Not the first time this has happened either, here’s another similar case in Atlanta: https://abcnews.go.com/US/mother-boy-killed-hit-run-driver-probation-community/story?id=14158040
meanwhile, in Japan, they ran a TV show of toddlers running errands
the traffic light was a third of a mile away.
I’m having trouble visualizing this. Does this mean that at a walking speed of 3km/h it would take ten entire minutes to get to a cross walk? Because that’s insane.
In Sweden we have crosswalks very regularly, usually like a couple minutes of walking at most. For bus stops farther between intersections there are markers indicating that people will cross, even without a normal crossing marker. For areas which can’t have a crossing (you may need to walk around a ways to get under or over four lanes) they put up barriers to prevent walking across.
When I was 10 my parents never let me out unsupervised and we didn’t even live near a busy road
Which is honestly a travesty.
Kids need to be able to have freedom to play, explore, and be out and about.
Society making it dangerous and discouraging what is necessary for healthy development is not great for society.
@HiddenLayer555 This is a messed up era. When I was a kid from kindergarten and up I walked to school alone. It wasn’t a super long distance, about six blocks each way but it was unsupervised, and that was the norm back then. What has happened that it has become so dangerous that kids need to be bussed to school even if they’re three blocks from the school?
Car-centric society has made it damn near impossible to walk.
Those six blocks you used to walk have all had their lanes widened into stroads, one converted into a thoroughfare, and no attention was given to pedestrian infrastructure so crosswalks, sidewalks or bike paths are almost non-existent unless you’re within 2 blocks of the school.
We have literally built most of our cities, or redesigned older cities that used to be pedestrian friendly and walkable, into a wasteland of asphalt and concrete designed exclusively for personal vehicles.
Have you been to an American school recently? The elementary next to my house could be confused for a prison at first glance. It hasn’t gotten bad, if anything it’s actually safer than when we went to school. They have promoted a society of individuals ruled by fear.
Our most recent school levy addressed basically nothing but turning the schools into jails by wanting to hire a bunch of cops, install metal detectors and a bunch of other “security measures” and this is a rural small district, we have zero need for that stuff, why not propose paying teachers better, buying updated textbooks or funding after school care, something but I’m not and never will vote to turn our schools into prisons
There is a pervasive ideal in this country that has been a core part of it since the Pilgrims landed: Puritanical Ethics of “punishment is Divine, to suffer is to be Holy”
Something is wrong? Punish the wrongness until it becomes righteous. If it doesn’t work then punish harder.
It’s how this country has always solved its problems. Label the other as wicked then beat them into submission.
I’m pretty confident this lemmy is overrun with bots spouting hallucinated LLM garbage.
Several posters here are citing shit not remotely true about this case, and somehow you all are just eating it up and upvoting them like crazy, clearly having not read the article yourselves or you’d realize how out to lunch the posts are.
Literally making up random facts that are extremely wrong. One talks about daughters, despite there being zero daughters mentioned, only sons. Others bringing up some random dude from 2011
And when called out they backpedal with more random garbage that doesn’t even make sense.
Yall, you get the fact these are obviously bots, right? Read the fucking article and stop upvoting obviously wrong statements, what us wrong with you?
the ever wonderful irony of people losing their mind about bots when in fact they missed something obvious
sure sounds like something a bot would do
The second article linked in the body of the post is about an incident in 2011 wherein a mother, one of her daughters, and her son were hit.
Hello friend, I think the confusion may be that there are two articles in this post that are about two separate incidents.
after allowing him and his brother, 10, to walk home unaccompanied by an adult from a nearby grocery store.
Wtf, are kids 10 and 7 not old enough to walk to the grocery store now?
Meanwhile all the boomers talk about how they have such find memories of walking around unsupervised until the streetlights came on or whatever lame Facebook nostalgia meme they’re parroting
Sorry I’m not following. Are you saying the boomers experienced it and pulled up the ladder like dickheads? Or that anyone who had freedom as a child is a boomer with irresponsible parents? I’m confused.
