The grieving parents of a 7-year-old child who died hours after being hit by a car were charged with involuntary manslaughter after allowing him and his brother, 10, to walk home unaccompanied by an adult from a nearby grocery store.
NC is a hellscape of stroads and highways. Walking anywhere there is a stressful situation. I’d walk down to the local park and needed to cross 2 lanes of traffic at a crosswalk. The speed limit was 35 yet people flew through doing 50 and this is with medians and a crosswalk. The only way to cross was to begin walking out and hopefully they brake for you.
That’s never the way to cross a street. You look ahead for a gap, then start moving the moment the car in front of the gap passes you. If you’ve gotta run, run, but what you’ve described is nothing short of suicide. Never trust drivers.
This feels like an origin story for a Punisher reboot.
They got it backwards. I will hold the road planners, the city government, the driving license issuer, and the driver responsible. It start with poorly designed roads and ends with poor driver training. The parents are the victims here.
It’s the parents fault for birthing a child into this hellscape into the first place. We’ve built this inherently violent landscape and your letting your spawns roam free? /s
but they want people to have more kids. lolwtf
Speaking of planners, i follow
on Mastodon (a transportation expert who cycles and cycles with her kid) and she put me onto this book
https://bookwyrm.social/book/1907724/s/killed-by-a-traffic-engineer
If you watch the video in THIS report, it’s clear that planners should bare some responsibility here.
They designed no logical, safe crossing where people need to cross. Even during the report, you can see other pedestrians walking across.
The only “sidewalk” is a tiny strip on only one side, and it’s right against the curb. You might as well be walking in a shoulder!
And the speed in an area like that is too damn fast.
That road was designed to be anti-pedestrian. Not the parent’s fault.
Mountains of shame looking for someone to blame in the dum dum land of lowest common denominator. This Yankeeland, this imperialist empire, this empty vessel of lesser things, this pit of despair we lean into the Edward Bernays dreamland of sucking the tit of the rotton corpse of the rugged individualtic mother. Ohhhh the humanity. Ohhhhh the humanity thots and prayerzzzzzzz. Fascist are the useful idiots of empire and capitalism and fascism are like peas and carrots. The liberals are fascist. You call me negative and I think you are stupid. Welcome to the lords and ladies of the clown kingdumb. The leader is a follower ,the follower is a leader that is dead. If their is a hell it is inside your head. Nothing WILL EVER change in Yankeeland. It is like demanding for HBO in Alcatraz. You can not solve generational issues until the boomers in office finally die this won’t happen in your lifetime. This evil empire is gonna set the world on fire.
Never blame the asshole in the car. Always blame someone else.
Did you read the article? The kid ran out into the street. The driver wasn’t speeding or impaired. They did nothing wrong so what exactly do you want them to be blamed for and why are they the asshole in this situation?
I read the article. Did you? Did you notice what it didn’t say? We can quickly infer that the man is local and these were local streets. What kind of crazy mother f***** would drive 25 in a 25 when there’s kids right next to them? I know what kind of crazy mother f*****, the kind who wouldn’t care if they struck those kids and killed them. The rest of us would show common sense, we would see the kids, and we would slow down to 15 miles an hour because we know that little kids might step out into the street accidentally and care about the lives of children.
Let me put it simply. If you see a kid near the road, slow the f*** down, you aggressive m***********.
Driving a killing machine. You don’t point a gun at anything you don’t want to kill. You dont drive a car without willingness to kill.
Streets should not be a place its just okay to murder children.
I would argue, and i know this is kind of radical and lots of you will disagree, that we should not have places where its okay to murder children.
I think your high ping has caused you to be disconnected with reality, try rebooting your modem.
You’re right. I switched to a wired connection and im much more reasonable now.
Of course we need designated child killing zones. How else will we cull the weak, and keep america strong?
You dont drive a car without willingness to kill.
eeeeh might be time for a break
Youre right. Im sorry i said that.
We absolutely need a place where its okay to kill children, and streets are far and away the best option for that.
I get a little stupid and udealistic sometimes when im high, but I’ve sobered up now.
you’re misreading my intent, deliberately. no one is suggesting those things.
cars are fucking this culture up. comments like this are pretty good evidence.
You don’t drive a car without willingness to kill
It has been a while since I’ve come across a statement that leaves me wondering how anyone came to such a disconnect with reality. Watching these mental gymnastics is making me sea sick.
I drive a car with a willingness to get from where I am to where I’m going, quickly. A comparison to a gun is just retarded: guns are killing machines because that is their sole purpose. The purpose of cars is fast transport of people and cargo.
Now, “murder” needs to show intent, and it sounds like you’re concluding anyone who is killed by a car is murdered because drivers must intend on killing someone simply because they got behind the wheel. I’m going to go ahead and assume you either a) don’t have any friends or family who drive, or, more likely, b) don’t have any friends and don’t talk to your family.
willingness to get where im going quickly
And a willingness to kill to get that done, if necessary, or you’d be on a train or a bike.
