Originally published at: 8 dead after car runs down pedestrians at bus stop in Brownsville, Texas | Boing Boing
…
7 Likes
“See, cars are as deadly as guns and no-one’s trying to ban them!” /ammosexual
17 Likes
I feel like this needs a different noun. (Also verb conjugation, maybe.)
18 Likes
Yeah! Let’s have gun operator licenses with a test on safety and regs, gun registration and insurance.
24 Likes
His steaks are even worse.
13 Likes
Gah! The allegory of the cave, only being chained to a wall, trying to perceive reality by watching the shadows of thoughts try to cross Sorbo’s mind.
Just shoot me!
18 Likes
Yearly examinations to ensure all the parts (including your secure gun storage system) are in good working order as well?
19 Likes
And demerit points!
15 Likes
And the key part of car ownership- insurance that covers injury and damages for the other person. Imagine if guns had to carry that. Suddenly their designed-in purpose of murder would become evident. Nobody could even afford that insurance, I bet.
32 Likes
This sounds like a fitting scenario for terrorism charges, no?
9 Likes
Came here to say this. Rob is good at pointing out the crazy double-speak of the police, usually. I’m surprised he let that “intentional accident” bit slip through uncriticized!
And this:
Okay, cool, so you kill 8 and injure more and it’s not manslaughter?
I know this is how the laws work sometimes, but it seems completely unjust to me.
17 Likes
I didn’t say that, I just quoted it (and made the term a post tag, because it’s amazing)
11 Likes
Oh no, I know. Sandoval said that. I just meant you usually call their ridiculous verbiage out more, shall I say, colorfully and entertainingly.
ETA: I also saw a typo that might’ve made my original meaning unclear. Fixed it.
10 Likes
I think this phrase used by the cops also reflects our society’s attitudes about cars. Every bad thing that happens is an “accident”. Drivers don’t give up control, they “lose control”. Our entire culture is programmed to use passive voice to deflect blame off drivers when talking about the two ton death machines.
IANAL but penalties for manslaughter can still be very steep. Presumably this would be nine counts as well, which are likely to stack up to life in prison regardless. This person will do hard time, I’m sure. As they should.
18 Likes
Zero tolerance when operating under the influence. Yeah… Let’s fucking go…
10 Likes
Totally. I gave up keeping track of how often our local paper reported some horrible auto incident like, “the car being driven by Mr. Smith left the roadway and ran through a family of 3.”
Yeah, but that’s not the initial charge. It’s reckless driving.
I’m bitter bc there’ve been a few instances around here lately where pedestrians were killed, but because the driver fell asleep at the wheel but was not inebriated, they get off with reckless driving instead of manslaughter. I find it infuriating. If you’re incapable of driving safely, don’t get behind the wheel, period.
And that’s not even touching on this guy’s likely motives…
14 Likes
@codinghorror Is there a way to get a quote of a quote to either reference the original quotee or at least not attribute it to the original quoter?
2 Likes
Ooof that’s rough. Yah, reckless driving is way too light for anything where a pedestrian is badly hurt or killed, IMHO.
9 Likes
You can edit the quotee’s name so it doesn’t sound like they said it when you’re really quoting a third party that the author referenced. I do this a lot when quoting the BB writers here, since they are often quoting external sources that I want to respond to. Example:
6 Likes
Vehicular (mass) homicide.
6 Likes