I dunno does your 7 year old jump out into oncoming traffic often? Cuz this kid did.
I think you’re trying to make a pretty s***** implication. Remember that this is a situation where the parents got charged with a crime for being reckless. Are you insinuating that the parents knew that their 7 year old child was likely to jump out into the street, and that perhaps the child had a history of doing so, and that the parents nevertheless allowed the child to walk home from the store? It sounds like that’s what you’re claiming.
A history isn’t needed, the child is seven years old, that’s all that’s needed.
Seven year olds are not nearly old enough to wander around 4 lane busy roads unsupervised, full stop.
That’s blatant negligence, there’s no getting past that.
Seven year olds are not nearly old enough to wander around 4 lane busy roads unsupervised, full stop.
He was with his older brother, who is 10.
And if a 10 year old is perfectly capable of walking to school (literally according to everyone), a 7 year old with their 10 year old brother should also be perfectly fine walking TWO BLOCKS without the worry of being killed by a driver.
And 4 lane roads should be banned in urban centers. It’s fucking ridiculous to have a goddamn highway in an area where children and families should be able to walk home safely!
They are if you teach them well
That’s why 4 lane roads should be banned
Exactly. Why are there 4 lane roads in pedestrian areas, especially so close to a school? Where is the pedestrian infrastructure so that this child could have walked safely?
I despise how people want to shift the blame to a child just walking to school and the parents who weren’t even involved instead of the driver of a multi-ton death machine for not paying attention to pedestrians.
I agree, well, at least car lanes.
Turn 2 of the lanes into bike lanes.
Tram?
@fodor @pixxelkick Contrast this with the treatment of rich white parents who buy their teenage children cars and allow them to continue using them unsupervised despite evidence that they routinely speed, drive distracted, and otherwise violate traffic laws when their teenager kills someone with their weapon.
Yeah, I remember when I was 7 I’d explore everywhere around my house for at least a few miles. There was a convenience store 2 miles out where I’d buy candy any time I’d scrounged up a few dollars of change.
What happened was terrible, but it was an accident nevertheless. Nobody should have to serve time, especially not the grieving parents.
Those who design american neighborhoods to be so car centric definitely should.
The CEO of the company that built the car should serve time
It’s fucking insane that anyone thought to charge them, let alone actually follow through with it. Multiple people have to have agreed for this to be reality. Another shit stain on humanity
Yeah but that was just a few miles. These boys walked…
*Checks notes*
The Food Lion store is two blocks away from their home.
That 76 year old man will live with his choice to drive at age 76 for the rest of his life.
Which, for a man in North Carolina, will on average be -4 years
He’s gonna live with the fact that some mom let her 7 year old run out into traffic… that’s not exactly his fault. He’s probably fuckin traumatized now because she was a terrible parent.
Let’s start with maybe, I dunno, not letting 7 year old kids go out and play near 4 lane busy roads or something? Maybe supervise your fucking kids though?
Driver did nothing wrong, the kid jumped into the road, the fuck is he supposed to do there.
That’s not the point, pixeldick
Cars have always been fucking death machines since their adoption, killing pedestrians at especially high rates. Since their introduction, this has always pissed people off with any real common sense.
We give up our streets entirely to them, put up with infrastructure increasingly hostile towards foot and cycle travel, scarcely enforce traffic laws, and treat driving like it’s a constitutional right.
We are long overdue for reworking our approach to transportation. Instead we’re stuck with incompetent lawmakers who are corrupted by industry bribes, and propped up by dipshits like you with your heads jammed up your asses.
All they had to do was use the fucking crosswalk. Instead the stupid kid is dead.
No one said otherwise.
Cars and roads sucking doesn’t mean the mother’s behavior is excused. Full stop.
You literally are acknowledging it’s a death trap, and surely you must then agree that a parent who let’s their children go play near the fucking death trap unsupervised is obviously being negligent.
