30 March 2007

Old news

Some of your are probably familiar with this story, in which a woman hit two children riding bicyles and killed one of them. So far, the police haven't filed any charges against the woman, who said she fell asleep.

I don't get how falling asleep makes you any less liable for killing someone. Is that really a valid excuse? It doesn't make any sense to me. It's not about intent - even a drunk driver doesn't mean to hurt anyone.

I can't see how there weren't manslaughter charges brought up. Isn't this the exact kind of thing the manslaughter charge is for?

The whole thing pisses me off, as I'm a little oversensitive to anything involving bicycles. But it's typical of the sort of car centered laws that are currently in place that a person on a bike has no rights, or if he/she has rights, they're thrown out in the process.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The miata is very cool. When I was a 23-year-old starting my career in baseball, I hired a 60-something professor who wanted to intern for free... and he drove his miata across country, despite admitting he occasionally fell asleep at the wheel, which led us young foolish kids to imagine him on the left side of an 18-wheeler, fall asleep and wake up on the right side, and wonder what had happened, which would be funny until you read the story of the woman who hit the two kids, which is simply tragic (throw her in jail) but comforts me that idiocy is not limited to Utah.