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Darryl Anderson was drunk behind the wheel of his Audi SUV, had his accelerator pressed to the floor and was barreling toward a car ahead of him when he snapped a photo of his speedometer. The picture showed a car in the foreground, a collision warning light on his dashboard and a speed of 141 mph (227 kph).
An instant later, he slammed into the car in the photo. The driver, Shalorna Warner, was not seriously injured but her 8-month-old son and her sister were killed instantly, authorities said. Evidence showed Anderson never braked.
Anderson, 38, was sentenced Tuesday to 17 years in prison for the May 31 crash in northern England that killed little Zackary Blades and Karlene Warner. Anderson pleaded guilty last week in Durham Crown Court to two counts of causing death by dangerous driving.
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17 years isn’t nearly long enough
Why can someone even drive a car that can go that fast on public streets? Countries should enforce speed limiters on vehicles brought into their country for roadway use. It may not prevent drunks from driving, but it could slow them down and prevent some deaths and injury. People don’t even need to be drunk for these speeds to be dangerous.
The world is my racetrack
–Assholes
How would these work exactly? Where I live max speed on freeways is 70mph and 25mph on residential streets. You can definitely still kill someone using a car limited to maximum legal speed.
You can certainly kill someone going the maximum legal speed in a place where the speed limit is much lower. But the likelihood of injury and death still does increase with the increase in speed. So if, say, 5% of accidents involving someone going 70 are fatal, but 10% if the person is going 90 (these are made-up numbers), then if cars are not even able to go above 70, you end up saving lives.
I doubt there’s significant difference.
One of those speed limits is designed for a location where cars are unlikely to hit a human directly. Another location can have a child randomly run into the street. 70 and 170 are both death sentences.
Speed limiters in cars that don’t dynamically adjust to actual speed limits are useless and only exist to check the boxes for idiot voters disconnected from reality.
While I agree that it would certainly be ideal if a speed limiter could account for the context that the car is in, you’ve missed a lot in drawing your conclusion that it would be useless without being able to do that.
Hitting a pedestrian is not the only type of accident. If you rear end a car going 25 mph at 70mph it is not a guaranteed death sentence for all. Especially if the driver brakes, which some do not, but some will. And this is ignoring cases where there isn’t a tremendous mismatch in speed. Like, even if it reduced residential deaths by 0% but it reduced overall deaths looking at all situations, it would be a net gain with literally nothing lost. We are looking at the aggregate here. So, it isn’t relevant if you think of one specific situation where you believe 70mph isn’t better than 90mph or whatever number.
Reaction time and braking distance are affected by speed. In some cases, the person going 70 might be able to slow down enough to have the collision be non-fatal. Reaction time goes down and braking distance goes up as speed increases. If a speed limiter gives just enough time to occasionally make an accident non-fatal, then in the aggregate you have fewer fatal accidents.
In fact, taking braking distance into account, I don’t think you can even say that over the millions of miles driven, that a speed maxed at 70mph isn’t going to, occasionally, lead to a situation in a residential area where someone was able to just get out of the way in time because the car covered 30% less distance between the time the pedestrian reacted and the time the car reached that spot (or an even larger difference if the driver noticed and braked at some point as well). But again, it doesn’t matter if it’s few to none in this specific scenario, because a speed limiter of 70 will certainly reduce fatalities overall.
Ok, as long as cops have the same limiters in their vehicles.
So how would a cop catch up to someone who bypass their limiter? Or respond to hostage situation in a timely manner? Or get to another unit who needs assistance?
I think it would just be better to fire cops who abuse their power.
So how would a cop catch up to someone who bypass their limiter?
They don’t, there’s no need. They get the person’s plate info and send the fine after the fact. They can also come impound the vehicle, as well. Dangerous chase: avoided.
Or respond to hostage situation in a timely manner?
They can have a special vehicle at the station that doesn’t have the limiter for extremely specific situations like that. Only specially trained officers can use it.
Or get to another unit who needs assistance?
Normal speeds. They shouldn’t be allowed to endanger people not even near an incident to get somewhere because another cop is “”“in danger”“”
I think it would just be better to fire cops who abuse their power.
I think it would just be better to not give cops the chance to abuse their power in the first place since that injures and kills people
Because every time government tries to limit vehicles there is a very loud roar of whataboutism and mah freedom.
At a certain point we need to prioritize people’s safety over “vroom vroom”. 200+ km/h is nearly double highway speeds. Children dying from speeding crashes should be much more important than somebodys ego and desire to speed.
If children dying from mass shootings isn’t enough to move these obstructionist-types, then nothing is.