You don’t get to go “roads are death traps, and because they’re death traps parents get off scott free if they let their children die to them”
No, in fact, it makes their behavior obviously worse because they should KNOW it was a bad idea
Interesting that you frame a parent losing their child in a tragic accident as “getting off scot free”. There’s a huge difference between a mistake and being criminally negligent. Clearly our opinions differ in this, and I find yours ghoulish.
WhY DOn’T kiDs PLAY OUtdiDe AnymOre!!!
The thing is, once car-centrism is established and normalized, it’s so hard to explain to people what the real problem is. Clearly the kid did a stupid thing and ran into the road when it shouldn’t. Clearly the driver had no bad intentions.
But somehow the thought never occurs to people that kids (and adults) will always be stupid and we shouldn’t strive to make a world where nobody makes mistakes. We should strive to make a world where making mistakes doesn’t kill you.
Agreed. As I read this I pictured the four lane stroad they likely had to cross.
If the roads were safer for pedestrians they’d be able to walk around without dying.
Clearly the driver had no bad intentions.
I hate to break it to you, but:
Jerry Guy, the man who hit the family and never stopped, reportedly admitted drinking “a little” alcohol earlier in the day. He also admitted to being on painkillers and being partially blind in one eye.
Guy had been convicted of two previous hit and run accidents. He pleaded guilty to the hit and run that took A.J.'s life and served six months in jail.
In a world without cars this man wouldn’t have killed a child with his decisions. But this is still gross negligence, especially the multiple hit-and-run charges.
I do agree that if anything this is a great case for pushing public transit and eliminating car centrism. But to not stop/pull over, multiple times, is its own level of selfishness.
I agree that “intentions” is a very weak way to put it, but there’s nothing indicating this driver did anything wrong either. It’s horrendous that the parents got charged, but the child “went between crosswalks”, which I take to mean going diagonally at an intersection. It’s plausible that the driver was doing everything right by traffic law and didn’t have enough time to react.
(Note that the case Broadfern quoted is a different one, I guess to illustrate the point that “intentions” are beyond the point.)
i don’t know how you can see someone admit to drinking and driving while on painkillers end up killing someone for the third time and say “maybe no mistakes were made 🤷”. absolutely baffling conclusion. and that’s not even mentioning his impaired vision.
Like Broadfern, you clicked on the far worse Atlanta case from 2011 linked in the post body as a related case, not the 2025 NC case linked from the title.
No, that commenter is correct. I read the wrong link from the article post. My apologies
The case discussed is directly related to the child, but the driver rather than the mother. The child’s name is A.J. Newman, and his mother is Raquel Nelson.
My point is that the driver never pulled over, which is after-the-fact negligence. Accidents absolutely happen and I blame 90% of this on the infrastructure.
My own biases lead me to believe the charges leveled against a grieving mother are primarily rooted in racism and/or misogyny, and the stark difference in trials adds insult to injury.
That said, I do agree with you on your primary point. It’s an awful, largely unavoidable mix of current circumstances that boil down to car-centrism. The only way out going forward is to completely change the infrastructure to be safer, and while it will be a fight it can be done.
EDIT: My apologies, you’re right. Different link, but from the same post.
The case you’re talking about is 2011. This article is a recent case where I see no indication of Jerry Guy’s involvement. The 2011 case is way worse since Guy did have wrongdoing and the mother was with children, but that doesn’t mean the 2025 case’s driver is at fault, which is what PotatoesFall meant to saw when they mentioned intention.
Edit: i wrote this before seeing your edit lol
there is no evidence of speeding or wrongdoing on the part of the driver, therefore no charges have been filed.
I feel like Atlanta law enforcement might need a refresher on what “wrongdoing” means.
This was in Gastonia North Carolina
Edit: just saw the 2nd link, I am an idiot
… the… the unsupervised child ran into the street
The fuck you mean?
The driver didn’t do a thing wrong, it’s a busy 4 lane road, you aren’t in the wrong if some random kid jumps onto the road in front of you.
I get that this is the FuckCars lemmy but give me a break, this is clearly a case of parents being negligent.
Don’t let your fucking seven year old child go play unsupervised on 4 lane roads, that’s not fuckin rocket science.
