• Binturong@lemmy.ca
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    3 days ago

    Crazy how they don’t even name the driver, like actually crazy and intolerable. I’m very curious just who the 76 year old is, and if that played a role in how charges fell at whose feet.

  • stinky@redlemmy.com
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    3 days ago

    Why? They didn’t do it on purpose, and it will never happen again. They just lost their kid. They’re going to be miserable for life, without the sentence. What point does the punishment serve?

    • buddascrayon@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      They are being punished for being poor. The driver is rich and someone has to pay for the death of a child and they aren’t going to put a 76 year old rich white woman in jail.

  • Sam_Bass@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    Sheesh when I was 10 me and my little sister would sometimes miss a bus and walk home from school in ft worth from riverside to bluff street by ourselves across three lane highways and bridges

  • A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    Its amazing how absolutely adamant America is to refuse to hold parents accountable for all shit they are actually responsible for with their children, but are willing to throw the book at the parents if the kid goes outside and anything happens.

    • swelter_spark@reddthat.com
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      3 days ago

      Where I used to live, parents were charged with child neglect after rats came out of the walls during the night and killed their baby.

  • Verdant Banana@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

    way people drive here in the tar states it is criminal to let your kids walk by themselves a certain distance

    even a high turnover with the crossing guards here because of the unenforced driving violations

  • Rachel@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    4 days ago

    What grand jury permitted these charges? This is insane. The driver should be arrested not the parents.

    • DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago
      1. A grand jury would indict a ham sandwich.
      2. Many states don’t have grand juries. They are only required for federal cases by US constitution.
      • Rachel@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        3 days ago

        Ah I didn’t know the second part. I knew Texas had them but didn’t know depends on the state. Well hopefully the judge throws it out or it goes to trial or something.

    • donkeyass@lemmy.sdf.org
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      4 days ago

      If it goes to trial. The prosecutor will threaten to stack an enormous number of charges unless they agreed to to a plea bargain.

    • Grass@sh.itjust.works
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      4 days ago

      going outside for fresh air also hasn’t been a thing in a long time. I went to abandoned farmland in europe before and there were still butterflies and grasshoppers but you dont see that in north america any more, just powdered cancer blowing around the tarmac.

      • Sculptus Poe@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        Only 5% of the land in America is developed according to a 2015 Bloomburg report. That leaves a lot of space for grasshoppers. By comparison, 80% of European land is developed. Fortunately a lot of that is farm and pastures or else they would be in trouble. We do have a lot of ugly cities though.

      • innermachine@lemmy.world
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        4 days ago

        U must be a city boy. Out here in the mountains of New England we have nothing but fresh air (at least since the smoke from Canada has blown away …) I have butterflies and fireflies and crickets and grasshoppers and frogs singing all the time

        • Grass@sh.itjust.works
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          3 days ago

          My hometown was literally 14 houses in the woods with one road. 6 of them still exist in a renovated state but now there are apartment towers and paved townhouse complexes everywhere, invasive weeds at every roadside, dirt lots unused that used to be wild native plants but are just dandelions and moss. All the parks used to be connected by trail but now its streets without sidewalks on all but one side of the smallest park. If you go down the residential streets you will see enough cybertrucks that I want to cry.

          So yeah its a city now but it wasn’t before.

          • innermachine@lemmy.world
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            3 days ago

            Damn that unfortunate. I live in a “city” for this state, and one of the bigger ones at that with 15k population. The “small town” in mass I moved from had 20k population. At least up here where the city ends, there is nothing but trees and mountains. Back in mass there was no distinguishable like as near the whole state is just sprawling suburbs and towns. I think some of what makes us glorify Europe in ways is they have harder lines where cities end, so you can still get to nature. Also, there’s still some nature to get to instead of just suburbs till the next city limits

        • Null User Object@lemmy.world
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          3 days ago

          You don’t even need to be in the mountains of New England. We’re right outside one of America’s bigger cities and within an hour drive of two more, and we have butterflies, frogs, raccoons, foxes, etc.

      • Cosmonauticus@lemmy.world
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        4 days ago

        Yeah you definitely do see that in North America. Just because you live in the middle of urban sprawl and suburb hell doesn’t mean everyone does.

        Can we stop glamorizing Europe? For fuck sake Franfurt Germany looks like Detriot’s heroin addict cousin and there’s villages that look like Gary Indiana threw up in a liter box.

        • Grass@sh.itjust.works
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          3 days ago

          where I grew up and some select cities from my childhood throughout canada there were all sorts of flying and jumpy grass critters. These days in the same areas there are rats, flies, and mosquitos, if anything at all. Maybe the odd sickly owl that the outsiders that took over the region dont care about. If you do see any desirable creatures they are sparse and nowhere near the look anywhere see twelve populations of the old days.

          and I’m not trying to glamourize europe but when I go visit family it’s been the same year after year trying not to step on grasshoppers, bees, and butterflies while my home becomes more and more empty apart from eroded concrete and car bits.

