A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!
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Sure. But you know they aren't as close as this makes it. One tool was meant to take life as the primary function. The other to get someplace.
Woman falls down stairs while carrying her baby, she killed him, accident. Woman throws her baby off the balcony, she killed him, murder. Both cases the baby was killed, both sad. But they are different.
The difference in intent makes sense. The difference in primary function does not, killing a person with a kitchen knife is no better than with a gun.
The problem with car accidents is that it’s difficult to know the intent of a person, especially carelessness kills a lot more people via cars than via kitchen knifes, and we can’t know for sure when it was an honest mistake by the driver.
Yeah, intent tends to be everything with unfortunate events.
I can argue that the woman may have fallen down the stairs with her baby on purpose. We can say she didn't take proper precautions, use the hand rails, ran down/up the stairs, only carry the baby in a safe device like a car seat, or that she simply should not allow the child to risk traversing up/don the stairs.
With a gun/balcony, the intent was pretty clear. With the stairs/car, they are both presumed accidents.
I think if you ignore the intention of the manufacturer for a moment and focus on the acts of the individual, they'll seem closer.
Both cars and guns are dangerous devices. Both can be used for intentional murder.
Both guns and cars are so dangerous that they should not ever be used carelessly. In fact, it would be the height of recklessness to use either one without constant vigilance. You could easily kill somebody.
But with guns, people generally accept that there is a wrong way to use them, and that it's your fault if you don't have trigger discipline, or if you ever point the barrel at someone without thinking.
On the other hand, the same cannot be said about cars. Just look how people react when you mention defensive driving, a system of disciplines that make driving safer for both the driver and anyone else near the road.
People are so used to getting away with driving poorly that they are willing to accept deaths rather than even hearing about safer driving habits.
Stairs might be pretty close to the same danger level as cars. If you consider how many people don't live or work in a 2 plus story building, maybe more so compared to cars.
"Approximately one million people in the U.S. are injured on stairs each year, making stair-related accidents the second leading cause of accidental injury. These injuries result in over $90 billion in direct and indirect costs annually, according to a study published in the American Journal of Emergency Medicine. Here's a more detailed breakdown: Number of Injuries: Over 1 million people are injured annually due to falls on stairs. Leading Cause of Injury: Stairway accidents are the second leading cause of accidental injury, behind motor vehicle accidents. Fatalities: Approximately 12,000 deaths result from stairway accidents each year."
Accidental and intentional killing should both be discouraged.
Discouraging accidental death is not achieved via harsh punishment. It's done through safer design and education
Safe design should be done a lot more. I am actually generally not a friend of harsh punishment, but the people who design unsafe roads need to get their act together.
100% agree. Safer practices need to be everywhere. That said, I agree distracted driving should be punished harsher than non-distracted accidents, but proving such goes into robbing people of privacy further. I really don't want more monitoring systems.
Texting and driving should be harsh, running stop signs/red lights as well. But accidents of not seeing a stop sign at night are going to happen, or even a pedestrian crossing not at a crosswalk with no way to see them in the dark. Hopefully we find good solutions, but our losses won't be near 0 unfortunately for awhile
That's fair. I was thinking about your comment in relation to the comic, so I'm glad we're on the same page. My city is currently redesigning formerly unsafe roads into something bike, transit, and pedestrian friendly. It would certainly be easier if they were designed that way to begin with
Any tool or item can be used to take a life or cause injury.
It could be argued guns are designed for hunting, and cars are designed for travel, but both can be used to cause harm.
Hell even a shopping cart design to haul groceries can be used to harm. Relevant video in the link.
If you kill someone with a gun and it was completely accidental, you're still likely going to do some time for it. Not so with a car.
Yea because a gun is literally designed as a weapon. If someone is wielding one and it "accidentally" goes off you were 100% being negligent in some way. With a car there are certainly situations where you can do everything as safely as possible but an accident still occurs.
Wtf?
Who made this meme (and topic) and why is everyone so ignorant of the law? This almost certainly is vehicular manslaughter case or... If it can be suggested that it's the pedestrian maybe was partially at fault it might be negligent manslaughter (ex: failed to stop when someone jumped out).
In the US, deaths deaths cars are treated less harshly than deaths involving firearms. One common example used to teach about jury biases is deaths due to drunk driving. Many jury members can empathize with driving drunk because many Americans have driven after drinking, even if they were under the legal limit
IDK if you should be calling other people ignorant if you didn't even know that much
"less harshly" is not what the meme is OP responding to is saying. The meme is saying "vehicular manslaughter goes unpunished and you won't even be arrested" which isn't true at all.
