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If you'll permit a tangent, there are a lot of drunk pedestrian fatalities. I don't think we talk enough about the risk of drunk walking.

Over one third of pedestrians killed in the US each year have been drinking too much to drive.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/08/05/drunk-...

Not a statistic that's great to pass around but I have read that drunk pedestrian walking is more dangerous than drunk driving (to the driver).

Taking an uber is always the move.

I'm fairly certain these exact statistics are spoken and quoted in Super Freakonomics, or maybe the first Freakanomics.

I sort of wonder if that is heavily dependent on country or area, I mean drunk pedestrian walking in Los Angeles might be more dangerous than in Copenhagen.

Kind of anadotical but the only time I have been around someone who got run into in Copenhagen they were visible drunk. Though I don't have any stats I can pull up.

Perhaps reading Super Freakonomics?

Rehashed here: https://freakonomics.com/2011/12/28/the-perils-of-drunk-walk... Google will provide people who don't like assumptions made in Levitt's math.

Disclaimer -- I did research for Levitt and John List when I was planning to go for an Econ PhD, but on nothing related to drunk driving.

Likely, but it's been long enough that I don't remember.

How much of this is due to the immediate physiological effects of alcohol (e.g. impaired reaction time, etc) and how much of it is chronic depressed alcoholics disregarding their own well-being and possibly committing suicide?

I've walked home drunk from bars more than a few times and I've never experienced any trouble using crosswalks like normal. I'm pretty certain it's much safer than driving home drunk (not that I drive to bars in the first place.)

Driving at night down narrow streets, I've had some people pop out from behind a wall in front of me. Fortunately everyone involved has always had good reaction times, so I don't think I've killed anybody yet.

Somebody who's not really thinking, or just stumbling around and being goofy. Lots of people including myself have said "DUDE wouldn't it be funny if we did [X incredibly stupid thing]?" while unreasonably drunk. Normally calm people start fights with people who can clearly kick their ass after a couple drinks. Probably a few think they can take on or play chicken with a car. Some people also just blink for a second and suddenly they're asleep, if they have enough drinks.

Depression may be a cause, but honest accidents and impaired thinking are definitely big reasons.

> I don't think I've killed anybody yet

If you can't tell for sure, are you certain that you weren't drunk yourself?

I lived in a small town that at the time had the highest number of fatalities in the state for both drunk walking and rail crossing deaths.

And though it was the kind of town that would make you want to top yourself, i think the real reason was there was a pub on either side of the tracks.

I personally witnessed more than once (and intervened) drunk people appearing to try getting themselves killed by traffic, like erratically running onto a road. Once I also saw a too drunk person that tried to cross a street (outside of a crossing), tripped over, fell to the ground and just passed out.

I don't think you want to discourage drunk walking because that will lead to more drunk driving which is a lot more dangerous to other people.

I'm not encouraging drunk driving, but rather getting an Uber.

Or at the very least, to walk cautiously after having several drinks.

Both drunk driving and drunk walking near a road should be very much discouraged. Hailing a cab should be encouraged instead.

No, being outside so drunk that you can't control yourself enough to correctly cross a street is not a "not a big deal".

I actually think this article makes the statistics seem worse by than they are by presenting them in a way that is easy to misunderstand.

Okay so a third of all pedestrian fatalities have been over the driving limit of alcohol, as the article points out. That sounds horrible. It sounds like you should never drink and walk, ever.

Thing is, there were only 1,547 pedestrian walking deaths in the whole 311 million person country in 2011. That same year there were 32,479 automotive fatalities. Throw in liver disease victims[1] and you’re looking at maybe a 1:60 ratio of pedestrian walking to every other kind of alcohol death.

More people actually die of “natural heat and cold” than alcohol related pedestrian accidents.

Alcohol is generally bad as we all know, and leads to all kinds of bad health outcomes, but I’d argue that pedestrian accidents are the least concern if we are to prioritize.

[1] There’s a bit of a silent fatty liver disease crisis going on, but that’s just obesity doing its thing. I’d love to see more urgent action on obesity.

Isn't that also because of how the US seems to be mostly designed for driving, not so much for pedestrians or cyclists? I mean I was in a suburb in Michigan once, walking to a nearby shop there were just no sidewalks.

The following is case assured me that the justice system in Germany is good and just:

A child was fatally hit by a truck at a tram station after another child pushed them. The truck driver tested positive for pot and was ultimately acquitted because the court concluded that even if the driver had been perfectly fit for driving, the accident would have been unavoidable.

I can not remember but I am certain that the driver had to face additional charges for driving under influence but this is another thing.

> Looking at the police report, I do wonder what the punishment would be in other countries.

In the U.K. 1-2 years it seems.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causing_death_by_dangerous_d...

Having read the facts appeal case you linked to it does not seem unreasonable (colliding with pedestrians on a marked and signed road crossing, travelling at >30mph). In the U.K. there is definitely an expectation that you slow down before a crossing.

In this case the court applied the minimum sentence and appeal rejected the victims’s side request for a harsher sentence.

The facts in the appeal case list many factors, some of which are not in favour of the driver (one pedestrian was trying to pick up the other so they were unlikely to have been lying down on the road and oncoming vehicles were flashing lights as a warning).

One could go to prison for this in USA, but only if the local police and prosecutors already hated one's guts for other reasons. In most cases a drunk pedestrian would be considered less sympathetic than a sober driver. Yes it is a pretty shabby "justice" when sympathies rather than facts determine verdicts.

The US justice system in general is pretty sympathetic to drivers in general, I doubt a case like this would see over a year of jail time here, and likely none at all.

Drivers yes, but I think he was riding a motorbike.

