• neatchee@lemmy.world
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    13 days ago

    This is incredibly reductive and makes us look like idiots who don’t understand “intent”.

    I get it, fuck cars, but this is ridiculous and only serves to make us look like a joke

    • VeganPizza69 Ⓥ@lemmy.vg
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      13 days ago

      “Oops, my foot slipped on the wrong pedal.”

      Intent without confessions and manifestos may not be that easy to prove.

      • neatchee@lemmy.world
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        13 days ago

        They’re not comparable.

        If I’m at a firing range, where it is expected that people are carrying guns and ammunition, I can pull the same “oops, my finger slipped” excuse.

        Similarly, if I drive my car around the side of your house and into your back yard to run you over, I can’t claim “my foot slipped”.

        Seriously, stop with the mental gymnastics. We don’t need to reach for more reasons to say “fuck cars.” There are plenty within arms reach

          • neatchee@lemmy.world
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            12 days ago

            See, THAT is a reasonable, thoughtful argument. Yes, the density of cars in our cities is dangerous.

            But there is not some epidemic of vehicular murders going unpunished.

            Rather, we have normalized living in a high risk environment. And THAT is the crux of the problem. Not law enforcement

        • SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.org
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          13 days ago

          You are the one doing mental gymnastics bro. What is that back yard comparison? Obviously you just swerve off the road, run him over and say you fell asleep - long day, had to work long hours to pay off my medical debt. Or have an old person run over CEOs, 80yo in cars kill people all the time because they should not be driving anymore. They always get off easy.

        • VeganPizza69 Ⓥ@lemmy.vg
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          12 days ago

          Similarly, if I drive my car around the side of your house and into your back yard to run you over, I can’t claim “my foot slipped”.

          I see one of those posts with cars crashed into houses every week somewhere. No murder charge.

          • neatchee@lemmy.world
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            12 days ago

            Perhaps that’s because… There usually aren’t fatalities inside the home???

            Like, not only is it a giant, loud object that can be seen coming in many cases, but the impact with the house exterior dissipates a huge portion of the energy.

            When people get killed my a car, they don’t die from the car hitting them. It’s almost always the impact with the ground that causes severe head trauma. Otherwise it’s a neck or spinal injury.

            Those types of injuries are just way, way less likely to happen when a car drives into a building.

            I’m getting really sick of people around here not showing even a modicum of logical thought and just screeching “CaRs BaD!!” every other sentence.

            Fuck cars, for a lot of reasons. We don’t need to make up new ones that are silly and illogical. We have plenty of really good reasons to say fuck cars that don’t involve bullshit claims re: murder charges or a lack thereof

            • Malfeasant@lemm.ee
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              12 days ago

              Hey, remember that story a while back about the rich kid that “accidentally” ran his truck through a pack of cyclists trying to roll coal on them? What ended up happening to him? (To be fair, nobody died, but still, 6 people seriously injured, at least a couple of those were life changing injuries, you’d think that would be comparable severity…)

              • neatchee@lemmy.world
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                12 days ago

                We’re actually talking about this in another reply to my comment haha. Outcome is unknown because he was charged as a minor so literally everything is sealed but he did graduate highschool so not in prison

      • FrostyCaribou@lemmy.world
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        12 days ago

        Recklessness generally also works in place of intentionally. Negligence is even lower, but is often reserved for civil suits.

    • Uriel238 [all pronouns]@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      13 days ago

      Then there’s the Sacklers pushing everyone on opioids until the US public is addicted and getting fentanyl off the street. 82,000 deaths in 2022. The trend is that number is rising.

      Was it intentional that Purdue started the epidemic? Their lobbyists pushed doctors to over prescribe them including for instances that didn’t warrant them, including material bonuses. So not really, but their shareholders really like dividends even if people have to die for them.

      Was it legal? Well, it hasn’t been made illegal yet

      See, were not looking at the true evil.

      In the case of cars, its not really the driver, but in the US, the stanglehold on transit held by big automotive and big fossil fuel. We have lots of highways (the Interstate Highway System is the biggest single project in the world) and they keep killing high speed trains and begrudge municipal transit, and parking requirements assure that every city is a sprawl of delineated asphalt.

      There’s the evil. And since its propelling the climate crisis (and we’re running out of water) it is going to kill us all.

      Too bad they threw billions at the far-right propaganda machine to push the fascist autocrat over the non-white non-male that wanted to transition to renewables.

