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Why aren't these people murderers?
by Arthur Webster Just plain honesty
Arthur Webster 
Just plain honesty
Once again a stupid fool has put himself behind the wheel of a vehicle he was incapable of controlling and slaughtered innocent victims.
A 27 year old drunk (well - twice the legal limit) decided that he could drive his 4 x 4 vehicle at a speed well in excess of the limit for the road, in conditions that were not ideal because of rain and then compounded his stupidity by attempting to overtake a bus carrying 50 people despite clear warnings that he was in a no overtaking zone.
The result was the death of 9 and the injury of 41 people who were simply going to the airport after their holiday on the Costa del Sol.
When are we going to see special driving tests for these 4 x 4 owners - and maybe a psychological test to prove fitness to drive such a vehicle.
Spain’s roads are full of 4 x 4s that never see an unpaved track. These vehicles are the status symbols, far too often, of those with no real appreciation of the power and lethality of the vehicle they are buying.
Bull bars are still widespread here so the lesson of hundreds killed by these pretentious ornaments in relatively mild crashes has not been learnt here.
Because of the significantly higher centre of gravity, these vehicles are less stable than a normal car. Some drivers do acknowledge this fact by slowing, significantly at a bend and almost stopping on corners.
Because the weight of the vehicle, combined with the higher centre of gravity, makes them much less nimble, trying to make any manoeuver at speed can be perilous - and it seems that it was just such a manoeuver that caused the crash.
It seems that, in pulling out to overtake the coach, the driver made a serious error of judgement and hit the roadside barrier. From there he bounced into the back of the coach with sufficient impact to spin the coach, cause it to roll over and slide along the road with the other roadside barrier slicing into it as if it was so much cheese. It was this barrier that caused most of the deaths.
I can believe the father when he says his son (the 4 x 4 driver) breaks down over what has happened but I simply cannot see how he feels that “he only had two beers†is expected to excuse what he did.
Nine people are dead. Others were very seriously injured. Whether or not it was the two beers that killed or injured them or the inability of the driver to control a ridiculously powerful vehicle at a criminally high speed doesn’t really matter.
He won’t be charged with murder.
Isn't it about time that wreckless endangerment of life by the deliberate breaking of safety laws (let's not even mention "common sense", which is dead) was treated in exactly the same way as murder?
How can someone directly responsible for the death of NINE people be treated as a delinquent driver instead of as a killer?
Apr 27th 2008 05:04
Just plain honestyOnce again a stupid fool has put himself behind the wheel of a vehicle he was incapable of controlling and slaughtered innocent victims.
A 27 year old drunk (well - twice the legal limit) decided that he could drive his 4 x 4 vehicle at a speed well in excess of the limit for the road, in conditions that were not ideal because of rain and then compounded his stupidity by attempting to overtake a bus carrying 50 people despite clear warnings that he was in a no overtaking zone.
The result was the death of 9 and the injury of 41 people who were simply going to the airport after their holiday on the Costa del Sol.
When are we going to see special driving tests for these 4 x 4 owners - and maybe a psychological test to prove fitness to drive such a vehicle.
Spain’s roads are full of 4 x 4s that never see an unpaved track. These vehicles are the status symbols, far too often, of those with no real appreciation of the power and lethality of the vehicle they are buying.
Bull bars are still widespread here so the lesson of hundreds killed by these pretentious ornaments in relatively mild crashes has not been learnt here.
Because of the significantly higher centre of gravity, these vehicles are less stable than a normal car. Some drivers do acknowledge this fact by slowing, significantly at a bend and almost stopping on corners.
Because the weight of the vehicle, combined with the higher centre of gravity, makes them much less nimble, trying to make any manoeuver at speed can be perilous - and it seems that it was just such a manoeuver that caused the crash.
It seems that, in pulling out to overtake the coach, the driver made a serious error of judgement and hit the roadside barrier. From there he bounced into the back of the coach with sufficient impact to spin the coach, cause it to roll over and slide along the road with the other roadside barrier slicing into it as if it was so much cheese. It was this barrier that caused most of the deaths.
I can believe the father when he says his son (the 4 x 4 driver) breaks down over what has happened but I simply cannot see how he feels that “he only had two beers†is expected to excuse what he did.
