By Bob Mionske
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It was only a few short weeks ago, as the year changed, that somebody, somewhere, fired off a gun to ring in the New Year. The bullet rocketed skyward, until the inexorable pull of gravity slowed its ascent, and it arced back to earth. A mile away, it slammed into an innocent New Year’s reveler, killing him instantly.
Police recovered the bullet, and based on tips, apprehended the shooter. Ballistics tests confirmed that the bullet came from the shooter’s gun. The only question now was whether the shooter should be charged with a noise complaint, or if he should be let go, perhaps with a warning to be more quiet in the future.
Improbable? Of course it is.
The “incident” described is fictitious, but that’s not what makes it improbable. No, what makes this depiction impossible to buy is that no law enforcement agency, and no District Attorney’s office, would treat this unintentional death as “just an accident” unworthy of serious charges; no chorus of apologists would assure us that the shooter’s regret is “punishment enough”; and if brought to trial, no jury of his peers would acquit him, thinking, “There but for the grace of God go I.”
And yet, when the instrument of injury and death is an automobile in the hands of a careless driver, that is often exactly what happens.
Each year more than 700 cyclists are killed by drivers on our nation’s roads while another 62,000 are injured. In the United States, the total annual death toll inflicted by drivers averages in excess of 40,000 people. It’s the equivalent of two jumbo jets crashing every single week, all year long, every single year, or entire towns being wiped off the face of the Earth. Salem, Massachusetts last year; Hoboken, New Jersey this year, and Twin Falls, Idaho next year. Every single year.
When 2,750 people lost their lives in the collapse of the World Trade Center, we went to war, invading two nations at a total cost to date approaching $1 trillion. When 2,750 people lose their lives on our nation’s highways every three weeks, month in, month out, every single year, we do nothing.
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The basic problem we face is that in most states there are appropriate penalties for drivers who commit minor offenses like failure to yield, and there are appropriate penalties for drivers who commit the most egregious offenses, like killing somebody while driving drunk. But there’s no middle ground—no appropriate penalties for those who kill through carelessness, and no justice for those who were killed because somebody else shirked their duty to exercise due care.
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As Andy Thornley notes, when drivers who injure or kill are not held accountable, we send all drivers the wrong signal about what is expected of them, and consequently, they have less incentive to be careful. By filling in the missing pieces of the vehicle code, we send the right signals to drivers about what is expected of them while operating potentially lethal machinery.
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https://bicycling.com/blogs/roadrights/2010/02/01/traffic-injustice-part-ii/oldId.20100205090159451
Biking in Baltimore