[nluken]

I know what the author is getting at but he frames the article like he agrees with the State charging the parents with involuntary manslaughter, which, barring some detail not included in the linked NYT piece, seems ridiculous to me.

The death of a 7 year old is a tragedy. Why do we then need to feel the need to hit bereaved parents with a manslaughter charge? Either there's something missing from the story or we're blaming a systemic issue on individual negligence.

[noah_buddy]

I don’t think that’s a reasonable takeaway considering the follow through to the end of the article where he states that the environment is the culprit. If anything, I think his supposition is that any one of innumerable actors are just as a guilty as the parents but that our system must reduce scope to find a specific culprit and charge them with something. I don’t think the author would agree with charging the parents with manslaughter, but I think the implication is that they were in some sense negligent considering the environment in which they live.

[tantalor]

> they were in some sense negligent considering the environment in which they live

Criminal negligence involves a "gross deviation from the standard of care that a reasonable person would exercise in the same situation".

Given the 7-year-old was escorted by a 10-year-old, I think that alone demonstrates a reasonable level of care was taken to protect the younger child.

If the streets are too dangerous for a 10-year-old to cross safely, then you need to look a lot deeper for the true source of the risk.

[karmakaze]

Yes, this is what caught my eye:

> West Hudson Boulevard is a high-speed arterial road with narrow sidewalks, a tiny median, and no truly safe crossings. Even a healthy, alert adult is taking their life in their hands by walking to that store. For a child, it’s playing the worst kind of roulette.

The fact that it did have a sidewalk, even a narrow one means that it's meant for walking. If it's unsafe then the existence of the sidewalk is only asking for trouble. It either has a sidewalk and is safe, or it isn't safe and shouldn't have a sidewalk. Having a sidewalk and being unsafe is the fault of the city/construction not the user.

Claiming a child was playing with roulette amounts to it also implying that lethal roulette games for kids is something that should be legal.

[alistairSH]

Agreed. The sidewalk is not fit for purpose - too narrow, adjacent to high-ish speed traffic, frequent turns into shopping plazas, few/no pedestrian crossings, and no sidewalk on the opposite side of the road, nor on many intersecting roads.

[alistairSH]

The street is, in fact, too dangerous for a 10-year-old, or even an adult.

There's a skinny sidewalk on one side. No sidewalk on the other. No signaled crossings for blocks. High-ish speed traffic.

Given an option, nobody would walk that particular stretch of highway.

Should the parents have been charged? Probably not (unless there are details missing from the artcile). Should we reconsider how we build our suburbs? Absolutely.

[paleotrope]

There's a signaled crossing right at the intersection?

https://www.google.com/maps/@35.2348779,-81.2052672,3a,75y,2...

[alistairSH]

Yes, but not to the SW corner of Hudson/Lyon. If you happen to live off Taylor, on the south side of Hudson, there's no way to get there.

[runako]

> there's something missing from the story

The missing piece is a picture of the parents. The author argues that the system needs to lay blame somewhere, and the parents present as a soft target.

[aaronbaugher]

I served on a grand jury a while back, and one of the few cases that wasn't a slam dunk was one where a woman's baby smothered while in bed with her and under the covers, possibly while the mother was using someone else's prescription drugs. Some of us were queasy at the idea of potentially putting a parent in prison, thinking that losing your own child and carrying that guilt was punishment enough, plus the question of what would happen to her other children, who by all accounts were well cared for (she was a single parent with no father in the picture).

We quizzed the prosecutor about it, and he said he understood that, but, as he put it, "A child is dead." He hoped to use the seriousness of the charge to get the mother to accept counseling and supervision as part of a plea deal; but his office couldn't just let it go, which is what a lesser charge effectively would do in my state. After he explained that, he got the indictment. Maybe this prosecutor is thinking the same way.

[omnicognate]

On the contrary, he makes it pretty clear he doesn't agree with it.

> So we do the next best thing for our consciences: we blame the victims. We prosecute the parents, demonize the driver, or scold the pedestrian for “not being careful.” And in doing so, we avoid indicting the real culprit: the American development culture that produced this environment.