I think you mean “involuntary manslaughter children” not “murder”.
Involuntary manslaughter just requires negligence, and cars and roads seem like tailor made environments for drivers to be negligent.
I know people here like to throw the ‘murder’ accusation around but it is a totally different level of intent and culpability - and it’d be hard to prove it beyond reasonable doubt.
In my country though there is special laws for drivers , death by dangerous driving, and death by careless driving - so as long as you use a car, the normal rules for manslaughter don’t directly apply.
I think , here, if you’ve killed someone it is hard to defend against a death by careless driving charge, as our highway code is very clear on duty of care towards vulnerable road users. But ultimately it’d be jury’s decision on “reasonableness”. I can’t see how no charges would be brought though - as the jury has to determine it, and any death must be taken seriously.
Prosecution should just need to show that there was a hazard (pedestrians, children, in this case the corpse should do the trick) and that a reasonable driver could have done more, say slow down to less than 20mph.
“no evidence of speeding” might be enough for some jurors, but that should be their call.Our problem over here is more on the punishment side. The punishment for death by careless driving seems lower than other forms of negligent killing. Many will get away with a small fine/community order and a 12 month ban from driving. So i think a lot of people probably plead guilty to avoid the fine and get away with a 1 year ban.
Weak punishment, but there’s at least an acknowledgement that they did something wrong.
Back to this case it seems crazy (to me) that there is not even a question for the court to determine whether the driver was negligent. Maybe the driver was reasonably attentive and had taken all reasonable measures to keep other road users safe, but surely they should be made to demonstrate that to the court.
Welll, part of the issue here is that americans are R strategists, and we must cull the weakest of our children pretty regularly.
Generally crimes committed with a car carry less/no penalty here, but it isn’t formalized.
You’re right. There’s nothing insinuating the driver is at fault in the article. That being said with him being 76 I’d fucking loooove to see if he could pass a driver’s test.
The fact theyre charging the parents is fucking ridiculous.
No he did not read. People here do not read and just go for “oh the poor kid” without knowing the whole story. Also they want to stop a vehicle going 45mph to 0 in a dime. Literally these commentator have never driven a car.
In Netherland, max speed is usually 30 kph (about 20mph) when there’s any chance of interacting with other traffic (bikes or pedestrians). The idea of walking along a busy road where cars go 45 mph is ridiculous. Separate the traffic streams and give them crosswalk with traffic lights, or slow down the cars.
The idea of infrastructure which is not hostile to humans seems to be totally alien to some people.
At seven I went to school and back home on foot and alone, about a mile, everyday. I did once have a close call with a car that didn’t stop for a crosswalk.
Are parents supposed to accompany their kids at all time until they are 18?
No but North Carolina cops will arrest a black parent to avoid having to arrest a white driver.
According to 'murica, until 16. Then they can drive their own car.
Seriously though?
We have many places where phone distracted drivers have made it too dangerous for any aged person to walk or ride a bike.
But it’s hyperbole. Kids in cities can get around alone just fine. And my 7 y/o goes to friends houses across a street and the through backyards. We have no sidewalks and fast cars though. So he is extra careful crossing. To the point that he’s basically a crossing guard when we walk together.
It sucks though because there’s nowhere to safely learn to ride a bike that isn’t driving distance from our house.
But it’s hyperbole. Kids in cities can get around alone just fine. And my 7 y/o goes to friends houses across a street and the through backyards.
It it really hyperbole though? Kids in the city are generally murdered by cars more than anything else. And if you have to cut through backyards to avoid death, that’s not really an optimal situation there. Personally I don’t care about trespassing at all, but people could literally shoot kids for this in shithole USA.
No, they’re joking. There’s no federal law governing it afaik- only state laws that vary wildly. Child development experts mostly agree that under 8yo is too young to be unaccompanied
Edit: NC doesn’t have a minimum, and the 7yo was with a 10yo, so it sounds like they have pretty much no case
The article says they were with an adult who was from the grocery store … So they were with an adult… Just not the parents… Unless I’m reading it wrong… I don’t even see anyone else mentioning this
They left their mom at home, and were walking two blocks up the street to meet up with their dad, who was grocery shopping. The dad was on the phone with the older kid at the time, keeping tabs on them while letting them gain confidence going on their own.
As a parent who struggles not to helicopter my kids, none of this sounds out of line to me. The driver who apparently couldn’t react to a kid stepping out unexpectedly, in what sounds like a residential area? I want to know why he’s got a license.
Yeah when I was seven my sister and I would travel laying in the backseat of the car, no seatbelts, with four adults in a car legally limited to five occupants, and they would smoke inside (rolled down the windows at least). I’m alive, and so is my sister. That doesn’t mean it was alright and we should keep on doing it.
