misdemeanor? so like, murder is illegal, murdering multiple with a truck is kind of legal
Meanwhile a couple of parents in North Carolina are facing manslaughter charges after they let their kids walk to the grocery store while they guided them over the phone and one of them got hit and killed by a car.
And the driver has not been charged.
I sure hope so, the kid basically ran into traffic. No crosswalk, completely unsupervised.
Ran into traffic?
A witness said Legend stepped into the street and was struck before his older brother could pull him back.
The driver struck a slow moving child who witnesses said had stepped off the curb and into the street. Stepped, not ran. The car then struck him before his brother could pull him back. There is no law against what these parents did. The driver on the other hand had an obligation to be aware of her surroundings including the children on the sidewalk beside the street who might step or fall into the street.
It also doesn’t matter if the child was unsupervised. Did your parents keep you on a leash? Do you keep your kids on a leash? Even if the parent was there, the child could still have stepped off the curb and been killed. If the brother wasn’t fast enough to pull him back, then then there is no basis to assume that the parent necessarily would have been.
Kids, unsupervised or not, do dumb things. The onus is on the driver to slow down when a potential hazard is spotted and to take steps to avoid it. Now, without more information about the setting I cannot say whether or not the driver should be charged. Maybe the kid wasn’t visible to the approaching driver, for example. But if the parents are being charged when there is no crime or real negligence, then the driver should be too and the courts can sort it out.
wtf
It is equal in legality as throwing one sub at an ICE agent.
What if I run over a bunch of ICE agents while riding a submarine sandwich?
Fun fact, more cops die in traffic accidents than by shooting.
true dat
So, if you actually read the article, it says he claimed that the steering wheel locked up on him, but the NTSB stated that he suffered from severe fatigue. Maricopa county prosecutors said there wasn’t enough evidence to press any felonious charges.
So, at best, this would be a case of manslaughter (which is a felony), but there’s no conclusivity on whether it was with malicious intent or premeditated.
So no, he’s not a murderer. He negligently fell asleep at the wheel.
If u drive while being impaired (by whatever) ur a piece of shit and if u kill anyone doing that (except like suffering a heart attack or something not foreseeable) ur a murderer in my mind.
Failing to maintain a vehicle is an impairment. Also “my steering wheel locked up” is not a reason to not hit the brakes.
Fortunately, the law doesn’t operate on what’s in your mind.
Murder implies premeditation. The prosecutor and judge didn’t see evidence of premeditation.
A lot of people use the word “murder” in a colloquial sense and not a strictly legal one. Further some jurisdictions have degrees of murder where other jurisdictions would use manslaughter. I’m assuming the person you responded to meant the lesser charges.
Yeah im not gonna use a legal definition colloquially cuz im not a weirdo. And ur obviously right that even in a colloquial sense there is a difference between premeditated murder and non-premeditated murder. Im not arguing that the guy is jack the ripper.
congratulations
the law doesn’t operate on what’s in your mind.
are you sure? intent is an element of many crimes.
edit: i tired nvm
deleted by creator
As someone who is a master of operating under what should be severe impairment I agree, being awake for 48 just leaves me vaguely slow when I talk. Also folks need to know their fucking limits, I refused to drive while I had food poisoning because I couldn’t think and also I didn’t want to shit myself in my car.
There is no law and order in the US. If you want to diddle kids, just operate a Joint commission accredited troubled teen facility. There are literally zero requirements, and you can sue anyone who questions you into poverty!
I mean it is not, by any legal definition of the word, murder.
And our current system requires us all to keep going even when fatigued.
Homicide.
The legal system, in this case specifically, can kiss my ass.
the legal system likewise respects you
It doesn’t seem to have been done intentionally, so at best it’s involuntary manslaughter. They think he may have fallen asleep or something.
Okay so negligent manslaughter.
It meets the exact spirt of involuntary manslaughter. Where his negligence either through faulty vehicle maintenance like him claiming that his steering wheel locked up or by being too tired and driving a multi ton vehicle that caused the deaths of multiple people. And yet they dropped some bullshit ass charges instead
deleted by creator
You actually get rewarded for running over cyclists, one more and it would all have canceled out
Insane. My friend is serving 6 months because he fought back against his violent abusive dad one time. This guy gets 6-12 months after killing 2 and injuring 11? Wtf is this system?
Afluenza, you know. This guy probably has rich and powerful daddy and mommy.
He should never get his license back. What the hell. Only 6 months.
Unfortunately, traveling by car is seen as the default. Hence using something else than a car to travel is seen as taking unnecessary risks, which is why we see a lot of victim blaming.
Speed limit inside of cities should be like 30km/h, 20km/h during the times of day when school typically starts and ends, all day near a school. Fines for speeding should be 3 dayfines for each kilometer you’re over the limit, with five percent of your net worth being added to your annual income for the calculation. 5 dayfines if you speed in a school zone. And if somebody throws themselves in front of your car, and they die, you should lose your license for 6 months. (Though in this case, all financial damages emerging from your license suspension should be paid by the estate of the deceased). In case of vehicular manslaughter that doesn’t involve somebody deliberately hitting your car, the license should be suspended permanently.
Sorry for the rant.
Remember people, if you wanna kill someone, make sure you’re in a car! If you’re lucky you might not even get a jail sentence!
Remember people, if you wanna kill someone, make sure you’re a rich white person in a car!
Also doesn’t hurt if the people you plow over are young, minorities, women, or - best of all - progressive activists.
