It doesn’t look like they should. If a kid darts out into traffic and you can’t stop in time, why would you get charged? The charge against the parents is ridiculous. If anything the rage should be against an environment that makes walking to a place so dangerous for anyone.
Even if I’m trying to tone down the fuckcars rhetoric…
If a kid darts out into traffic and you can’t stop in time, why would you get charged?
If you can’t stop in time, 90% of the time it means you were either speeding or not paying attention to your surroundings, and your negligence/incompetence caused a death.
It is absolutely absurd that the parents are being brought before the court to determine liability, but the driver is not.
The speed limit was 45 mph (72 km/h) and there was no crosswalk at that location; there are trees in the median obscuring the driver’s view. A map is helpful: Google | OSM.
From context, the kids probably lived in the neighborhood to the southeast. The driver would have been eastbound, and would have just passed the Lyon street intersection, which has traffic lights and crosswalks. There is no sidewalk on the south side of Hudson boulevard at this location, so it’s reasonable she wouldn’t have been expecting pedestrians.
I can’t see assigning criminal liability to anybody here. The infrastructure sucks.
I can’t see assigning criminal liability to anybody here. The infrastructure sucks.
The liability should fall on the licensed engineer who negligently approved the design. The street was literally incomplete and should never have been built that way in the first place.
The street was presumably designed to the standards adopted by the city and state. We probably shouldn’t update the street design standards by punishing engineers who follow the existing standards; a legislative or regulatory approach is suitable here.
you just showed me a wide road with good visibility
drivers need to pay some fucking attention. they need to be looking ahead at all times, not just the 0.3 seconds that somebody was obscured behind a tree. if you watched them approach the tree, you goddamn well know that they’re still behind it if you didn’t see them leave.
This is also why it’s so important for adults to cross safely at crosswalks to set a good example for children in poorly designed suburban hellscapes. I cringe so hard every time I see some random idiot pushing a stroller across three lanes onto a raised median when there is a crosswalk 20m away.
Yes, we should design infrastructure better, but we also need to understand that what we have now is incredibly dangerous, and we need to set an example for children every time we interact with it.
Totally agree, the ignoring of crosswalks is terrible, I’ve seen this lead to accidents in my luckily very walkable town before. Kids do what they see.
What if they weren’t speeding and the surroundings contributed to a line of sight problem for both drivers and pedestrians. As mentioned in the article.
I can think of many places in my own area where a car could be going slower than the speed limit and someone just jumping out from a median would give no time at all to react. It’s absolutely a car-dominant infrastructure problem.
Just goes to show how deadly our streets are designed that the prosecution thought it was so completely obvious that the environment is too dangerous for a 7 and 10 year old pair of kids to navigate.
I will admit, it certainly comes across like that. But it was more an illustration of how America works. This entire event is some crazy satire political cartoon that manifested itself.
The 76 year old driving an S.U.V. faced no charges.
It doesn’t look like they should. If a kid darts out into traffic and you can’t stop in time, why would you get charged? The charge against the parents is ridiculous. If anything the rage should be against an environment that makes walking to a place so dangerous for anyone.
Even if I’m trying to tone down the fuckcars rhetoric…
If you can’t stop in time, 90% of the time it means you were either speeding or not paying attention to your surroundings, and your negligence/incompetence caused a death.
It is absolutely absurd that the parents are being brought before the court to determine liability, but the driver is not.
The speed limit was 45 mph (72 km/h) and there was no crosswalk at that location; there are trees in the median obscuring the driver’s view. A map is helpful: Google | OSM.
From context, the kids probably lived in the neighborhood to the southeast. The driver would have been eastbound, and would have just passed the Lyon street intersection, which has traffic lights and crosswalks. There is no sidewalk on the south side of Hudson boulevard at this location, so it’s reasonable she wouldn’t have been expecting pedestrians.
I can’t see assigning criminal liability to anybody here. The infrastructure sucks.
People want to be angry at as many people as possible. Thank you for the actual information.
My father is in his mid-70s, and a better driver than many of my friends. And the hatchback he drives is often defined as an SUV.
While I find myself agreeing with the sentiment here most of the time, judging without fact is getting more and more common, unfortunately.
The liability should fall on the licensed engineer who negligently approved the design. The street was literally incomplete and should never have been built that way in the first place.
The street was presumably designed to the standards adopted by the city and state. We probably shouldn’t update the street design standards by punishing engineers who follow the existing standards; a legislative or regulatory approach is suitable here.
you just showed me a wide road with good visibility
drivers need to pay some fucking attention. they need to be looking ahead at all times, not just the 0.3 seconds that somebody was obscured behind a tree. if you watched them approach the tree, you goddamn well know that they’re still behind it if you didn’t see them leave.
This is also why it’s so important for adults to cross safely at crosswalks to set a good example for children in poorly designed suburban hellscapes. I cringe so hard every time I see some random idiot pushing a stroller across three lanes onto a raised median when there is a crosswalk 20m away.
Yes, we should design infrastructure better, but we also need to understand that what we have now is incredibly dangerous, and we need to set an example for children every time we interact with it.
Totally agree, the ignoring of crosswalks is terrible, I’ve seen this lead to accidents in my luckily very walkable town before. Kids do what they see.
What if they weren’t speeding and the surroundings contributed to a line of sight problem for both drivers and pedestrians. As mentioned in the article.
I can think of many places in my own area where a car could be going slower than the speed limit and someone just jumping out from a median would give no time at all to react. It’s absolutely a car-dominant infrastructure problem.
Just goes to show how deadly our streets are designed that the prosecution thought it was so completely obvious that the environment is too dangerous for a 7 and 10 year old pair of kids to navigate.
I know you’d like to prejudge the driver based on age, but you need the facts of the case to know if the driver was at fault.
Actually, I’m prejudiced against motorists.
I say it’s always the driver’s fault.
This is funny because as a motorist, the people I hate the most are other motorists
As a driver, I hate all things on the road, be they living, dead, inanimate, or my own vehicle.
Driving sucks. It doesn’t spark joy in me.
I will admit, it certainly comes across like that. But it was more an illustration of how America works. This entire event is some crazy satire political cartoon that manifested itself.