This was a problem before cars existed, parents in the 1600s were smart enough to not let their kids go play unsupervised under the hooves of horses too.
I mean, I guess running over a kid could be considered doing nothing wrong. I could also guess what kind of “person” you are.
If you’re driving down a highway and a kid jumps in front of your car and dies, yes, in every way, you’ve done nothing wrong. What was the thing the driver did wrong? Not rewrite the laws of physics?
… mate do you think this person did it intentionally?
@pixxelkick @JSocial For most of history and in most societies today, it was and is absolutely routine for parents to let 7 and 10 year old siblings walk a few blocks together. When my mom was 7, she was responsible for walking her 5 year old brother to school and that wasn’t at all unusual in their neighborhood. The problem is the number and size of cars and stroads, not a lack of helicopter parenting.
It also was routine to beat your kids and get prescribed meth to take home, and give your kids alcohol and smokes
What sort of argument is this, times change as we learn things.
Supervising your fucking seven year old near a 4 lane road isnt helicopter parenting lol
@pixxelkick You haven’t traveled much outside the United States of AmeriCar, have you? Building stroads through neighborhoods, making it unsafe for people of any age to walk to their nearest grocery store, is the problem. Almost all other high income countries have been steadily reducing their traffic fatalities for decades while the US does the opposite. Which system represents progress?
I never said stroads were good.
You understand two things can both be a problem at once right?
Stroads are indeed awful.
Letting your 7 year old go and play near one unsupervised is also very bad too
You don’t get to just go “roads bad” and this excuses the mothers negligent behavior. Both can be bad, at the same time.
@pixxelkick There was no negligent behavior. Why have we become a culture that criminalizes every aspect of motherhood (ignoring the father’s role as an equal co-parent) from having an abortion or even a miscarriage to not keeping your children on a leash for the entire 18 years they are minors (or at least 16, at which time if you can afford to buy them a car you can let them loose to kill people) and then bitches that women don’t make enough babies?
@pixxelkick If children can’t walk to their neighborhood grocery store safely, that’s a societal problem, not an individual one. Instead of looking for a scapegoat to punish, fix the fucking neighborhood so it doesn’t keep happening (to adults as well as children).
I’m guessing white driver black kid.
They are being real cagey with the deets about the driver. 😒
I read it. I can’t believe there were even charges against her. This is the second round of court as she was given the option of an offer to retrial. Which is extremely unorthodox.
She and her kids were crossing a street at a non crosswalk at night. A driver who had been drinking hit them (her, her daughter, and her son) and her son lost his life. Driver took off. Driver served 6 mo.
The crosswalk closest to her was 1/3 mile away, her house was just across the street from the bus stop.
…I think you read a very different article, nothing you said matches the story of the article at all?
You just making shit up? Or are you just a bot hallucinating llm garbage?
Nothing you wrote matches the articles story at all, what in the disinformation bullshit is this.
Also why the fuck do you have thirteen up votes?
None of you idiots read the story and just upvoted this hallucinated garbage? What is wrong with people.
The kids weren’t with their mom, the article doesn’t mention time of day, it doesn’t say a crosswalk was 1/3 of a mile away, they were unsupervised, THE DRIVER DIDNT SERVE ANY TIME AND ISNT CHARGED, THE DRIVER DIDNT TAKE OFF, THERE WAS NO DAUGHTER, IT WAS TWO BOYS…
Seriously people, what the fuck, why are you upvoting this blatant disinformation?
The internet really is dead huh?
I realize the issue. You read the posted article and I read the link in the description. They are indeed different articles.
I have watched children be bussed across a stroad rather than making it safe for kids to cross
more than one place i’ve lived at had a busy road be the ‘line’ separating bus vs walk to school. where i am now some literally get bussed across the road and then another block to the school, while some who live up to a mile away on the ‘same side’ of that road as the school get to walk.
@Semi_Hemi_Demigod @HiddenLayer555 And sadly many US residents including those employed as traffic engineers or school facilities planners and transportation officials don’t see that as unusual or inappropriate.