When Sandy Hook happened and we didn’t even get universal background checks, I saw conservatives plainly that day.
Guns have useful legal purposes and specific constitutional protections though. Cars don’t. The number of people going track racing in their SUVs has to be essentially zero.
Guns have useful legal purposes
Weapons are tools with only one utility, kill people.
Killing people isn’t always illegal, and you forgot hunting, euthanasia, and target shooting.
The fastest speed limit I’ve seen is 65, so it is over double that
There are some 110 km/h hwys near me. The average speed seems to be 130 km/hr and cops don’t seem to mind until you go faster than that. 20 over seems “acceptable” near me, even in school zones marked 40 km/hr.
Lol could you convert those to freedom units? I’m too smoothbrained for this
20 km/h ≈ 20.000 yards per hour
40 km/h ≈ 40.000 yards per hour
110 km/h ≈ 110.000 yards per hour
130 km/h ≈ 130.000 yards per hour
Live up to your name!
As a Canadian, I read 141 and thought, “141 km/h is pretty fast, but that’s not international news fast.” Then I saw it was mph!
Driving that fast on a closed course while sober with complete focus is dangerous. Yet this guy was drunk and texting on public roads.
“Sometimes mistakes happen," he said. "But I’m not a bad person.”
AFAIK, no mistakes happened, those were all choices. And by making those choices, yes, you are a bad person.
I agree these where choices, and he should be held accountable for them. I disagree that they make him a bad person, because a person may not have the understanding of what those choices can result in. I agree that he is not a good person, but I agree because he is refusing to take responsibility for his choices.
Edit: And upon reading the remainder of the article, I agree he is not a good person, because he clearly did understand what those choices could result in. Shooting video while driving, let alone at those kind of speeds, and while drunk? I can’t think of any excuse or explanation that could mitigate that.
This is literally the afluenza teen defense that got Ethan Couch zero jail time for killing 4 people and seriously injuring 9 while drunk driving.
This guy is too poor to drive drunk and actually has to face consequences for his actions.
Fuckin Christ what the fuck
Not only did he just get probation but then he and his mom fled to Mexico and were later caught and they still didn’t get much of a punishment.
And that’s not even all of it. That whole Wikipedia page is filled with crimes. Both his and his parents’. Insane
PSA: your local fire precinct (in the USA, probably England too) can do a car seat installation and fit check for you. Strap your kids in, and strap them TIGHT. It can be very easy to install a seat improperly, I had mine checked when I was a new parent until I was confident I had it right.
Before anyone flames me for victim blaming I am 100% not blaming the mother. It is quite possible that at those speeds the child would have died regardless, and the driver deserves every day in jail that he spends.
I’m almost 100% certain that a 141MPH impact absolutely destroyed everything that the car seat was attached to. There was an accident posted on reddit a couple years ago (from either L.A. or Texas) where a guy was going something like 120MPH and hit stopped traffic on the highway. His vehicle completely sheared off the upper half of the car he hit first and then shot over several vehicles before hitting a building probably 30 yards off the side of the freeway. A car traveling that fast carries an insane amount of energy.
But take into account that the woman was also driving at certain speed when he hit her. If she was driving at 100MPH then his speed relative to her was just 41MPH
Why would we assume the victim was speeding too?
I think his math is bad because he just went with a cool round number.
But, more realistically, she was probably going somewhere between 55-70 mph (don’t know road or highway or whatever) and that’s still a difference of 70-90 miles an hour. So I’d say yeah, the seat check MIGHT prevent harm if you’re super duper lucky but I don’t think that baby’s walking away from that with anything less than life threatening injuries
babies can’t walk
Bruhhhh
Bad drivers need harsher punishments if you ask me.
17 years is a seriously life-altering prison sentence sentence.
Quite frankly, this flavor of irresponsibility can be corrected in just a few years time, you just need a justice system that’s interested in correction rather than punishment.
Kinda hard to accomplish when you have people cheering from the sidelines for more punishment…
I get it, but also when I think about if that happened to my sister, let alone my child, no amount of time would be enough. 2 years for ripping two people out of your life feels like a pittance. How do you separate the emotion from the practicality?
People shouldn’t be locked in cages just because of someone’s emotions.
I don’t know that emotion is so easily divorced from justice. How do you define what a just punishment is for a crime? Or does the magnitude of the crime not matter?
We learn over and over again from our various texts-of-wisdom, be it fables or scripture or novels or movies, that revenge is a primitive response to problems. It’s the moral of so many stories, right?
Yet we organize society to satisfy these immature desires. Punishment, for the most part, is neither deterrent nor corrective, and a paltry form of redress.