[nluken]

It came across more mixed to me. It seemed like he spent the whole article making the case for negligence and then took it back at the end.

[pixl97]

Hence why people should read entire articles instead of just headlines and bites of it.

[IAmBroom]

Or why article writers should present cohesive, well-structured thoughts.

[roncesvalles]

I'm not a lawyer so I can't comment on the charge itself but as a lay citizen, after reviewing Street View, the parents are definitely at fault.

That area is not walkable and I wouldn't trust a 7 year old to go there alone, period. And then to allow them to jaywalk at the spot where the kid was struck is downright unconscionable. And the median looks like it's easy to lose your balance over (I suspect that's what really happened).

I'm not generally against the notion of letting a 7 year old walk alone in public but this isn't some cornerstore at the end of a 25mph residential street. This is basically a highway. Although the speed limit on that stretch is 45mph, I'm pretty certain drivers would be hitting 60 there since the road leading into it looks like a 60 road.

[alistairSH]

But there's a sidewalk there. Without any thought, we should be able to assume a sidewalk is fit for purpose.

The fact that we have a sidewalk that's "obviously" not fit to purpose is a massive failure on the part of the local transit authority/DOT.

[roncesvalles]

But you see, if the 7 year old runs or falls into the 25mph residential street (as kids are wont to do), a car driving towards him could stop on time. On a busy 45mph stroad, there's no chance.

[tantalor]

> I wouldn't trust a 7 year old to go there alone

The 7 year old was not alone, he was with his older brother.

> They had sent Legend out to the grocery store with his 10-year-old brother when he stepped out in front of traffic.

https://www.wsoctv.com/news/local/nc-lawmaker-bring-attentio...

[wonder_er]

'jaywalking' is a term that supports the concept of vehicular homicide.

A normal ethical system would say the obligation to not kill anyone with a vehicle is on the operator of the vehicle. The environment should also support safe handoffs between priorities.

The parents are not at fault - they were born into this shitty country. It is the road engineer, the city engineer, full stop.

Consider this book: [Killed by a Traffic Engineer: Shattering the Delusion that Science Underlies our Transportation System](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/201978334-killed-by-a-tr...)

Jaywalking is a supremacists, propagandistic term, I would propose it be excised from your vocabulary: https://josh.works/jaywalking

It was used mostly to imprison formerly enslaved people for walking around. In some american cities in the 50s and 60s, thousands of people PER YEAR were ARRESTED for jaywalking!!!!

It's how deputized slave patrols (police) can easily initiate harassment against the enslaved/formerly-enslaved class.

[potato3732842]

There's a lot of nuance to marked crossing vs not. You can definitely make an argument that waiting for a break in straight, undistracted, traffic and then jumping to the median is safer than trying to cross at an intersection where there's other things going on. If you do it right, it can be much safer.

On the other hand, if you do it wrong it can be way worse. Considering that we're talking about children who have no experience behind the wheel and no ability to accurately predict what the drivers will do I think "use a crosswalk and wait for traffic to let you cross" is likely the best advice.

All that said, your race baiting language policing game is stupid, malicious and actively detracts from the discussion.

[wonder_er]

if a group of people (deputized slave patrols) is harassing and kidnapping another group of people (anyone perceived to be non-white), and I am talking about it, is it _me_ who is stupid, malicious, and detracts from the discussion, or is it the slave patrollers and their supporters who are stupid and malicious?

I think it's the latter.

[bpt3]

I have to assume you have absolutely no interest in being taken seriously by at least 99% of the US population, given that you are making statements like these regularly and they do not appear to be satire?

I took the time to read a couple articles on your blog, and they are wildly inflammatory and inaccurate to put it mildly.

[wonder_er]

i write for me.

I don't find most people in the USA to be worth taking seriously, either. Liiiike if someone thinks the primary purpose of police is something like "protecting and serving" vs. being deputized slave patrollers.

How could I take that person seriously?

If I don't think political authority is real, and 90% of the us population does think it is real, and votes, I'm already out of sync with all of those people.

