Parents bought their seven and ten year old children quad bikes for Christmas, then took them out for a drive on Boxing Day, in the dark, on an unlit, winding, narrow, public road - allowing the kids to follow the parents car. A big car passing in the other direction collided with the seven year old and killed her.
Of course the parents are pretty upset, but instead of “what the fucking hell were we thinking?”, “we’re so sorry” or “oh God, what have we done?”, they managed to come out with “We are all privileged and proud to have shared your wonderful life.” and “You have had and given us the most amazing seven years any mum and dad could dream of. We watched you grow from a small baby to a beautiful princess who was perfect in every way. Sleep tight you beautiful angel.”
I see this occasionally in my area. Apparently some parents think that as long as it’s not an actual car, a kid that age can be entrusted with a motorized vehicle, such as a scooter or an ATV, on the neighborhood streets. Goddamn idiots.
Reading a bit further, this isn’t even one of those dumb cases where the parents buy a motorised vehicle for their child, then realise it can’t be used in their tiny suburban garden, so allow the whining, pleading kid to ride it a bit on the footpath when nobody is looking (although those are bad enough).
They live on a 50 acre farm. There must be plenty of space where the kids could have ridden the vehicles - only risking the usual class of quad bike accident such as flipping it into a pond and drowning underneath it, or just falling off and breaking bones against some solid object such as a tree.
They are more then fucking idiots but what did you expect them to say "Fuck, bugger, looks like that one is dead’. They KNOW now they are morons, they just seem to want to feel like they did a good job before this happened. It’s not like they wanted to kill their kid.
Of course, they’re not going to be quoted as wailing in grief at their own stupidity and blame, but it looks like the idea that it’s actually their fault may not have even occurred to them.
Wouldn’t there normally be something like “If only we’d bought them jetskis instead…”?
It’s not just parents. A week or two before Christmas I overtook a slow-moving Transit van on a dark country lane. Five yards in front of him was a tractor with no lights, being escorted by the Transit so he could use its headlights to see. :smack:
That’s just frickin’ icing on the cake. Some of us don’t have 50 acres on which to ride, yet we keep our quads off the street (except when absolutely necessary). Somebody who has 50 acres decides to go for a ride on the street? That’s just precious.
The vast majority of ATVs have solid rear axles. That’s right - no differential gear. So when coming around a corner, the ass end needs to slip a bit, which is somewhat difficult to do when riding on pavement. This is why in the U.S. you’re warned only about 100 times before buying a quad that it’s not to be ridden on pavement.
Some people don’t listen. And some of those people end up paying with their lives.
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I have to wonder if the parents will be charged with “reckless endangerment”, or whatever is appropriate for someone who puts their kids in such a dangerous situation.
In that case, shouldn’t we be pitting her? My buddies and I used to ride our dirt bikes on the street between each others houses all the time when we were seven or eight, and I never thought my parents were stupid morons. We never rode them at night, though, is that where they failed?
A couple years ago a man had his toddler son in the front seat and the boy was killed when an airbag deployed for what would have been a non-fatal crash had it been an adult. Charges were filed, but the judge at the indictment decided not to bother since there were no punishments that the court could come up with that would be as bad as losing your child because you were a dumbass.
Same theory applies here I suspect, although society may want more.
Vital differences here. She wasn’t riding a dirt bike on a urban street, but a powerful , motorised device ( which she shouldn’t have been riding on the road till she was sixteen), on a narrow, dark winding country lane.