And this is the exact comment (seriously, seen it damn near word-for-word over and over again in Twitter conversations) that has me so frustrated. It’s as if people think that responsibility is a zero-sum game where any blame for the tragedy placed on the intersection diminishes from the blame placed on the impaired driver. She is entirely to blame for the accident. The intersection is also at fault, because it’s structured such that any lapse of judgement whether it be that of an impaired driver or that of a sober driver is likely to cause a high-speed T-bone (through-traffic speed limit is 110km/h). Just because impaired drivers are a menace independent of badly designed intersections doesn’t mean we can’t take the opportunity to improve the design so that the inevitable accidents there are less likely to be fatal.
Nor can I. I am no Mr. Greenspan, but in my experience in the criminal courts, if the evidence shows clearly that the accused is guilty and there would be no point in fighting the charge(s), then the best approach is to plead guilty at the earliest possible opportunity. You can then use this as a mitigating factor in sentencing–not only is the accused “manning up” and admitting he did wrong, but he’s not wasting the Court’s time and money fighting something he cannot win.
Without knowing more than what I’ve read in the media, I cannot say if there are any other mitigating factors that would come into play, but with the early guilty plea, he has at least one. By advising his client to plead out now, Mr. Greenspan is helping his client get, as Malthus aptly put it, the best available outcome.
That would have been a great class! I did read Eddie’s book when I was in law school, and it was full of “war stories.” Would have been better to hear them in person, though.
I heard him speak at Law Day a few years back about his experience as co-defence counsel for Lord Black on his trial in the US Federal Court in Chicago. Some fascinating comparative law topics came up.
There are far too many people like him in this world. Other than throwing them in prison for a very long time, I wish there was a better way to rid society of them.
Agreed. There can be more than one contributing factor to an accident, and a highway design flaw doesn’t excuse someone who was breaking the law anyway.
Which intersection is this, Gorsnak?
Highway 11 and Wanuskewin Road.
The highway has a speed limit of 110km/h, crossing traffic has stop signs. The family was traveling southwest towards the city and were struck by the impaired driver who was crossing the intersection (haven’t seen the direction stated, not that it really makes a difference.) Traversing this intersection is frequently an uncomfortable affair as crossing traffic (and westbound highway traffic turning left onto southbound Wanuskewin) is frequently heavy, and prone to crossing in smaller windows than you’d expect because they’ve been waiting long enough to become impatient.
KarlGauss’s map is also correct.
Ah yes. I’ve been there by daylight, but I can see it could be particularly dangerous by night. Which coincidentally when most drunk drivers are out…
He’s a gardener actually. Damn him! :mad:
But yes, Rob is whom I meant. So mush for my annual New Year’s Resolution not to make any mistakes. :smack::o
“much”, not “mush.”
Can his lawyers, if does plead guilty and just go in front of a judge, get to pick his prison and conditions in the prison?
Sometimes in the US wealthy persons have done this.
No. Judges do not have the power to assign a convict to a particular prison. They just get processed by the correctional system, which decides where they go based on risk assessments, length of sentence, etc.
It just gets worse and worse! :eek:
If it’s any excuse, I was out until 4am with my English buddy who’s moving back to London next week, so I’m not operating at full speed right now. (I did manage not to wipe out any families on the way home, but then that would have been difficult – but not impossible! – to do from the back seat of a taxi.)
As an aside, I’ve always wondered why we have at-grade intersections in the Canadian West. Why can we not separate them, as they do in Ontario with the 400-series highways, or in the US with the Interstates? Hardly a week goes by without hearing how somebody got plowed and died at an at-grade prairie intersection. This one made the news because of alcohol, but I’d suggest there are many more that are a product of sober, but poor, judgment
I’ve had my share of horror stories; I’m sure that all prairie-dwellers have. The fully-loaded semi that slowly pulls out from a cross-road, the left-turner who cannot get up to speed in time, the farmer who runs his unlicensed and ininsured slow-moving tractor/combine down the road… These wouldn’t happen if we had separated-grade interchanges, with rules about who could and could not use the roads.
Combine the above with slick roads, fog, poor visibility, driver distracted by looking down at their cell phone, noisy kids in the backseat, or driver half asleep and you have a disaster.
Sometimes one has just seconds to make a judgement while driving. When your driving at full mental capacity and awareness - ok, you can safely slow down and pass a slow moving vehicle in front of you. But then there are other times and we have all been there.
Cost.
A modest bridge over the highway with entrances and exits here in TBay was recently completed for nine million dollars.
The planners looked at traffic volume and frequency of collisions.
As populations expand, so will road use, so overpasses and underpasses will have to be built. The trick is to build them on a timely basis without either incurring too many collisions in the interim or diverting public funds from other very worthy projects and services.
The grid road system has gravel roads running N/S every mile and E/W every two miles. Drop a highway diagonally on top and you can’t possibly put bridges on all of them. To make a proper limited access highway you’d need to build service roads parallel to the highway and add bridges every 10km or so. Cost would be obscene. Saskatchewan already has more miles of maintained road per capita than any other jurisdiction in the country (quite possibly the world) and we can barely afford to keep what we’re using in decent shape without considering such a massively costly undertaking.
In any event, they don’t want to put up an interchange at 11 and Wanuskewin because the long-term plan is that a perimeter highway comes through a km or so south, with full interchanges, and the existing intersection will be removed entirely. My preferred solution is just to make an 80 zone on the highway, which won’t eliminate accidents but should make them much more survivable. If that turns out not to be sufficient, traffic lights until this pipedream of a perimeter highway is built. Lights there would suck, but 7 deaths in 5 years and rate likely to rise suck more.
Sorry, didn’t mean to hijack this worthy hate on a rich fuck with a considered discussion of Saskatoon’s transportation infrastructure.
Now, now, there’s no reason we can’t do both!