And I've got at least one or two additional hot takes that could alienate another few percentage points.

race and gender are constructs of supremacy thinking, the US government commits 100x more acts of terrorism than the next most terroristic group, evangelicalism is a cult, all religion is self-and-other harming, monogamy is way over-rated, marriage is harmful to everyone...

honestly, I'd be concerned if it seemed like lots of people agreed with me, especially lots of people in America! One doesn't get a nation that did 400+ years of chattel slavery without most people being pro-slavery.

[refulgentis]

Saw enough comments like this with unbelievable details that I went and figured out how to see it. Here: https://maps.app.goo.gl/aEjjXcmDDaFKtivR9

We are rounding a surface street with a 45 limit to a highway at 60 and then pretend its obviously unsafe. This is obviously wrong, given the crosswalks.

Also, we have 0 idea if the child was allowed to jaywalk. We know they were on the phone with the older one at at least some point. That's all.

It's a tragedy, but, hard to get my head to the idea that its manslaughter that both parents are culpable for. As noted in coverage, it's an odd gap compared to how unsecured guns are treated.

[amluto]

> This is obviously wrong, given the crosswalks.

If you’ve marked the right spot, I count one single intersection within credible walking distance that has crosswalks at all, and it only has crosswalks in two (!) of the four places where they ought to be.

I guess that, if you happen to be at the SW corner of Lyon and W Hudson, then you’re just stuck there? There’s even a “SCHOOL” marking without a crosswalk a short distance to the south.

[refulgentis]

Lots packed in here. I don't know how to interlocute with it without being straightforward, but I'm nervous, I think you'll be upset and people will think there's more disputable here than there is and I'm just being mean. I apologize in advance.

> one single intersection

What other roads did you find that intersect that are relevant?

> within credible walking distance

Let's put some ground beneath the possible skew I may have injected by just assuming it was a credible walking distance: 2.5 minutes at 2.5 mph.

557 feet from leading edge of crosswalk to trailing edge of supermarket, via Google Maps.

Taking the 2.5mph low range for human walking speed, that's t = 557 ft / (2.5 × 5280 ft/hr) ≈ 0.04219 hr = 151.8 s = 2.5 min.

> I guess that, if you happen to be at the SW corner of Lyon and W Hudson, then you’re just stuck there?

I guess that too!

Does it obscure or shed light to talk about an unrelated path when discussing whether parents should be charged for manslaughter?

I don't like suburban traffic infrastructure either, just, think we might have gotten a bit into that in a way that makes me want to make sure we're also signalling we're not talking about the parents anymore, or at least, if we are, I want to make sure it's clear what facts we're using when talking about it, at least for the audience.

> There’s even a “SCHOOL” marking without a crosswalk a short distance to the south.

What's a SCHOOL marking?

Are you discussing the school speed limit sign?

Do SCHOOL markings or speed limit signs denote an intersection immediately adjacent to the sign / SCHOOL marking?

If not, why does this one need a crosswalk? AFAICT the limit sign is on the same side of the street as the school, with a sidewalk.

[amluto]

You said that, “given the crosswalks”, W Hudson isn’t obviously unsafe. I tried to figure out what crosswalks, plural, you were talking about.

There is one crosswalk at the E side of the intersection with Lyon. There is not a crosswalk on the W side, nor is there there one before W Hudson ends a ways to the west.

If you follow Lyon to the south, you will find the word “SCHOOL” in big letters in the road, with no associated crosswalk.

If you go east a couple thousand feet, there’s another crosswalk. Sure, a couple thousand feet is a credible distance to walk if you’re going for a walk, but it’s rather far to detour as a pedestrian to get across a street.

Okay, maybe the kids in question should have used the crosswalk at Lyon. If your mark is right, I buy that.

But this road looks awful. Suppose you’re at Southwest Jr. High and you want to go to La Bodega Food Mart or Subway. How do you get there while using crosswalks to cross major streets? The obvious locations that seem like they should have crosswalks don’t have them.

> What's a SCHOOL marking?

Check out satellite view and go south a little way on Lyon. “SCHOOL” is painted on the street. Notably, no crosswalk is painted on the street.

[refulgentis]

-1. What a great website its been here lately. Lets just make things up altogether, and damn those worryworts arguing with us: as long as it feels good, we are happy.