kuan

We are doomed

https://dc.streetsblog.org/2011/07/14...with-children/

Chris516

I hope the DA gets' swamped with protest for wasting the court's time by blaming the victim.

bgross

I guess that I'm just in 'denial': there has to be more to this story, like the mother was an urban ute crack ho with priors for child endangerment and her kids were running amok while she was in the bushes with a 'john'.
Otherwise I simply refuse to believe that a grieving mother would be sent to prison for a longer term than the effin' drunk who killed her kid, simply for crossing the street.

kenoshi

A better explanation of what happened:

https://www.grist.org/infrastructure/...ion-of-walking

This is an epic justice fail. Yes the mother shouldn't have crossed there. But as far as Atlanta's transportation agency is concerned, pedestrians are to use crossings WHEN available. Asking her to walk an extra 3000+ feet just to cross 100 feet is unreasonable. Lol really, I don't understand how she could have been charged vehicular homicide when she wasn't driving either.

genec

This is pretty outrageous... But remember, she wasn't generating any money for the county (unlike the drunk who was spending at a bar), she had multiple kids (cost the county more to educate her brood), she wasn't crossing at a crosswalk (clear violation of the law) and she was going to ride the bus (no car, so no local road tax income); whereas the drunken idiot was just a "good ole boy" doing what comes naturally. Gosh, can you blame the judge?

dolanp

See one of the comments there... sounds like there's more to the story:

Digital_Cowboy

This is one of the most asinine things I've read. A mother who is crossing the street, gets hit and watches her young son also get hit and killed is charged with and convicted of vehicular homicide. What the smeg was the jury thinking of?

From reading both articles, about how this road was "designed" with just the motorist in mind, is the same mindset that I ran into when I complained about how dangerous the road that I live on is for people trying to cross. I was told that if the road was made safe for pedestrians, cyclists and anyone else who wants to cross the road that it would be to great of an inconvenience to motorists.

So instead of being able to safely cross the road in one motion, one has to start crossing the road and than stop in the center at the median and wait for the next break in traffic.

This is exactly, what we've talked about in other threads about how car centric we've become as a nation. Let's make things as easy as possible for motorists and to hell with everyone else.

And as has been asked by one of the commentators in one of the articles given that the victim in case who was for whatever insane reason charged with a crime. Is a "poor person of color," how is an all white middle class jury a jury of her peers?

kuan

There is a road named Randall Road in Lake in the Hills, IL, which is four lane road separating commercial from residential properties. I've been griping about the lack of crosswalks there for ten years now. There are no crosswalks even at traffic lights. So my SIL drives with her kids across the street to Costco.

If you think I'm kidding go streetview it.

mnemia

We've got some similar problem areas near me. I live near an 8-lane arterial (and that's not even counting the protected turn lanes) that has no crosswalks or pedestrian signals for about 5 miles. The priority seems to be to maximize the speed of traffic at the expense of pedestrian safety, as the lights are all timed so that it's literally impossible to walk across the street during a single green light cycle on a cross street (and even then, you have to dodge all the turning traffic produce by the very pedestrian-unfriendly environment). I can barely make it across in one light cycle on my bike if I accelerate all out, so people on foot stand no chance whatsoever. And it's not like people don't try it, anyway...it's a giant gash in the middle of the community, separating where people live from places they might want to go (grocery stores, shopping areas, etc). As more high-density housing and retirement communities have gone in in the area, the level of foot traffic has increased, but nothing has been done about the horrible situation.

I've also had several email exchanges with planners about this problem, and the general attitude seems to be a) that no pedestrians would cross there because it's so dangerous (it's certainly dangerous, but sometimes people don't have a choice, and I see people running across all the time), b) that the law doesn't require them to do anything unless the pedestrian traffic is "significant" (not sure what that means, but a lot of people do cross on foot, and they get hit by cars fairly often), and c) that they plan to do something about it, but maybe 10 years from now when they can totally redesign the whole road to have more grade-separated intersections. I don't know how to respond to that kind of dismissive attitude, but it seems clear that the car is king, even at the expense of people's lives, for planners. I'm beginning to think that large-scale lawsuits or political pressure are the only thing that can change their minds.

genec

But why would anyone want to ride a bike or walk to "the big box warehouse store?" Why that would just be crazy. (typical auto centric thinking...)

