Its amazing how absolutely adamant America is to refuse to hold parents accountable for all shit they are actually responsible for with their children, but are willing to throw the book at the parents if the kid goes outside and anything happens to them as a victim.
Prevents parents from letting their children taste freedom.
Where I used to live, parents were charged with child neglect after rats came out of the walls during the night and killed their baby.
No arrest for the city planners who knowingly ignored accounting for pedestrians. Hm, shocked.
Wow. I was still in kindergarden when my mom sent me to the shop to get some milk and stuff. And nobody considered this evil or criminal. Are American kids that unindependent?
Arrested!
The primary issue isn’t that American children are less capable but that American neighborhoods are unsafe. In many suburban developments in the United States it isn’t safe to walk to anywhere of interest (excepting the neighboring houses). Residential areas are often separated from commercial and recreational areas by high speed automobile traffic lanes with little-to-no pedestrian infrastructure.
This simply isn’t true. Crime rates have fallen significantly, including violent crime. In addition, car accidents and pedestrian deaths have also decreased significantly per capita compared to 30+ years ago, though has been on the rise in the last decade or two depending on the study.
This is entirely being driven by changing perceptions in America due to the 24h news cycle and sensationalized national news.
I wasn’t referring to crime rates at all, just the dangers of American traffic infrastructure. And in that context I’m not interested in comparing the rates of traffic injury/death over the past X years but with other developed countries.
On top of that, most Americans drove SUV or straight up trucks (disguised as pickup). Those are so high that most people hit cannot roll over it and straight get the blunt force and die
The U.S. is a big country, whether large vehicles are the most popular depends on what state you live in.
That being said, anyone from Europe will notice that there are way more of these trucks (designed in a lethal manner as you described) than they have ever seen before, no matter what part of the U.S. they visit.
They are so much less capable tho.
I really miss when the phrase, “Look both ways before you cross the street,” was drilled in every kid’s head. Now, I just see so many people (especially teenagers with living next to a high school) completely ignoring where they are walking, ignoring the signs/signals, with all their attention on their phone.
Then we have the new law (at least in California) that says pedestrians don’t have to use a crosswalk if they think it’s safe to cross. 9 times out of 10, they don’t bother looking until maybe thay are halfway across.
I was on a walk with my kids and it had them stop so that this lady who was walking could go by. The lady who was walking was completely oblivious and nose deep in her phone. Was walking at a snail’s pace. I almost told the kids never mind just go ahead.
Are y’all not telling your kids to look both ways? It’s still very much a thing where I live. Maybe people don’t cross roads with their kids in more rural areas so they are missing that experience?
I’m pretty sure they covered it in my kids elementary schools too. They have a walk to school day each year and empathize safety.
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“Why don’t kids ever play outside anymore?!”
Headlines:
going outside for fresh air also hasn’t been a thing in a long time. I went to abandoned farmland in europe before and there were still butterflies and grasshoppers but you dont see that in north america any more, just powdered cancer blowing around the tarmac.
Yeah you definitely do see that in North America. Just because you live in the middle of urban sprawl and suburb hell doesn’t mean everyone does.
Can we stop glamorizing Europe? For fuck sake Frankfurt Germany looks like Detriot’s heroin addict cousin and there’s villages that look like Gary Indiana threw up in a liter box.
where I grew up and some select cities from my childhood throughout canada there were all sorts of flying and jumpy grass critters. These days in the same areas there are rats, flies, and mosquitos, if anything at all. Maybe the odd sickly owl that the outsiders that took over the region dont care about. If you do see any desirable creatures they are sparse and nowhere near the look anywhere see twelve populations of the old days.
and I’m not trying to glamourize europe but when I go visit family it’s been the same year after year trying not to step on grasshoppers, bees, and butterflies while my home becomes more and more empty apart from eroded concrete and car bits.
It’s probably all the pesticides and habitat erosion.
This is patently false.