Nine people are dead. Others were very seriously injured. Whether or not it was the two beers that killed or injured them or the inability of the driver to control a ridiculously powerful vehicle at a criminally high speed doesn’t really matter.
He won’t be charged with murder.
Isn't it about time that wreckless endangerment of life by the deliberate breaking of safety laws (let's not even mention "common sense", which is dead) was treated in exactly the same way as murder?
How can someone directly responsible for the death of NINE people be treated as a delinquent driver instead of as a killer?
Apr 27th 2008 05:04
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Comments
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Jean DAndrea
RetiredSeems to me that our legislations are going crazy. Nothing seems to be right or fair anymore. Apr 27th 2008 19:13 |
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Arthur Webster
Just plain honestyHi, Cheryl, It seems America has gone too far but I wonder how much of the distance was created by greedy lawyers. There is a world of difference between a competent driver having an accident and an incompetent, intoxicated driver causing one. Hi, Snakesmum, The legislation has always been crazy. Since when has the loss of a licence for a couple of years been proper punishment for the killing of innocent by-standers? Apr 28th 2008 03:44 |
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Cheryl Baumgartner
  Medical Billing/Coding/InsuranceArthur, The trouble is that this would in effect be used by those who like to try to legislate morality. We already know that doesn't work. I think a lot of the problem in the US is from all of these laws that were designed to protect minors but they don't. Giving alcohol to a child is abuse. I grew up getting my little taste of wine on special occasions or having a little sip of beer now and then. Alcohol held no fascination for me as I grew older. However now you have people dying/hospitalized from alcohol poisoning on their 21st birthday. They finally get the chance to break the great taboo but since it's such a mystery they drink until they pass out, get sick, etc. Most of them will get in a car and drive too. We need to take the mystery out of these things so it's not so attractive to these young people. Apr 28th 2008 08:25 |
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Jean DAndrea
RetiredHi Arthur, Agree with you. We have a case here where a guy killed 5 or 6 people and injured others, and he was sentenced to I think seven years. Not enough, I don't think, but he and his family are saying it's too severe for an accident. He's appealing of course. What the jury weren't told until after the verdict, was that he had a record of driving offences going back years. Hi Cheryl, Like you, we were always allowed to have tastes of sherry, beer, etc., as children, so alcohol was no great mystery to us. I think it's a good idea to allow children to taste it on occasions. Jean Apr 28th 2008 17:27 |
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Not Here
 just want my account deletedAh yes, but incompentence runs rampant everywhere these days...I agree there is nothing wrong with allowing your children to taste but don't forget there are also parents out there who think it's a good idea to let their children get drunk...or to get them drunk themsleves! As for the 4 wheel drives, I just happen to live in such where one might actually have a use for these monsters, yet I have never owned one. Perhaps things will smarten up around the same time people smarten up and start driving the vehicles they should be, like the perfect city or pavement car...a Zenn. Apr 30th 2008 08:14 |
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Cheryl Baumgartner
Medical Billing/Coding/InsuranceGarnet, To me the alcohol situation is no different than the gun situation. Ignorant kids playing with a new toy. That's how they see it because they aren't taught different. We had our family drunks like every family so we saw what happened from over-indulgence. We knew what could happen. We've got kids out there killing each other with guns because they don't KNOW any better. I grew up in a house where handguns, rifles and shotguns were readily available, I knew where they were BUT I also knew what a gun could do. I was taught from youngest childhood how to properly handle a gun, And that guns were not toys. Education prevented kids from playing with them. Apr 30th 2008 08:52 |
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Not Here
just want my account deletedHi Cheryl....They don't know any better? Have they no conscience?? No ability to distigush RIGHT from WRONG??? I was taught how to use a kitchen knife too, I could still kill or seriously harm someone else with one...or with virtually any other object too or even with my BARE HANDS! Does anyone educate us how to use our bare hands properly? I don't agree at all that education is so much what is needed(without even the discussing the FACT of what certain education can cause placed in the wrong hands), but rather there is a need for people to quit brainwashing their children...that they are better or deserve more than others...that they need stuff they really don't need...that racism is okay...that getting drunk WITH your minor children is okay...and I'm sure the list only goes on and on and on! Apr 30th 2008 19:27 |
