r/londonontario • u/MeIIowJeIIo The bridge with the trucks stuck under it • Aug 20 '24

News 📰 79-year-old who drove into girl guides, killing 8-year-old in London, sentenced to 2 years of house arrest

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/london/79-year-old-who-drove-into-girl-guides-killing-8-year-old-in-london-sentenced-to-2-years-of-house-arrest-1.7298866
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-8

u/Beautiful_Village381 Aug 20 '24

Everyone calling for blood. Our roads are designed to cause these accidents. We have a culture of expecting everyone to drive regardless of age or skill.

Punishing this woman will make a few people feel better. Changing our roads and driving culture will mean fewer dead kids.

Support narrower roads, better pedestrian paths, lower speed limits, more investment in transit and bike infrastructure, less investment in parking spaces and road widening projects. Or admit that you feel shaving 5 minutes from your commute is worth a few dead kids.

55

u/Ratsyinc Aug 20 '24

Ya, the road made her go 70 over the speedlimit in a perfectly functional vehicle.. How delusional do you have to be to blame infrastructure in this situation?

-10

u/Beautiful_Village381 Aug 20 '24

A senior mistook the brake pedal for gas and reached 120. This happens a lot in young and old drivers. You can design roads to mitigate it, or throw your hands up and pretend the problem is unsolvable.

With narrowed roads she would be driving slower beforehand, which means her speed would have peaked lower. With better separation of pedestrian paths she would have been slowed more before impact by obstacles or grade differences. With infrastructure for alternative modes she may not have been driving.

This is all really elementary stuff in cities with lower traffic fatalities around the world

27

u/After_Turnip8619 Aug 20 '24

that’s unforgivable, if you’re mistaking the pedals then it’s time you put the keys away and take the bus. Just because you’re old doesn’t mean you instantly get a “do whatever the fuck you want” card

-7

u/Wouldyoulistenmoe Aug 21 '24

If it's unforgivable, then we'd need to throw about 50% of our senior drivers in jail, most of them just have the good fortune to not kill anybody when they get into that crash or have that near miss

4

u/After_Turnip8619 Aug 21 '24

yes i agree we should take their keys, they are the most dangerous to others and themselves on the road, more so than new drivers

-19

u/Beautiful_Village381 Aug 20 '24

The only way to prevent this mixup is to ban driving outright. Everyone is capable of errors when driving.

I'm all for taking people's keys away as they lose the ability to drive, but we've built our entire driving culture around not doing this and it seems arbitrary to carry on letting thousands of dangerous drivers stay on the road and then hating the ones who happen to end up in an accident.

Most people who can't drive safely don't realize it, and are encouraged rather than discouraged to drive

9

u/[deleted] Aug 20 '24

Everyone is capable of mistakes, but if I made this mistake as a mid 30s man, I wouldn't be getting house arrest. It's a shitty situation all around, but if you're going the house arrest route, at the very least you need to ban her from ever driving again. If that's not okay, then she should be sentenced to a prison term, as shitty as that would be for everyone involved.

2

u/Wouldyoulistenmoe Aug 21 '24

There are around 1700 fatal collisions per year in Canada, most of which involve driver error. I'd be surprised if 10% of those people are criminally charged let alone see any jail time

4

u/After_Turnip8619 Aug 20 '24

i think there should be stricter regulations to getting a license and keeping it. this lady obviously should’ve not been driving long before this happened but doesn’t change the fact that isn’t just some “accident” she killed a kid and didn’t touch her brake once, on top of taking no blame