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This one is complicated
Jul. 16th, 2011 01:13 pm
Well, not the issue, the backstory.
And the issue is pretty bad. Woman with three crossed the street after getting off a bus rather than walking a mile out of her way to the light, kid darted into traffic and got hit by a drunk driver... and the mother got convicted of "vehicular manslaughter"! Edit: That link is better (it has a picture), but this one is working right now.
I picked up this link at FRK. There's this one guy there (one of the periodic drop in semi-trolls, I'm thinking) who is convinced that the fact that some of us (me) are calling this a failure of design (seriously, how hard is it to provide safe crossings closer than a mile apart?) are trying to avoid or abdicate responsibility. After all, this woman "committed a crime" by "jaywalking" and she put herself "and others, including drivers at risk".
Guy's an obnoxious ass, but it gets better. Another commenter pointed out the term "unmarked intersection" and said that it's rarely illegal to cross at those. And after one too many snotty comments from Mr. Annoying, I looked up the law in Atlanta.
I'm not a lawyer, and I know little about Georgia laws, but looking carefully at this page and at the picture in the first link, I'm wondering if this woman ever broke the law at all. It seems to me that by crossing at the intersection (the obvious place to cross) and waiting at the median for traffic to pass, she was... actually within the bounds of the law.
Not that this convinces Mr. Annoying ("haven't you ever heard of yielding to traffic??" because, y'know, waiting for the cars to pass isn't doing just that), but I'm even more pissed off on this woman's behalf now. I just thought the case was morally wrong before, but now I'm wondering if it really had any legal standing at all, even a flimsy one!
And the issue is pretty bad. Woman with three crossed the street after getting off a bus rather than walking a mile out of her way to the light, kid darted into traffic and got hit by a drunk driver... and the mother got convicted of "vehicular manslaughter"! Edit: That link is better (it has a picture), but this one is working right now.
I picked up this link at FRK. There's this one guy there (one of the periodic drop in semi-trolls, I'm thinking) who is convinced that the fact that some of us (me) are calling this a failure of design (seriously, how hard is it to provide safe crossings closer than a mile apart?) are trying to avoid or abdicate responsibility. After all, this woman "committed a crime" by "jaywalking" and she put herself "and others, including drivers at risk".
Guy's an obnoxious ass, but it gets better. Another commenter pointed out the term "unmarked intersection" and said that it's rarely illegal to cross at those. And after one too many snotty comments from Mr. Annoying, I looked up the law in Atlanta.
I'm not a lawyer, and I know little about Georgia laws, but looking carefully at this page and at the picture in the first link, I'm wondering if this woman ever broke the law at all. It seems to me that by crossing at the intersection (the obvious place to cross) and waiting at the median for traffic to pass, she was... actually within the bounds of the law.
Not that this convinces Mr. Annoying ("haven't you ever heard of yielding to traffic??" because, y'know, waiting for the cars to pass isn't doing just that), but I'm even more pissed off on this woman's behalf now. I just thought the case was morally wrong before, but now I'm wondering if it really had any legal standing at all, even a flimsy one!
