You know who should be charged over this? It's not the parents. It's not even the driver. And it's not even necessarily the city board responsible for the shitty car-centric design. It's the fucking psychopaths in charge of car & oil companies who lobbied this and forced car-centrism on an entire continent. They need to be on the dock for every preventable pedestrian & cyclist death in city limits. All of them are mass murderers.
this post was submitted on 06 Jun 2025
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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.
EDIT: Leaving this up for clarity, but I did in fact read the wrong link from the post. The above commenter is correct. Carry on and have a good day.
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.)
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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 by themselves 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
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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.
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
The CEO of the company that built the car should serve time
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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.
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@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.
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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.
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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.
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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 Americans complain about everything being car-centric, this is exactly the kind of shit they’re complaining about.
My grocery store is a mile away, but I can’t legally walk there. There are no crosswalks to get to the store. If I’m going to fully obey the law as written, I must use a car just to go to the store.
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That's fucked up.
Its too bad that Americans refuse to use their 2A rights to enforce normalcy and crush the crony capitalist conservatism that causes these problems
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That 76 year old man will live with his choice to drive at age 76 for the rest of his life.
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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.
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