Parents are supposed to teach their kids to navigate the world and be sure they’ve learned before letting them loose into traffic, which these people didn’t do. Also unloading the responsibility on the older sibling(s) is something that have to stop, a ten years old shouldn’t have to carry that burden, imagine the guilt and trauma of that poor child.
Experts pretty much all agree that kids need some level of autonomy and freedom to grow up healthy. The exact level is under constant debate, and at what age things are appropriate is under constant debate. With freedom and autonomy though will come accidents. It’s an unavoidable consequence. There’s no way to be absolutely certain that a particular kid won’t make a terrible lapse in judgement, no matter how much you’ve drilled something into them. Hell, even adults make those kinds of mistakes all the time.
Put another way, I could keep my kids very safe by keeping them in the house, tethered to an iPad all the time, unable to leave my earshot, like so many parents seem to do now. They’d be super safe. And they’d grow into the kind of inept, stunted kids that people are constantly complaining about.
Yeah sure, blame the victims of horrible infrastructure. I walked myself to kindergarden, when I was around 4 or 5 years old, when I was 7, I would walk home from school.
There wasn’t some busy four-lane-road on my way in my rural town. Four fucking lanes? What the hell?
Living in a city, I wasn’t allowed to cross roads by myself when I was seven (some thirty years ago) much less four lane ones. The horrible American infrastructure make it even worse for the parents to let their kids go alone. Was the mother not aware of that road being there?
Better question: Was the old fart not aware there were children under his murder vehicle?
He’s cooperating with the cops apparently, but it sounds like it was a bystander who was checking on the other kid until their parents could get there.
which these people didn’t do.
According to the cops. jfc.
Yeah 2 miles here. It’s still the rule, school bus service available if you are more than 2 miles away from school OR would have to cross a dangerous road.
And no, obviously we are supposed to be precognitive and able to tell if something will happen.
That said - I would let my kids walk to the shop themselves only if there was no big road to cross. Drivers here will run kids right over. Everyone knows someone with a family member killed by a car.
with a family member killed by a car
Killed by a driver.
Only in 'Murica…
This doesn’t serve justice, in any way.
Why were the children trying to walk between crosswalks? I’d bet because the only crosswalks anywhere in the area are at stoplights and way too far apart. A painted cross wall at minimum, or a HAWK light that stops vehicle traffic should have been there. But those are too expensive until multiple people are killed by traffic, it takes a lot of blood to get human-cebtric infrastructure installed in this country.
The crosswalk directly leading to the middle school near me was known by the school and the neighborhood to be dangerous due to traffic speed, and the community had been fighting for a HAWK light to be installed by the county for nearly a decade. They even widened and replaced the road during that time and still refused to install it (although they did install the underground conduit necessary when doing the roadwork). It took 4 children total being killed by vehicles outside of school hours before they finally agreed to install a HAWK light there.
Charging the parents doesn’t do any public good. I doubt they’re going to find a full jury that could convict unless there’s some underlying information about the parents trying to kill the kids or some shit like that. I can’t imagine a jury of 12 would unanimously convict.l based on the info provided.
You’re assuming they’ll get a trial and won’t simply be held in jail until they accept a plea deal.
Edit: for those unaware of Yankee justice 90-95% of all criminal cases are resolved via plea deals
Pedestrian crossings are potentially miles apart, but it’s illegal not to use them? Makes sense…
Laws that are almost impossible to follow are great for keeping prisons full
What the fucking fuck…
This is north Carolina, mom is white, dad is black…
Yeah, something about this is off. I was thinking that the 74 year old driver was white and a “pillar of the community”.
My sister and I played outside until it was dark. Then my dad would blow a whistle so loud that the entire neighborhood would hear it and come home.
Anything to shift accountability away from drivers, huh? Cars and the people behind the wheel of them are just an unavoidable force of nature now?
76yo probably shouldnt be driving, wanna bet the driver could be well connected, alot of these wierd incidents magically disappears.
District Attorney Travis Page. Gaston County. Prosecutorial District 38. (704) 852-3113. Tell him your thoughts.
City makes walking on foot a death sentence, offloads responsibility on people foolish enough to produce life in a world that wants us to die.
“In such cases, adults must be held accountable for their responsibilities to ensure a safe environment for their children,” police said in a statement.
Okay, I get the rational behind it.
Gastonia police declined to comment to NBC News, but said in a statement that “there is no evidence of speeding or wrongdoing on the part of the driver, therefore no charges have been filed. The driver continues to be cooperative and the incident remains under active investigation by the Gastonia Police Department’s Traffic Division.”
Except when you drive a car, fuck it! You can do whatever you want. As a driver of a vehicle that can kill people, you don’t have be responsble for anything.
