL.
I watch too many British quiz shows on YouTube. Assuming celebrities/comics representative a somewhat representative cross-section of Britain, the number who share anecdotes of being incapable of getting a drivers license leads me to think that the American tests are far to simple.
To be fair, it’s much harder to drive on the wrong side of the road.
I know you’re making a joke, but it reminds me of how terrified I was driving in Ireland. I was certain I’d get in a stressful situation behind the wheel, panic, and react instinctively. Which would have been the very worst thing to do. That never happened to me, but my co-driver and buddy did turn into two lanes of oncoming traffic in Dublin. Fortunately, the Irish seem to be used to confused American drivers, and everyone paused to let him extricate himself.
I have been hit once while cycling, hit once while riding a motorcycle, and my wife struck once as a pedestrian. All were due to inattentive driving (one was very inattentive since they were looking at a cellphone). I was lucky and had basically no injuries from my two incidents (can’t say the same for the bike and the moto), but my wife ended up in the ICU and then a month of hospital and rehabilitation. I’m not saying inattention should be on the same level as malicious, but the driver that struck my wife got a simple moving violation. That driver caused multiple traumatic brain injuries (TMIs), and mutilated a leg. It was over a year of recovery and my wife has permanent, serious lifelong disabilities because of this. Luckily, the driver had the insurance to cover the massive bills (you know how much a helicopter ride costs?) because if not, we would’ve been out a lot of money. To me, inattention should have more severe consequences. Put your FUCKING PHONE DOWN!!!
My wife hit three cones in parallel parking and ran up on the sidewalk in the three point turn and still passed her driving test.
Her current tally from 32 years of driving is five major accidents (inflation adjusted over $10k in damages each) and numerous minor ones. She hasn’t come to a complete stop at a stop sign since the George HW Bush administration, routinely drives 15 mph over the limit on local roads, laughs at the flashing 25 mph sign at the schools, and has ZERO traffic citations except for the two that were he result of two of the accidents (following too closely and failure to obey a traffic [stop] sign).
She has numerous warnings for speeding, unsafe lane changes, etc. She doesn’t drink, but short of that she’s as big a menace on the roads as you can imagine a non-teenager driver to be.
It’s not just too easy to get a license, it’s too damn hard to lose it.
Yes, and. Not to hijack this discussion further from evil motherfuckery, but part of the problem is that our society is, unintentionally but actively, encouraging the evil motherfuckery of irresponsibly distracted driving by making driving such an inescapably huge part of everyday life.
The average human being in a developed society should not have to:
- cart around a couple of tons of climate-controlled multi-passenger vehicle under their sole control,
- mostly at speeds high enough to cause maiming and fatalities upon collision with unprotected humans,
- for about 3-10% of their waking life, day in and day out,
- just to accomplish the everyday business of living.
It’s not efficient, it’s not healthy, and it’s not safe. Automobile use is inherently dangerous, just because cars are big, heavy and fast. It should not be a constant necessity for the vast majority of people. But, that’s the way American society is currently set up.
Add in all those commercials that tell you that you don’t have to be attentive anymore when you drive because all those new safety devices will be attentive for you.
This is an excellent way of thinking about this issue, one that I have not run across before. One reads about walkability, without much discussion of why that is a good thing, other than the physical and possibly emotional benefits of walking. And one reads about the bad things that cars do the environment and so on. But this is a more effective picture of what life could be like without such dependence on cars. Thanks.
Excuse any typos, it’s hard typing while I pat myself on the back for commuting by bike for thirty-plus years.
(Only got hit once… after that I just assumed I was invisible to cars.)
Ooh, that was the main superpower of that guy from the X-Men, what was their name… Oh yeah! ROAD PIZZA
I had a light for riding at night, but it was off most of the time (even as I would ride to work around 8~11pm every day). Somebody explained my behavior well: “if they can see you, it gives them more time to aim”. Which is not wrong: when drivers notice something out of the ordinary, like a bicycle, they study it, and in doing so, they tend to drift toward it.