Last week, we had an incident in the town where I live (large town--about 75K people living in the town proper plus the bedroom communities). A pedestrian decided to try to cross one of the busiest streets in town. Not at a cross walk. Against the lights.
The inevitable happened.
The individual driving will not be charged.
Thing is, I don't see why that was even considered. The street in question has a 45mph speed limit, two lanes going either direction, plus a left turn lane in the middle. Most of the people who live here don't like crossing that road. But for whatever reason, the pedestrian decided to not just cross that road, but jaywalk through traffic.
Yes, they died. But it was a result of their own stupidity.
I don't know, maybe they were on a cell phone and not paying attention...but that doesn't make it any less stupid.
I honestly can't bring myself to feel sorry for the pedestrian. Their family, yes, but not them. That kind of stupid really shouldn't be let out on its own. It's one of the reasons I'm trying to brainwash my kids to call stupid what it is, and to not participate in it.
No, the person I feel the worst for is the driver. Because they have an accidental death on their conscience, through absolutely no fault of their own (given traffic on that road, they may have saved lives by not hitting the brakes and causing a massive pile-up--even if they had time to stop, nobody around them would have been able to avoid hitting them).
The only negligence I see is that of the pedestrian, and they've already paid for that.
Charges for the driver shouldn't have been even a brief consideration, given the rest of the facts.
31 minutes ago
The sad part is the driver will have to live with having killed somebody, regardless of the reason...
ReplyDeleteIt's why I feel sad for the driver, not the idiot who decided to play Frogger for whatever reason.
DeleteWe have stretches of highway with barrier walls in the center. About once each year, someone will try to cross during rush hour, and a driver will have something else on their mind for a long, long time.
ReplyDeleteThey put dividers between directions of traffic between the across-the-street parking and the class buildings at the university where I used to work, everywhere but at the crosswalks. Didn't stop any of the students from hopping them. Thankfully, the locals are very used to watching for students along that particular stretch of road. More students get smacked crossing driveways just as someone's turning in than they do crossing the actual roads.
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