  • CuriousSkeptic42@lemy.lol
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    4 days ago

    That’s awfull,

    I am not from America, am from UK.

    Currently reeling from the ill-advised amendment to the Online Safety Act.

    I could see situations where the “security” theatre of ID based age verification could cause parents to let their guard down too low and get in legal trouble for negligence.

    I happen to be a software engineer by trade, i feel no software can protect people from bad decisions they want to make willfully. (Without a strict régime of oppression/surveillance enforced)

    You can mitigate accidental exposure with local filters though. (But those are readily available on many routers, even at the technical level(that you don’t nessesarily see) its just a list of domain names to block/allow).

    The question I always ask people when they have greviences about a political problem is: “What are you going to do about it? 🤔”

    There is probably some advocacy group this political issue cited.

    Any Americans or others here who care about this a lot, should reach out to them and/or contact their representative directly.

    I am sure many people know this, I was busy focusing on recovering from the lockdown’s and serious health issues when all this amendment was mentioned in Parliament. (Not that this is an excuse for not utilising my expertize till this when its bit late)

    Where I live its pretty quiet when politicians say its to “protects the children” with no reasoning how it does so and amendment involves information technology, which many people understandably find difficult to navigate.

    Many of my family still upload their passport or driving licence now despite what I warned.

    Guess I just have to keep quiet to them about it unless something bad happens like identity theft or worse. (Then I help if they ask, but it just sucks).

    Am glad that our votes in UK are least are paper only votes. (I don’t think our democracy could withstand long-term large-scale computerized voting)

    Just some food for thought. Goodday, from across the pond to my American folks hot on this story, and to everyone else. 🙂

  • NauticalNoodle@lemmy.ml
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    4 days ago

    “North Carolina is about average for national pedestrian deaths. But in the United States, that average is bleak, three times that of the rest of the developed world. The death toll of Americans on foot rose by 58 percent in the decade leading up to 2022…”

    “A common response to the death of a jaywalker — whether an adult or a child — is to blame the victim: Why didn’t the boys cross at a traffic light, less than five minutes away?”

    23 months ago a unhoused pedestrian was killed in hit-and-run just around the corner from me in a place I walk for exercise multiple times a week. It blew my mind when I fully considered how few people (especially officials) care when a pedestrian is killed. Sure enough when talking about it with family one of the first things I heard was “What was she even doing near the road” I mentioned the bus stop was only a couple yards away.

    I was hit at a crosswalk a year before that by a lady pulling out from stop sign in traffic but at least she was coming from a dead-stop. I watched another guy one or two years ago roll off of some college kids hood because he was crossing at a crosswalk and the kid just made a left turn directly into him… -I’m beginning to think pedestrians need better protections from careless drivers, and I reside in what’s supposed to be a more pedestrian friendly town already.

  • webp@mander.xyz
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    4 days ago

    So if I walked home but on my way got hit and killed by a car, I would’ve committed suicide?

  • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de
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    4 days ago

    Fuck anyone (and there’s a lot of them) who think kids shouldn’t be allowed to walk and ride bikes or scooters or play outside. That the parents should get anything but condolences from this is absurd.

  • EtherWhack@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

    I really miss when the phrase, “Look both ways before you cross the street,” was drilled in every kid’s head. Now, I just see so many people (especially teenagers with living next to a high school) completely ignoring where they are walking, ignoring the signs/signals, with all their attention on their phone.

    Then we have the new law (at least in California) that says pedestrians don’t have to use a crosswalk if they think it’s safe to cross. 9 times out of 10, they don’t bother looking until maybe thay are halfway across.

    • RagingRobot@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      Are y’all not telling your kids to look both ways? It’s still very much a thing where I live. Maybe people don’t cross roads with their kids in more rural areas so they are missing that experience?

      I’m pretty sure they covered it in my kids elementary schools too. They have a walk to school day each year and empathize safety.

    • Raiderkev@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      I was on a walk with my kids and it had them stop so that this lady who was walking could go by. The lady who was walking was completely oblivious and nose deep in her phone. Was walking at a snail’s pace. I almost told the kids never mind just go ahead.

  • Sculptus Poe@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

    Bullshit of the highest order. Why is there no common sense? What the hell is wrong with these people, adding tragedy to tragedy? Why is the answer always to throw somebody in jail, which serves less than no purpose for anything except maybe in the case of serial killers and crazed murderers? And for this… Bloody fuck.

    • NauticalNoodle@lemmy.ml
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      4 days ago

      In addition to the other guy mentioning private prisons and kickbacks, you have prosecutors with win quotas and you have police who all too frequently see everything in black-and-white in their application of the law. After reading the article it sounds like the former reason.

    • YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today
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      4 days ago

      They get kick backs from the prisons. It’s really that easy. Everything these people do, they do it for profit. Simple as.

      • brown567@sh.itjust.works
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        4 days ago

        Hold up, let me go check the parents’ race real quick

        Edit: ooh, mixed race! Quite possibly the only kind of couple the US “justice” system hates more than black couples!