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A comment on The rise of fake engine noise. Parent comment

Re:The rise of fake engine noise by CalRobert on Thursday January 22, 2015 @01:42PM (#8930838)
This is apparently a downvote magnet but to clarify, you wrote:

    "There's one situation where drivers don't face penalties if they hit and injure/kill a pedestrian: if that pedestrian caused the accident and the driver had no way of preventing it."
This is the statement with which I disagree. There are many situations where drivers don't face penalties if they hit and injure/kill a pedestrian, not just one. Anyway, my views on this are clear and I am obviously in the minority. Regardless, I still think that if one operates a heavy, dangerous vehicle near people who may be killed by it the onus of responsibility for not killing people falls on the driver.

If a person leaps in front of a big rig in order to kill themselves, then no, the driver is not responsible. If a kid runs after a soccer ball in the street and gets run over because they driver didn't stop in time, then the driver was probably going too fast for the circumstances.

Mind you, I like cars. I may walk to work but I drive very quickly on the autobahn a few times a year and it's a blast. Limited access roadways with _incredibly_ good visibility and road conditions are great places to go fast. Cities and towns with cars, bikes, walkers, and anything else you can imagine all using the same street space are great places to go slow.

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Re:The rise of fake engine noise by freehunter on Thursday January 22, 2015 @02:11PM (#8931041)
I think that's a misunderstanding, or a misinterpretation of what I meant. I didn't say "there is only one situation", I said "there is one situation".This could be interpreted as "only one" or as "one of many". I meant it in the context of "one of many". There's an implied "there's (at least) one situation", but without that explicitly stated, you're right that there could be an implied "there's (only) one situation".

So allow me to clarify my original post: There's at least one situation where drivers don't face penalties.

And then let me word it a little more strongly: There's only one situation where drivers, under the law, don't face penalties: when the driver was not at fault. Because the situations you listed are those where the driver legally could have faced penalties but did not.

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