At seven I went to school and back home on foot and alone, about a mile, everyday. I did once have a close call with a car that didn't stop for a crosswalk.
Are parents supposed to accompany their kids at all time until they are 18?
According to 'murica, until 16. Then they can drive their own car.
Seriously though?
No, they're joking. There's no federal law governing it afaik- only state laws that vary wildly. Child development experts mostly agree that under 8yo is too young to be unaccompanied
Edit: NC doesn't have a minimum, and the 7yo was with a 10yo, so it sounds like they have pretty much no case
“In such cases, adults must be held accountable for their responsibilities to ensure a safe environment for their children,” police said in a statement.
That's ... beyond callous and (hopefully) has no legal standing, even in the USA.
Let's fix it:
The "adults" who continue building car-friendly environments that are positively dangerous to pedestrians need to be held accountable for their responsibilities to ensure a safe environment.
So the city, as a group of adults, failed also to ensure a safe environment, should also be arrested.
They gotta blame the people who designed the city. If these kids were a small fraction of the same age and in Japan they would be on TV for braving their first solo trip into the market to buy a vegetable for dinner. It would be a cute TV show called "Old Enough" on Netflix with English subtitles instead of a cruel reality on this side of the same planet where a kid is now dead.
That part of it isn't the fault of the parents, but the fault of the society we have created.
Btw that TV show is a few decades old but my point is that the world is possible. We don't need to be like Japan was in that TV show, but we do need more walkable cities.
Imagine your kid dies, your other kid being traumatized by watching his brother die, and then being charged with involuntary manslaughter.
I came here to mention Old Enough. So sad that my American kid can never have this kind of experience because of how fucked our cities and society are.
A while back I watched a video about jaywalking. The idea was that, before cars were very common, people would just walk around the street and cars had to go around them. As cars became more common, car owners wanted to get rid of the people on the street, so they invented the term and offense jaywalking. Take something that poor people do (like walking instead of driving) and turn it into an offense.
This is basically the same thing. Make the parents responsible for what was a driver's fault on a road that shouldn't have been built the way it was in what must be a residential area - given that the kids just crossed the street from house to store. You have to turn the victim into the perpetrator, because looking at facts makes the wrong people look guilty.
My understanding is it was car lobbyists and PR folks trying to blame pedestrians for fatal car versus pedestrian crashes that invented, spread, and legislated "jay walking."
"Jay" was slang for hobo/tramp/loser.
The 76-year-old driver will not face any charges.
TBF, the child ran onto the road (a typical US road that encourages drivers to drive fast and be oblivious of pedestrians, I guess), and - according to the police - the driver was neither speeding nor under the influence and is "cooperative".
But to charge the parents with involuntary manslaughter for letting their children walk 2 blocks is madness, and makes me question the police department's objectivity, to put it mildly.
My guess is at the very least the driver's reaction and/or eyesight was impaired due to old age.
You see children next to the road, you slow down. You are the adult operating the deadly machine. You have a duty to be extra careful around kids.
Where I live, if a kid jumps in front of your car, even if there is no crossing and you had no visibility, you still have the majority of the fault. The truth is you are the one driving a killing machine, and if you are going at a speed where you can't ensure, with your currect visibility and road conditions, that an accident won't happen, it's you who is at fault.
Of course that's different on highways and speedways, where the one crossing would be found at fault. But for all residential areas, drivers need to be careful about pedestrians crossing the road, and especially kids who are unpredictable.
This doesn't serve justice, in any way.
Why were the children trying to walk between crosswalks? I'd bet because the only crosswalks anywhere in the area are at stoplights and way too far apart. A painted cross wall at minimum, or a HAWK light that stops vehicle traffic should have been there. But those are too expensive until multiple people are killed by traffic, it takes a lot of blood to get human-cebtric infrastructure installed in this country.
The crosswalk directly leading to the middle school near me was known by the school and the neighborhood to be dangerous due to traffic speed, and the community had been fighting for a HAWK light to be installed by the county for nearly a decade. They even widened and replaced the road during that time and still refused to install it (although they did install the underground conduit necessary when doing the roadwork). It took 4 children total being killed by vehicles outside of school hours before they finally agreed to install a HAWK light there.
Charging the parents doesn't do any public good. I doubt they're going to find a full jury that could convict unless there's some underlying information about the parents trying to kill the kids or some shit like that. I can't imagine a jury of 12 would unanimously convict.l based on the info provided.
Pedestrian crossings are potentially miles apart, but it’s illegal not to use them? Makes sense…
What??? In Switzerland we walked to school by ourselves at age of 4.
Same here in Germany. Imagine getting killed right around the corner.
And then the parents getting blamed instead of driver??
Sounds like evil inception, first the nightmare of losing your child and then the nightmare of possibly losing your job and house etc. I hope they at least don't have to go through the nightmare of prison (which they would likely have to go through alone, since there is no couples-prison). Evil evil evil
Gastonia police declined to comment to NBC News, but said in a statement that “there is no evidence of speeding or wrongdoing on the part of the driver, therefore no charges have been filed. The driver continues to be cooperative and the incident remains under active investigation by the Gastonia Police Department’s Traffic Division.”
Fucking insane. Ancient driver must be good, we must blame someone. How about the folks? They seem to be having a good run!
During my driving lessons in Germany i learned that you always have to slow down around kids. Kids are unpredictable. Kids do not pay attention all the time. Kids struggle with estimating distances and speeds of cars coming your way.
Unless the case is something like "Kids jumped from a bridge right in front of your car." There is no way that the driver couldn't have done something to prevent the accident or at least form it being a fatal accident.
Can we start labeling if something is US. Cause this feels very US. Have you guys tried sidewalks?
NC is a hellscape of stroads and highways. Walking anywhere there is a stressful situation. I'd walk down to the local park and needed to cross 2 lanes of traffic at a crosswalk. The speed limit was 35 yet people flew through doing 50 and this is with medians and a crosswalk. The only way to cross was to begin walking out and hopefully they brake for you.
Here's the road
Nice, how'd you come by that? Posted article didn't have anything but the town name.
Only in 'Murica...
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