I’m confused. Why exactly are you unwilling to “give him a pass on this because of his grief”? For what would you be giving him a pass?
Could be that the woman wasn’t tall enough for him to see.
What does the SUV have to do with it? If we brush aside the simple anti-SUV bias (which I share), we’re left with:
- A vehicle possibly too tall to afford easy visibility of a short person walking nearby.
- A vehicle probably twice as heavy as the aforementioned Prius, and proportionally more lethal to be run over by.
And sometimes people manage to do careless things with no cell phones involved at all. Parents have been known to be distracted by something their kids were doing, for example.
Accident or mistake is not enough negligence to sustain manslaughter.
This was on our local news last night and they talked to the guy in the SUV. He feels pretty sick over the whole thing.
He wasn’t on his cell phone and he wasn’t mad about his order.
He didn’t pull up close enough to the drive-thru window and had to lean out his SUV window to grab the food. He didn’t have the SUV in park and his foot slipped off the brake. And everyone knows what an automatic vehicle does in drive when you take your foot off the brake. It lurches forward.
Unfortunately at the same time the lady was walking in front of his vehicle and she got caught between it and the landscaping.
The guy was negligent but it was an accident.
If the guy’s story is true, it’s disturbing that it was distorted into “angry guy barking on cell phone plows into innocent mother.”
Hmm, a guy driving a $50K+ vehicle kills a hispanic person in a drive through and gets to drive away afterwards? I’m surprised this didn’t happen in Texas.
Because that’s a caricature of the self absorbed corporate jerk, with some truth to it. SUVs are marketed and designed to appeal to the selfish, uncaring and aggressive; the manufacturers don’t use the word jerk, but might as well. In other words, running unconcernedly over a woman while talking on a cell phone and not getting charged are what many would expect from an SUV driver, whatever the facts are in this specific case.
Well, it’s better copy and more symbolic that way; Angry Arrogant Jerk Crushes Innocent Mother. Plus, it’s neatly black and white, with criminal and victim; accidents are morally messier.
(bolding mine)
Or, as in this case, brown and white. 
And Blanche, I live in Texas. I can empathize.
The crime of killing a human being without malice aforethought, or otherwise in circumstances not amounting to murder
Wanted to add that from the description of the accident scene, it definitely looks like he accelerated away far too quickly for it to have been a case of his foot slipping off the brakes. He moved far enough forward to hit the barrier where the drive-through path curved. Since I’ve never seen a drive-through where you have to turn sharply immediately past the window to avoid hitting the barrier, he had to have travelled forward quite some distance, probably at least one car length. They also described that there was damage to the barrier (made out of railroad ties) - he didn’t just hit hard enough to crush the young woman, he dislodged the railroad ties holding up the landscaping.
If it was a young person or a minority in an old used car, you could be sure that the police would have kept him there. But it was a rich guy in a nice car, and it wasn’t like it was a white woman he crushed.
Although I had just mentioned how I feel about drivers on cell phones, it’s just coincidental that I observed her do this twice while talking on a cell phone also. I didn’t mean to imply people aren’t ever careless because of other things.
How do you know the driver was white?
How do you know the SUV cost $50k+?
How do you know the driver was “rich”?
I live in this area. I’ve driven past that McDonald’s countless times. This accident happened in a very busy, very mixed area of town where you’ll see everything from rich people driving BMWs on their way Uptown to poor people driving jalopies on their way to K-Mart. And vice versa. You simply cannot make assumptions about race and income at this location.
At this one, you do. It’s an immediate turn.
Amazing how folks aren’t afraid to wait for actual facts before trotting out that race card.
The driver was from Ghana.
It’s black on brown violence, yo!!!
:rolleyes:
I didn’t read every other reply, but I never said he was white. I assumed he was, though the fact he is from Ghana makes this less likely.
Lincoln Navigators START at app. $50K.
He could afford a Lincoln Navigator.
How can you be directly adjacent and parallel to a building and immediately turn without grinding against the side of the building? Is this window on the corner of the building?
Hey now, why should any of that get in the way of a nice easy slam on rich white guys? Everyone knows they’re bad news!
I just love watching all the assumptions crumble as more facts come out.
White? No, from Ghana.
Rich? Works in a nursing home - not usually the path to riches.
He does drive a Lincoln Navigator, though.
This does not mean rich. It may mean frugal and very large loan. You should really remove your foot from your mouth, placed there as you leapt to erroneous conclusions.