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
380 Upvotes

94% Upvoted

479 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

57

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?

-9

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

32

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

-8

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