Originally Posted by
The Human Car
Applying the reasonable person standard we should expect most people here have experienced driving their vehicle off the road several times in a row and that is a normal part of the driving experience.
The issue is more like making the
possibility of facing criminal charges or other severe charges, compared to now with it being near imposable to face anything of significance.
Again the problem with traffic law is we have turned the standard for gross negligence to the standard for normal negligence with such a high bar outrageous behavior goes unabated.
I don't agree with your last statement, as I don't see this drivers actions as gross negligence. I think there should be a higher bar for intentional stupidity and losing your concentration should not be that bar level.
Setting it lower will cause a couple things, you will have people living in fear of driving and staying home (which admittedly is not a bad thing to me hehe), and that fear will lead to slower traffic caused by the overly cautious while the people who just want to drive normal will start road raging, or possibly you will have people not giving a crap and driving like an idiot more often since the penalty is the same. But in the end you will have people who made honest mistakes going to prison for it. Yes they killed someone, yes its terrible, yes there should be penalties, yes they ar epaying the penalty every day. But locking someone away for it IS wrong.
Have you ever killed someone with your car? I know people that have. I even know an aquaintance who killed himself a year later because he couldn't deal with it. And he did nothing wrong, a kid jumped in front of his car from out behind a parked car trying to get his ball. It can be a fate worse than prison.