U must be a city boy. Out here in the mountains of New England we have nothing but fresh air (at least since the smoke from Canada has blown away …) I have butterflies and fireflies and crickets and grasshoppers and frogs singing all the time
Kinds in the Netherlands and Japan roam in their cities safely. Its less an urban issue how rotten US mentality is.
10 years ago we had fireflies by my lake. This year I counted maybe 4 total.
You don’t even need to be in the mountains of New England. We’re right outside one of America’s bigger cities and within an hour drive of two more, and we have butterflies, frogs, raccoons, foxes, etc.
Yeah. I’m like minutes outside a major city and see these things in my backyard. I think they probably need to get their eyes checked or something…
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C t’une bonne chose mon ami(e)
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My hometown was literally 14 houses in the woods with one road. 6 of them still exist in a renovated state but now there are apartment towers and paved townhouse complexes everywhere, invasive weeds at every roadside, dirt lots unused that used to be wild native plants but are just dandelions and moss. All the parks used to be connected by trail but now its streets without sidewalks on all but one side of the smallest park. If you go down the residential streets you will see enough cybertrucks that I want to cry.
So yeah its a city now but it wasn’t before.
Damn that unfortunate. I live in a “city” for this state, and one of the bigger ones at that with 15k population. The “small town” in mass I moved from had 20k population. At least up here where the city ends, there is nothing but trees and mountains. Back in mass there was no distinguishable like as near the whole state is just sprawling suburbs and towns. I think some of what makes us glorify Europe in ways is they have harder lines where cities end, so you can still get to nature. Also, there’s still some nature to get to instead of just suburbs till the next city limits
Only 5% of the land in America is developed according to a 2015 Bloomburg report. That leaves a lot of space for grasshoppers. By comparison, 80% of European land is developed. Fortunately a lot of that is farm and pastures or else they would be in trouble. We do have a lot of ugly cities though.
(The driver faced no charges.)
🙄
This is America. This is not Trump’s America, this is America.
Americans, when Trump is dead or when the civil war ends or how ever you get rid of his orange ass, this is America that needs fixing.
The 76 year old driving an S.U.V. faced no charges.
I know you’d like to prejudge the driver based on age, but you need the facts of the case to know if the driver was at fault.
Actually, I’m prejudiced against motorists.
I say it’s always the driver’s fault.
This is funny because as a motorist, the people I hate the most are other motorists
As a driver, I hate all things on the road, be they living, dead, inanimate, or my own vehicle.
Driving sucks. It doesn’t spark joy in me.
I will admit, it certainly comes across like that. But it was more an illustration of how America works. This entire event is some crazy satire political cartoon that manifested itself.
It doesn’t look like they should. If a kid darts out into traffic and you can’t stop in time, why would you get charged? The charge against the parents is ridiculous. If anything the rage should be against an environment that makes walking to a place so dangerous for anyone.
Even if I’m trying to tone down the fuckcars rhetoric…
If a kid darts out into traffic and you can’t stop in time, why would you get charged?
If you can’t stop in time, 90% of the time it means you were either speeding or not paying attention to your surroundings, and your negligence/incompetence caused a death.
It is absolutely absurd that the parents are being brought before the court to determine liability, but the driver is not.
What if they weren’t speeding and the surroundings contributed to a line of sight problem for both drivers and pedestrians. As mentioned in the article.
I can think of many places in my own area where a car could be going slower than the speed limit and someone just jumping out from a median would give no time at all to react. It’s absolutely a car-dominant infrastructure problem.
The speed limit was 45 mph (72 km/h) and there was no crosswalk at that location; there are trees in the median obscuring the driver’s view. A map is helpful: Google | OSM.
From context, the kids probably lived in the neighborhood to the southeast. The driver would have been eastbound, and would have just passed the Lyon street intersection, which has traffic lights and crosswalks. There is no sidewalk on the south side of Hudson boulevard at this location, so it’s reasonable she wouldn’t have been expecting pedestrians.
I can’t see assigning criminal liability to anybody here. The infrastructure sucks.
People want to be angry at as many people as possible. Thank you for the actual information.
My father is in his mid-70s, and a better driver than many of my friends. And the hatchback he drives is often defined as an SUV.