      Guns are pushed in the US, and kept fairly unregulated by the munitions companies. Their ads imply you can’t be a real man without a loaded firearm. I never got it, but everyone male on the far-right is super sensitive about their masculinity. And they really like guns.

      • neatchee@lemmy.world
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        12 days ago

        🙌PREACH🙌

        These are the types of arguments we ought to be making memes about. Well reasoned, well spoken, and based in facts that are irrefutable

        Kudos. Thank you for doing “fuck cars” the right way 💪❤️

    • brlemworld@lemmy.world
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      13 days ago

      I’m sure that kid in Texas totally didn’t have intent when he ran over 12 people then backed up over them again

      • neatchee@lemmy.world
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        13 days ago

        And did that kid get off with a “oopsies!”? No? Then how is that related to this thread?

          • neatchee@lemmy.world
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            12 days ago

            Would love to see a citation on this. Not familiar with the specifics and would love to know more but I had trouble finding this specific story

            • DrunkEngineer@lemmy.worldOP
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              12 days ago

              https://archive.ph/3tLtL#selection-1499.0-1499.550

              More than a year passed with no news about the crash or charges against the driver. Then, in the winter of 2022, the Waller County District Attorney quietly closed the case without a public announcement. Because the defendant had been handled as a juvenile, the court proceedings and final verdict were sealed. Had the case been dropped? Was there a settlement?

              The boy would soon graduate from Waller High School, walking across a stage in front of a large crowd. The victims wondered what level of remorse he felt in the wake of the crash, and whether he might go on to impart some measure of good on the world?

              “I don’t think they ever could prove it was intentional,” DeToto said, getting into the legal semantics of recklessness versus the desire to do harm. “I’m not defending rolling coal on anybody. But that’s probably not going to be a Class A assault where you could go to jail. It’s going to be a Class C. It’s just like a ticket. Is it offensive? Yes. But it’s a different level than intentionally hitting a group of bikers.”

              • neatchee@lemmy.world
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                12 days ago

                Yuck. That’s pretty distressing :( It sounds like the civil case is still ongoing? Maybe the parents will feel some burden (as guardians should in this case).

                For what it’s worth, just to clarify for anyone reading along with the context of this conversation:

                • nobody died in this incident, though multiple people suffered long term debilitating physical and psychological trauma
                • the perpetrator was a minor, and in an assault case where there was no clear intent to cause physical harm - the trend of “rolling coal” being one of intimidation and clout-chasing - the virtue of pursuing criminal convictions that would be expunged before any sentencing of substance could occur is questionable
                • as a minor, any plea agreement or settlement would be sealed. Not even the victims would be allowed to discuss it. So it’s very possible it wasn’t just an “oopsie” but a settlement where the kid lost his license, was placed under house arrest, was required to do community service, with the parents helping cover medical expenses… We’d never know. Which is itself a problem, for sure, because it undermines the deterrent factor for others!
                • there is still an opportunity for civil remedies for the victims, and I’m confident their insurance providers will be trying to recoup their costs

                What a shitty situation. Frankly, the law is just really poorly equipped to handle minors who engage in reckless endangerment with a vehicle. We badly need to get some better laws on the books for handling kids who show wonton disregard for others’ safety, especially when it’s just for clout

                It seems like the prosecutor really did want to go hard on this case too. The article mentions a previous conviction against someone who actually did kill cyclists with their vehicle: life in prison

                In 2017, an army veteran named Victor Tome had veered head-on into a group of people riding bikes in Waller County. The crash killed two riders. Tome, who’d been intoxicated on a mixture of drugs, received a life sentence without parole.

                But to bring it back around to the OP: I think this kinda proves the point I was trying to make…nobody is getting away with murder. And I have a strong suspicion that if anyone had been killed, they’d have tried to prosecute the driver as an adult.

                I need to go watch something happy after reading that article. What a horrible incident. Maybe the victims got justice and we won’t ever know, and it certainly seems like the city/county made some significant changes in the aftermath. But it still doesn’t feel right. :(

        • merde alors@sh.itjust.works
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          13 days ago

          every negative comment is not trolling. People should be able to express their dissatisfaction, constructive or not, without instantly getting labelled a “troll”.

          • stevedice@sh.itjust.works
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            13 days ago

            Not every negative comment is trolling, but if every comment is negative then it is trolling. Or just an all around unlikable person, but most likely a troll.

        • subignition@fedia.io
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          13 days ago

          Replying to trolls (instead of reporting and moving on with your day) is also not helping, FYI.