It’s ok, none of the people killed or hurt were billionaires, so like… they guy barely broke any real laws worth worrying about.
This is good. It gives the grieving families a year to plan how to get the bastard once he’s out of jail.
Obviously run his ass over in a Walmart parking lot.
Sounds fair. I’d expect me smeared on the road by a truck is probably worth a couple of hours of community service. At least a couple. Imagine a beautiful Lady. That’s at least a couple of months depending on the make-up. 2 cyclists and 11 injured yeah that should carry some prison. Specially if it was a nice Walmart bike with shimano part upgrades. Amazon electric… Forget it, that’s at least 25 to life. But only if it had a fancy range extender. Otherwise maybe 15 years?
Hopefully they learn their lesson and doesn’t become a repeat offender.
It’s really cool how judges would say that all human lives are equal but also closely match them to their net worth…
wtf America.
So, upon reading the article, the NTSB concluded the driver was extremely fatigued.
Do truck drivers not get tired where your from? Is this incident really an indictment of the entire United States? Is the rest of the world a tragedy-free paradise?
If you drive while tired and kill someone as a result that’s not an accident. You intentionally kept driving instead of pulling over and taking a nap.
There is effectively no difference in drunk driving and driving while extremely tired. Both impair your driving ability equally.
IMO driving while tired is worse as the impairment creeps up on you for hours and you can stop at any time. There should be almost no impairment in your decision making.
On drugs it conceivable that you took a couple of shots and then your drunken mind decided to drive. In this case the decision to drive was made by someone impaired.
If you drive in a professional capacity your employer should be held accountable too. People that drive their employees to drive unsave should lose their business and spend some time in jail.
I largely agree, but the Maricopa prosecutor and judge saw it differently.
Edit: Downvotes don’t change reality.
Doesn’t mean much. Police violence cases are regularly ignored by prosecutors and judges due to lack of public interest/insufficient evidence you didn’t deserve to be battered.
Yeah, that’s very true. That driver also doesn’t deserve to get convicted of something more severe than what he actually did.
he killed 2 people
seems like he did plenty
Never had to report to a boss, eh?
i don’t care enough about your boss to ignore 2 people dying
it should be negligent homicide unless mechanical failure can be proven and even then he should have to show proper upkeep
cars are 1000 pound+ death machines if people don’t respect the responsibility they should face more then this dude is getting
I’m not ignoring their deaths. Send him to jail for a year, sure. But it won’t fix the problem and it will allow him to experience life inside prison. I don’t think they teach vehicle maintenance in there.
if it was due to negligence, there has to be real consequences, we have non violent drug offenders doing more time
if nothing else he shouldn’t get his license back
No, because we have mandatory breaks and such. Every second gets fully recorded and stored for authorities to check. Driving without sleep just isn’t worth the risk of losing your license
So does the United States in their trucking industry. This guy just fucked up horribly. He is not, however, a murderer which implies premeditation.
Driving drunk is also premeditated. As should lack of sleep be
“Premeditated” in the context of homicide means someone intended to kill someone else. That is, they set into motion a course of actions because they believed that course of action would result in the death of a person.
Homicide in the context of fatigue or impairment are not usually premeditated because people generally do not put themselves in those cognitive states believing that doing so will result in the death of someone else.
Historically judicial systems have recognized that those cognitive states are more likely to result in unintentional deaths so do hold people operating vehicles under those conditions to a higher standard of punishment than, say, a sober person involved in a fatal crash. At the same time they consider intent and hold people in those circumstances to a lower standard of punishment than those who actually intended to kill someone.
I’m glad you and everyone else chose that double shift.
So if someone got really tired and plowed into a bunch of ICE agents would get the same sentence?
for international context here: this is (one of) the hottest major city in the
countryworld; we have year round bike weather. This happens all the time unfortunately.The hottest city != Bike weather?
They meant to say “bike melting weather”
People who live here are used to the heat. I ride my bike in >40° weather all the time. People who aren’t used to the heat yet will start to ride right before sunrise when it’s 27-30°. To give you another frame of reference: I set my HVAC to 25.5° year round and turn it down to 24.5° when I’m “overheated” (room temp <24° is unbearably cold to me). We’re just built different here.
I speak for all of Canada when I say that you are fucking nuts.
deleted by creator
Yeeehaw
I’d like to know whether that means he can drive for the 2nd hald of his prison term.
Prosecutor needs to be tried for treason. At the very least there needs to be a permanent license suspension.
…treason?
You plow a vehicle into an event and kill people - intent or no - you’re definitely an enemy of that society.
I don’t think that’s how it works though.
Prosecutors have court fabricated immunity so its moot either way.
After those six months, we need you back out on those streets running over cyclists and subsidizing our dying domestic auto industry, you hear me?!
- Judge in this case after doing his sentencing
/s
I guess he can’t be an uber driver for the county jail?
I imagine he’ll face the consequences for the rest of his life, regardless of how the “justice” system handles it. Honestly, I’d be surprised if he lived 10 years before something happened to him. The victims had families.
I would be extremely surprised if anything happened to him. It’s not a movie.
At the very least there are 13 big civil suits coming his way.
Those still have to go through jury? What happens if he cannot afford a lawyer?
Then he will have one appointed for him. It’s kinda the reason that public defenders exist.
But that is for criminal cases as far as I know. You will not get a public defender for civil case as far as I know.
Apparently so! Today I learned something new! Driver’ll prolly get shafted with court costs, tho…
I don’t think there are any court costs here. Not something he would be forced to pay. He gets an option to hire a lawyer or represent himself.