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Cheryl Baumgartner
Medical Billing/Coding/InsuranceNo they don't know any better. The play with the X-box on a game that rewards them for killing, they wtch movies where the bad guy kills and gets away with it. Nobody every took them out to see first hand the effects of what a gun could do. Nobody ever taught them that a gun has one purpose, to kill. Nobody ever taught them that the only reason you point a gun at someone is because you have made up your mind to pull the trigger knowing it can result in death for the other person. Hell Nobody has taught them how to tell if the thing is loaded. So when they and their buddies find a gun and start pointing it at each other and it and playing and that gun goes off and they kill their buddy what would you call it? Deliberate? They don't even know the thing was loaded what would have prevented it? Education! Apr 30th 2008 21:02 |
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Not Here
just want my account deletedSo what about the cases where the child was taught everything about how to use a gun but yet after coming home from hunting and proceeding to clean their rifle they accidently shot their sister? Where the hell was education? And in your case, where the ____ were their parents?(pissed drunk?) Why did they not teach them that TV and Video games are NOT REAL? INCOMPETENCE and ARROGANCE, plain and simple...fixed only by Truth which is determined by CONSCIENCE. We ALL have the ability to determine RIGHT FROM WRONG, just not neccassarily the ambition to use it! You want to teach them something, don't teach how to use guns, teach them NOT TO ____ WITH THEM! p.s. What the hell do they think when the shoot villians on these games and they drop like flies with blood and guts spewing everywhere? That guns are like stuffed animals? Apr 30th 2008 22:11 |
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Arthur Webster
Just plain honestyHi, Garnet and Cheryl, You have both opened up a can of worms that I was skirting round. It seems to me that parental irresponsibility is to blame for many of the ills of today but that irresponsibility is connived at by the state. As you look around this sorry systen that we live in, especially if you look at the type of social censure that no longer exists, is it any wonder we are fighting for the very survival of civilisation? Lok at the super X-Boy that GWB and TB played with. Real people getting their real guts splattered all over the place in a game of "Look at me Paw! Can I kill or can I kill?" The game goes on today but there is little glory in it but doesn't it let some of the big boys stand up and try to frighten everybody else by screaming about 'terrorists' in every town and village. The war for terror is being won. There is more terror today than there has ever been before - but it is a terror that is a bit like the trailer for a movie. "Coming soon to a town like yours!" they scream. "Just when you thought it was safe to lock your doors, you discover that home is not the safest place any more". In all the world's attempts to be peaceable, just one man has the power and the ignorance to create a world that only he, alone, could be proud of. Only one man, with all the international knowledge of a dead fruit fly, can set back civilisation by centuries." (You can do your own deep whisper) Watch as an army of amoeba brained social scientists destroy the will of millions! Watch as the electronic cyclops sucks the inteligence and will out of more millions! Learn how the lawyers create a class of blameless criiminals and put them on the streets! See the education system become a baby sitting service! Watch as achievement becomes derided and scorned! Understand why it is easier to steal than to earn - and have more fun in the bargain! George Orwell could not have invented the hellish world in which we live. At least his vision of 1984 still had some form of social structure and discipline. We have accepted that discipline is no longer necessary. Only fools and imbeciles try to control themselves, the rest simply behave as though there was no-one else around them and leave it to any army of apologists to defend them against any attack by anybody they may have injured in any way. There were reports in the YUK recently of drug dealers breaking IN to jails to sell their wares and of prisoners too well off, inside, to even contemplate escaping. Go figure! I suppose killing a few people while driving like a fool is really quite acceptable. May 1st 2008 04:45 |
Well he could come to America where even honest accidents are labeling people as criminals. Many states have made criminal charges automatic when there is a death resulting from an accident. Nobody has to be drunk nobody has to be on drugs, nobody even has to be driving recklessly.
An unexpected occurrence on the road, say an animal darting in front of your car causing you to lose control can result in vehicular manslaughter etc. Through no fault of their own that driver is now a criminal. In the case of drugs and alcohol yes they should be charged but remember it will not remain cases of drug and alcohol. They will slowly add in other things to result in charges of murder also.
Apr 27th 2008 09:11