GojiSube

Yep, welcome to Cobb County Georgia. Nothing the Courts do here surprises me anymore. There are folks here who want the County to complete do away with the bus service because it isn't turning a profit. Of course, none of them ride the bus.

kuan

Suppose that were justifiable. I can stretch my brain a bit to see it from another POV, but even so, this whole street is 3-4 miles of no crosswalks strip mall on one side and residential on the other. I might be spoiled living in Minneapolis but 3-4 miles of no crosswalk? That's inconceivable to me.

wroomwroomoops

I've seen this kind of sh*te, when visiting a place near Dallas (that was my first time in the USA). I was in a hotel on one side of the road, and there was a restaurant on the other side. But you couldn't fu*king cross it - no croswalks! NONE! All I could think was "And these people think they live in a 1st world country? This is the pits.".

Later I learned that the USA is not all like that, but still, I would feel sad if I had to live in a country that has places like the one I mentioned (and places others mentioned in this thread). It's like the USA allows a bit of dystopia here and there. Are there any concentration camps, for pedestrians?

genec

Me too frankly... but it comes from that USA brand of automobile centric thinking. I've seen loads of stuff like this in various places and it just boggles my mind. The ironic thing is that in a 3rd world country, you are actually less likely to encounter this sort of thing as "everybody" doesn't have a car.

skye

Sherman stopped too soon.

Dchiefransom

Since it's at an intersection, in California, that might have been considered an "unmarked crosswalk".

KD5NRH

A: My house
B: Ace Hardware, where I often need to go for a drill bit, odd nut, etc.

Green line: US377 - 2 lanes each way plus a suicide lane - fairly heavy traffic any time Ace is open
Second has a stop sign
Lillian has a light, but no pedestrian buttons, and even if a car does come along, the green for Lillian is short
Alexander Road has a light and marked crosswalks, but still no push-to-cross last time I looked

Thus, I generally drive or take the bike over to Lillian to go what would be a maybe 300 yard walk to Ace. (The bike would be useless too, but I finally figured out where the sensor is well enough to trip it most of the time.) Granted, a crosswalk at Second would be Russian Roulette considering how often I've seen people run the light at Lillian, but still, push to cross buttons at Lillian and Alexander would at least show some effort on the state's part.

wroomwroomoops

No wonder, then, that you're so anti-CM: for you, the car is the word of god. I mean, you are conditioned to think that way. I don't blame you, considering the way you live and were brought up. The car has all the rights and all the power, pedestrians and cyclists barely exist (and if they do, they must be hobos).

Zaneluke

There was a cross walk about1-2 blocks south of where that google map picture was taken.

genec

Why isn't there a crosswalk at every block... a car can cross at every block.

No, I have not looked into this in depth... but consider my question for moment... if a car has access, but a walking human does not, why is it that the human in the machine has more access than the human without the machine?

Keith99

One does not have to go nearly as far to find soem explaination. Here are a couple more links to stories:

https://t4america.org/blog/2011/07/18...-perpetrators/

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...d-hit-run.html

As to letting the driver off with less. As far as the initial accident is concerned it seems he was not at fault at all. According to the mother someone else ran across the road and her son followed.

The first link has an overhead shot of the site of the accident. I wish I knew if any of the poles in the shot are lightposts. If one is and they crossed elsewhere then not walking an extra 20-30 feet was the difference between crossing where it was lit, vrs in darkness.

On a legalistic view it looks like they had an intersection withing 50 feet and chose to cross away from the intersection. BUT if the intersection was not lit I can see deciding to cross elsewhere, where there is a useable median strip (The intersection is a T with turn lanes, far from ideal for crossing).

One thng is very clear, ther were others who got off the buss. This is not a no witnesses incident. But I have not seen anythign from any of them or fromthe trial transcript. Only what the mother says. For me that raises teh possibility that these sources all found enough an emotional story and then stopped looking any deeper.

Digital_Cowboy

That IS the $64,000,000.00 question.

mnemia

Especially since it's a lot more convenient to drive an extra block than to walk the same distance. I'm continually frustrated by the fact that when biking, I'm often forced to take LONGER routes in order to avoid a few problem areas on the major connecting roads. I think I could bike to work faster than driving (6 miles) if it weren't for that factor.

genec

Agreed! Such is life in an autocentric society... not only do we give cars essentially more ROW, but we make the routes for car free humans even longer. I was quite pleased to see just the opposite in Oulu Finland... the bike paths between places there were the most direct way to get around, whereas the roadways required that you had to "go around" a bit... and what the heck, just how much effort is it anyway to push the gas pedal?

wroomwroomoops

I was a couple of times in Oulu, and for me, used to the great cycling infrastructure of the rest of Finland, the thing that stood out the most was that Oulu is really, really flat. Flat as a pancake, and hence, I could achieve much higher speeds than, for instance, in Helsinki.
Nice town, just too bad that it's so damn high up there in the North.