While I find myself agreeing with the sentiment here most of the time, judging without fact is getting more and more common, unfortunately.
This is also why it’s so important for adults to cross safely at crosswalks to set a good example for children in poorly designed suburban hellscapes. I cringe so hard every time I see some random idiot pushing a stroller across three lanes onto a raised median when there is a crosswalk 20m away.
Yes, we should design infrastructure better, but we also need to understand that what we have now is incredibly dangerous, and we need to set an example for children every time we interact with it.
Totally agree, the ignoring of crosswalks is terrible, I’ve seen this lead to accidents in my luckily very walkable town before. Kids do what they see.
I can’t see assigning criminal liability to anybody here. The infrastructure sucks.
The liability should fall on the licensed engineer who negligently approved the design. The street was literally incomplete and should never have been built that way in the first place.
The street was presumably designed to the standards adopted by the city and state. We probably shouldn’t update the street design standards by punishing engineers who follow the existing standards; a legislative or regulatory approach is suitable here.
you just showed me a wide road with good visibility
drivers need to pay some fucking attention. they need to be looking ahead at all times, not just the 0.3 seconds that somebody was obscured behind a tree. if you watched them approach the tree, you goddamn well know that they’re still behind it if you didn’t see them leave.
Just goes to show how deadly our streets are designed that the prosecution thought it was so completely obvious that the environment is too dangerous for a 7 and 10 year old pair of kids to navigate.
Fuck cars and car culture. Roads are for the people.
“Gaston County’s district attorney, Travis Page, has not explained why he brought such high charges”
North Carolina? I suspect we all know the answer to that one…
Man, look at those good jeans…
What good genes…? I don’t see any!
…these “happy white politician with their happy white family” photos are so bizarre…
They ain’t happy, look how fake their smiles are. Creepy crazy vibes.
Probably 2.5 kids in the pic too…
Well yeah, it looks like his wife is ½ kid
What grand jury permitted these charges? This is insane. The driver should be arrested not the parents.
If it goes to trial. The prosecutor will threaten to stack an enormous number of charges unless they agreed to to a plea bargain.
- A grand jury would indict a ham sandwich.
- Many states don’t have grand juries. They are only required for federal cases by US constitution.
Ah I didn’t know the second part. I knew Texas had them but didn’t know depends on the state. Well hopefully the judge throws it out or it goes to trial or something.
The father’s black, the mother’s white, the prosecutor is a Republican, and this is North Carolina. And this is The New York Times, so the parents’ race isn’t even mentioned. Wouldn’t know it’s a mixed marriage if the paper hadn’t included a photo, but you can bet District Attorney Travis Page knows.
But they did show several photographs of the parents throughout the article.
And the article is written to highlight the ridiculousness of the charges and even highlights another situation where much more leniency was provided, showing a double standard.
I felt pretty strongly the subtext was screaming racism. That can be much more effective then focusing on it.
They would certainly get more people to read it and question the situation than starting out as “Racist DA uses his role to imprison parents, blaming them for gerting hit by SUV.”
You and I both know, people would stop caring once they learned the races of the child and parents.
But that way, maybe more people read a bit further, and maybe, just fucking maybe, empathized a bit before using the excuse that empathy is toxic.
The high bail seems particularly cruel in this case. The purpose of bail is to ensure the defendant comes to court to answer for the charge, which these parents seemed inclined to do given they want to regain custody of their other children.
Why? They didn’t do it on purpose, and it will never happen again. They just lost their kid. They’re going to be miserable for life, without the sentence. What point does the punishment serve?
They are being punished for being poor. The driver is rich and someone has to pay for the death of a child and they aren’t going to put a 76 year old rich white woman in jail.
Sheesh when I was 10 me and my little sister would sometimes miss a bus and walk home from school in ft worth from riverside to bluff street by ourselves across three lane highways and bridges
way people drive here in the tar states it is criminal to let your kids walk by themselves a certain distance
even a high turnover with the crossing guards here because of the unenforced driving violations
Anything but make the cars smaller
