Honestly… How much of a monster do you have to be to hit someone with your car and not think to stop and help them…
You’re average car driver… they panic. On the other hand this guy laughed and left.
Last place I lived had an incident where a driver taking a left turn ran onto the curb and over a rather obese guy. Driver decided to try and flee, but his front tires were off the ground on account of the guy he just ran over
So the driver did what many drivers do: Rocked the car back and forth to get away. Got off the guy after a couple tries and ran off. Coroner’s report stated his medical opinion was the victim would have lived if the driver had stopped the car and helped, and that the victim died due to organ damage suffered from the rocking back and forth
The driver was sentenced to ~9 months in jail, out after ~6 months. His license was suspended for a year. People like that should never drive again, but he argued without a license, he couldn’t work and if he can’t work, he won’t be able to pay the civil penalties to the victim’s family (spoiler: He won’t be able to pay them either way)
isnt there an uplifting news community somewhere on lemmy… god damn dude
People are weird. I’m not excusing behaviour but in some situations of chaos I’m in control and directing so long as it’s work. Outside of work in those situations I can have a tendency of flailing my arms not knowing what to do.
IMHO it’s bad but people who leave the scene it should be attributed to human nature the larger concern is after they calm down if they turn themselves in. That to me should be more judged upon.
That said, people, if someone is hurt don’t leave the scene!
It’s a pretty reasonable response in a world where humanity is punished.
Perhaps very late to your second minimum wage job (that you really need to barely make your family’s rent) where they have a habit of letting people go at the drop of a hat while being blasted in social media about how hard it is to find a job right now.
I hope you dropped your /s somewhere big boy
There is a time and place for everything, and this ain’t it.
I choose to believe their poorly worded post meant something like “the dehumanizing conditions the average person finds themselves in perhaps explains, though does not excuse, the monstrous behaviour we’ve seen on display here. I hope that in a more equitable and respectful world, people would be rewarded rather than punished for their compassion”
I don’t think that’s what they meant, but I choose to believe it 😛
Hi, LA native here, and I’ve driven around there before. That location, the industrial roads in south downtown, the type of people driving there at 6:30am, and this 45 year old guy who was probably just trying to get to work (likely biking out of necessity) makes none of this story a surprise. Even the lack of stopping isn’t a surprise as the two drivers were probably also hurrying to work, although imagine killing a guy and starting your work day anyway, yikes.
Search up 45th and Pacific, Vernon, to see how industrial that area is. There are a few places in LA that you can bike safely but this sure as hell ain’t one of them. That’s not to say I’m blaming the victim, of course, but that there’s a clear systemic problem if someone can’t get to work safely. Then again, anti-car folks probably already know that.
My two cents, don’t ignore the class issue. Biking infrastructure is only available in affluent communities yet many people bike to work because they can’t afford to own a car. And what little bike routes we do have (e.g. Ballona Trail), they’re riddled with drug users and homeless encampments (at least, in the morning, they get cleared out regularly).