Do you want justice? Start with redress. You can’t fix the problem of a dead child but the victims need proper support, to alleviate all the other issues caused by the crime. In Canada the prison system is called “corrections” but it mostly fails at that… rehabilitation requires an evidence-based system to succeed, and ours is built on punishment, an emotional response.
If you want deterrence, well that requires eliminating poverty and supplying real education, backed by proactive and robust mental health services.
I define justice as the best possible outcome of a bad situation.
So the crime committed and the effect on the victims, if any, doesn’t affect the sentencing?
Uh, sure it does, in the sense that if someone is unable to be rehabilitated, they should be kept away from the public? Not sure what you’re asking except maybe “can I please just have a little revenge?”
With all due respect, the justice system shouldn’t exist for you to experience vengeance. It’s easy to get angry and to wish harm against people who would hurt our loved ones, but at scale we just end up with a punitive justice system that begets even more violence and misery.
If a person can be reformed after committing a profound injustice to the point where we can trust that they won’t repeat their crimes, why would we want their sentence to be lengthy and cruel when it could instead be compassionate and effective?
Forgiveness is a powerful thing. If you can’t even think of forgiving this hypothetical transgression you’ve come up with, how can you ever hope to have a positive influence on this world that might actually protect others from the kind of tragedy you’ve described?
Imagine having your children killed - probably hard if you don’t have children and the reading your comment.
I anything ,the justice system should be more punishing for such cases. How can you even mention forgiveness for drunk driving,showing off,killing people and then asking for it with such a worryingly easiness?
Forgiveness for what,for being a blatant sociopath? Really? If I were that lady I would have preferred enjoying the rest of my life with my children as opposed to forgiving a murderer and knowing he might do it again,cause it’s easy to forgive and “Forgiveness is a powerful thing”. This is not a case for forgiveness,but harsher punishment.
Again: you’re asking for forgiveness for a drunk driving murderer of people and children.
So, death sentence? Eye for an eye?
No,not death sentence,but i noticed people here are worryingly apologetic for murder. It is murder,not in the 1st degree off,but still murder.
25 years with no parole and that’s that. I’m sorry,I just can’t find excuses for drunk driving murders like some people do. It’s my belief system,not a standard.
Some people are just that irresponsible. Also the human brain is notoriously bad at risk assessment, so some people truly don’t realize how likely they are to cause suffering and death when they do shit like this. Harsh punishments won’t change that because this guy probably didn’t think he was gonna accidentally murder 2 people that night
It’s my belief system
Thought terminator detected.
How do you know when a person is reformed versus playing the part to get out earlier? Is there a risk of the system being abused by those who commit a crime knowing that they can get out in a couple years’ time?
If you can’t even think of forgiving this hypothetical transgression you’ve come up with, how can you ever hope to have a positive influence on this world that might actually protect others from the kind of tragedy you’ve described?
I’m sorry but I’m not sure I see the connection here. How does forgiveness prevent such tragedies?
17 years is harsh but fair. Anything beyond that is just punitive.
Americans are in a very weird bubble when it comes to punishment/correction compared to most of the developed world and they don’t seem to notice it.
Insane punishments, death penalty, imprisoning drug users, imprisoning sex workers, private prisons, normalized prison violence/sex violence. It’s bonkers.
Wouldn’t be a Lemmy post if it weren’t for someone shitting on America or Americans even when the story has nothing to do with America.
Punishments in the US tend to be excessive though and people in the US somehow normalized it.
I mean, 17 years for a car accident, drunk or not, is completely draconian. Murderers and child rapists regularly get lesser sentences, and their crimes were malicious not negligent.
There’s no benefit to society to lock anyone up that long for something that can be corrected with a compassionate justice system. If we can release them with confidence that they won’t make the same reckless decisions again, is there any point to locking them up for that long other than to make them suffer?
I’m sorry but this isn’t “world news” to me. Random drunken tragedies are hardly something useful to keep me informed on what is happening in the world.
It can be useful for people to see how other countries handle crimes like this one.
I’m from the US and if this happened here depending on what state he was in would determine whether he got a slap on the wrist or jail time. Also if the judge was corrupt or a shitty person he’d get a slap on the wrist(see rapist Brock Turners case).
So it not completely useless. At least I don’t think so.
He killed two people. A 17-year sentence seems fair.
Anglophones do be loving their cars but the real problem is cyclists riding on pavements. Have you got any idea how dangerous that is? Only the other day I took a picture of my pumpkin spiced latte and caused a multiple pedestrian pile up.
Had me in the first half, ngl.