You can kill someone with a gun and have it be called an accident. You can also intentionally run someone down with your vehicle and have it be called vehicular homicide.
We can say "fuck cars" without false equivalencies.
To me whether this comic is being fair hinges on stuff like, how many people are being intentionally murdered with cars but the killer gets off easy because of the method? How many accidental gun deaths are prosecuted more harshly than they should be? I don't actually know the answer to these. It does seem relevant that guns are a tool designed for killing.
I suppose when you remove intent and literally all other context, this makes sense.
This is a bad take lol. You can be charged with manslaughter if it's an accident and murder if you were trying to kill someone with your car.
Blatantly wrong takes like this just increase the cognitive dissonance between the anti car movement and everyone else.
Somebody (@Jhex) else posted that there is apparently research giving some creedence to this.
But I agree, this meme is death-spiral-cult level. It's for fellow anti-car folks to commiserate, but it's probably net negative overall to post memes like this since they can be easily mocked by carbrainers.
It's worse than that.
You don't generally blame someone for being shot by a random stranger.
But kill a cyclist or pedestrian by car? What did or didn't they do?!?! 🧐
Its a strange world were somehow we have been conditioned to belive travel on foot or cycling is somewhat "lesser" then travel by car.
Hopefully the notion of "Car is King" dies one day, and we build cities once again for the people living in them.
I think if you kill somebody through negligent discharge of a firearm the charge would be manslaughter or criminally negligent homicide, not murder. And I think that if you intentionally run a person over with your car you'd get charged with murder.
Here the charge is nothing.
https://www.thewhig.com/feature/kingston-ontario-cyclist-fatality-police
Except people frequently do get charged with murder for pedestrian fatalities, all over the world in fact. If you can prove intent, it's murder.
This is a rubbish take.
If you hit someone with a hammer, it's assault and you go to jail. If you drop a hammer on someone accidentally, it was an accident and nothing happens to you. See how dumb that sounds?
While working in auto claims, I handled a case involving a wealthy individual who, after drinking at a country club, caused an accident that sent another car into a pond. Instead of calling for help, he drove home to sober up before contacting the authorities. Tragically, the young driver drowned, and his family had to sue the insurance company. This case stuck with me as a stark reminder of how selfish actions, fueled by privilege, can have devastating consequences.
Reminder to everyone, you can downvote bad memes. No offense to the OP, but I don't think it's good optics to have this kind of highly questionable content.
Side note: I gather "singer" must be the author's signature, but it sure looks like the criminal is being identified as a singer for some reason.
Literally my friend was killed on his bike by a tow truck driver. The driver got like probation or something, maybe. And the company he works for has "move over and slow down, it's the law Tow Lives Matter"
Assuming those stickers weren't put on due to your friends death, I'm okay with them. Tow truck divers have to work on the side of highways and some have been struck and injured or killed on the job. Cars and their infrastructure suck, but we should still try to protect those who have to work on our roadways.
We can slow down and move over for both cyclists and tow trucks. It doesn't need to be exclusive.
no? both of them can be either an accident or murder in principle; maybe it is more common for gun killings to be murders and car killings to be accidents, but that isn't a matter of law
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mens_rea
also explained in comic form here: https://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=173
Let's not spread misinformation just because it helps a good cause.
It's not misinformation. It's explaining that if you want to off someone, proving murder with a car is much more difficult. You have reason to be driving a car. You have less reason to be brandishing a gun.
Cars are like tanks.. there I said it
Literally
I'm confused, how exactly is a size comparison of two vehicles meant to add anything to the conversation here? Size implies lethality?
A standard city bus is about twice as long as those tanks, so is a bus twice as problematic?
Weight matters more than size, but that’s omitted from this graphic. I suspect the tanks are much heavier.
But speed matters exponentially more than weight. (kinetic energy = 1/2 * mass * velocity squared) And I’d imagine that trucks regularly go much faster than tanks.
The height of the impact point also matters The higher the front grill/bumper, the more lethal the impact. The current fad for high vehicles with flat front grills has significantly increased pedestrian deaths.
These vehicles are unacceptable large for public spaces. The threshold for CDL style licensing needs to be lowered to make modern trucks/SUVs require the training their design deserves. Also tax the bajesus out of them when they're in city spaces. Either they're in the neighborhood for business reasons or get out.
And the police can do either and it’s called justice!
Why was the car guy named "Singer"? Was there an infamous hit-and-runner named Singer?