In Canada you'd be unlucky to even get jail time at all, it's fucked. We're kinda infamous for this.
One I remember was a driver going 120 km/hr in a 60 zone, ran over some girl guides, and kills an 8 year old.
2 years of house arrest.
Comment on And nothing of value was lost
Zagorath@aussie.zone 3 weeks agothere was an old redditism that the best way to get off with murder is to use your car
Not a redditism. An urbinist-ism. Reddit had a healthy contingent of urbanists, but you’ll find us here on Lemmy too, over at !fuckcars@lemmy.world, or !urbanism@slrpnk.net. (Or, frankly, because it’s a movement with significant overlap to anticapitalism, just all around the threadiverse.)
And it’s completely true, too. I can easily think of half a dozen cases where someone killed someone else with a car and got away scott-free in my country alone (in fact: with just one exception, the ones that come to my mind are all in my city alone). And only one of those cases even went to court as far as I know.
BurgerBaron@piefed.social 3 weeks ago
Rinox@feddit.it 3 weeks ago
In Italy there’s been a big push against this in the last decade.
There’s now a law called “road murder” (omicidio stradale) which makes the penalties for killing someone while driving, especially if intoxicated, more similar to intentional murder (rather than manslaughter). It’s essentially aggravated manslaughter, when you cause the death of someone while driving recklessly.
Zagorath@aussie.zone 3 weeks ago
That’s brilliant.
Honestly I’d push for a change in law such that a crash between a car and a more vulnerable road user is legally presumed to be the car’s fault unless evidence is provided to the contrary. The big problem we’ve had far too many times where I live, and in many other parts of the world, is that because you can’t prove the driver was riding negligently (or more to the point: because you can’t convince a car-brained jury pool or judge panel to find that they were negligent), far too often they get off scott-free.
Rinox@feddit.it 3 weeks ago
Generally speaking, here it’s often presumed that it’s the car’s fault, or at least that’s how I feel it’s perceived.
Still, negligent driving includes DUI, driving while on the phone, driving too fast, driving in the opposite lane, not stopping to a red light or yield, illegal passing of another car and failing to stop after the incident occurred.
Moreover, the law now specifies that DUI is a criminal offense even when no incident occurred and blood level of alcohol is above 0.8 g/l, with possible jail time from 6 months to a year.
It’s become quite strict. Although I’m not sure how much it will actually affect the number of incidents, I’m not always very pro to “just increase the penalties” kind of laws. We need a more comprehensive plan to reduce the likelihood of incidents as much as possible, especially deadly incidents.
Zagorath@aussie.zone 3 weeks ago
here it’s often presumed that it’s the car’s fault
By people and the media, or by the law? Because those are definitely not the same.
Though unfortunately in most of the anglosphere, the answer is that the average person will presume it’s the *non-*car-driver’s fault, and the law will make no presumption either way (which has the effect of letting drivers get off).
Moreover, the law now specifies that DUI is a criminal offense even when no incident occurred and blood level of alcohol is above 0.8 g/l
Wow that’s really cool! Is 0.8 g/L the only level of BAC that’s used in Italian law? Or are there like, other lower thresholds with less legal severity? I ask because, assuming 0.8 g/L is the same as a 0.08% BAC, that seems really high. For context, in carbrained Australia the limit is .05.
dylanmorgan@slrpnk.net 3 weeks ago
Dan Sheehan (of “NOT A WOLF”) wrote a piece about how easy it is to get away with vehicular murder on his blog: reallyveryhuman.com/…/where-can-a-car-kill-me
fartographer@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I have a cousin who once said that he’s gotten more tickets on a bike in Manhattan than anytime he’s driven through the city. He then followed that with, “in fact, I’m pretty sure that as long as you don’t hit anything that pays or collects taxes, the police will tell you to go away because you’re interrupting the flow of traffic.”
socsa@piefed.social 3 weeks ago
How tf do you get a ticket on a bike? Just hop on the sidewalk and down an alley or two and nobody's going to catch you.
BurgerBaron@piefed.social 3 weeks ago
I ride in the parks after curfew bylaw and we pretend they've done their job for a moment where they "chase" me to an alley they can't drive through and I wait for them to fuck off for 2 minutes.
koper@feddit.nl 3 weeks ago
Sadly this article is paywalled
Truscape@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
Go go gadget archive.ph !
Zagorath@aussie.zone 3 weeks ago
No luck.
tourist@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
The prosecutor is gonna bust the fattest nut of his life during discovery if he reads the defendant’s credit card statements