Someone I know was driving down a country road and struck a person in the middle of the road and killed them. The person wasn't drunk as far as I know, but their car broke down and they were trying to walk to somewhere. Why they chose to walk in the middle of the road at night no one knows, but due to the desolate region and the unexpectedness of it, they were not seen. There was no jail time and charges filled. It was understood that the pedestrian shouldn't have done that. It really messed the driver up, they're a very nice person and having caused the death of someone really hurt them, even though there really wasn't anything they could have done.

Obviously every instance is circumstantial, and I didn't really read anything about the case, but if drunk people were lying down in the road, at night, in dark clothing, I don't see a crime.

But if one was actively picking up the other while oncoming drivers flashed their lights to warn people, and he drove his motorcycle at an excessive speed through the crosswalk?

This is the very reason Russians buy dashcams by tonnes.

Sold few thousands of them to Russian retailers at around 2008-2009, when I worked in a trade company in Singapore.

Previously they were used by Taiwanese taxis to record what's going on inside the car.

Russian's immediately found an inventive use for it, and instead made them to videolog what's going on in front of the car.

Everyone should have a dashcam.. I have had installed them in all of my cars fro the better part of a decade now. I am in the US

Does every country allows filming everything outside? I could imagine that some laws won't allow that or won't allow such a recording to be used as an evidence in court.

At least in the US, I believe it varies state by state with certain restrictions pertaining to audio specifically, iirc.

Honestly I could see that happening to me. Some cars have lights that make it hard to see clearly on my side of the road. I wish car windshields could shield your eyes from lights too bright or something. Especially now that cars have these bright LED lights depending on the angle they are as bad as high beams when they pierce your eyes.

I kinda hate driving at night. People can barely keep from getting into accidents in broad daylight imagine at night time.

Often those LED lights aren't angled correctly (at least here in Australia), on the highway in a non-SUV I sometimes get temporarily blinded by oncoming and following traffic at night on the highway

This was in a motorcycle.

Many motorcycles have windshields too. Many motorcycle helmets as well.

There are glasses for night driving (yellow ones) which will reduce bright light and increase contrast in low light situations. You might want to check them out.

Perhaps this detail should be added to the Github issue to mitigate the misunderstandings and accusations already going on there.

The lack of empathy displayed in that thread is disgusting.

After reading the whole translation linked in the GitHub issue, and being a father of 6 kids who love to make me practice being a judge every day as if I have nothing better to do, I’m convinced the judgment is reasonable. Even in our tiny library parking lot, I very often see people driving unreasonably fast between all the parked cars and the library door, often within a foot of the cars. Even if they are driving within the speed limit, there are constantly people coming out from between cars in a way that they can’t be detected by cars ahead of time, especially young children who don’t have the life experience to know to come out slower. It’s unquestionably dangerous to drive like that, yet I see it almost every single day. One of these days someone is going to get hurt. And in this case it looks like the same circumstances: a bit of reasonable cautiousness could have possibly prevented the driver from not seeing the people apparently laying on the crosswalk. Unless the driver followed every single procedure of the road perfectly, they are at fault to at least some degree. And someone is dead. It’s just a generally awful situation all around and nobody wins.

The defendant actually admitted guilt, seemingly readily. His argument was not that he did nothing wrong, but instead that the sentence should be adjusted. Instead of the minimum jail time of 1.5 years, he was asking for the maximum suspension of driving privilege time of 3 years. If jail is for criminal activity and suspension of driving privilege is for poor driving practice, I can see his point. Of course it gets blurry when you have criminally poor driving practice.

Yes but assuming negligent driving is the cause of death of another person, it seems that just not being able to drive for a while is not taking into account the seriousness of the permanence or the consequences of the events. I am no fan of jail and don’t wish prison on anyone. But justice seems to demand at least some kind of serious retribution for the loss of life if there is any accountability. For intentional murder people get 20+ years. Accidental death having only 1.5 seems much smaller than that. That’s all I’m saying. If it wasn’t negligent but reasonable then I agree that no jail time makes most sense. But slowing down at cross walks at night in Russia seems like a reasonable thing to expect. But I’m no judge.

Yes, but this wasn't a library parking lot. This was a roadway, at night, and he appears to have been going the speed limit. And the victim was lying down on the roadway in dark clothes. And there was an oncoming car with high beams on according to the court findings.

So you think that he should spend 1.5 years in a Russian prison for that? A sentence that may very well ruin him psychologically for the rest of his life? And/or leave him with TB and/or Covid-19? (and here I note that American prisons are not much better, if at all).

> So you think that he should spend 1.5 years...

hold on... no one ever said anything like that. not a single comment here. let's keep calm.

the whole situation still seems unreal to myself...

Except the comment that the commented you quoted is answering to?

see the three dots i had in there? that's me being lazy and not quoting the whole hyperbole.

But your criticism was about my take on the judgement, not the conditions that are common in Russian prisons (and no, it's not hyperbole, I have an acquaintance who worked with MSF on TB in Russian prisons: https://www.msf.org/tb-prisons-containing-catastrophe).

okay, sorry, just felt based on many comments here that people are being emotional.

if you read below, someone who can actually read the court documents said the victim was not lying around, but actually helping the other person.

just too much unknown to form our own personal judgement here. that's all i was trying to say.

It is worth remembering that the speed limit is not an "it is always safe to drive this speed here" advisory. In particular if your vision is obstructed (perhaps by very heavy rain, fog, or an oncoming car with high beams) then you may need to slow down considerably.

Agreed, I agree that it can be unsafe. However, if you're going the speed limit, it reduces the chances significantly that you were doing something grossly negligent or unsafe that works warrant an unusually harsh sentence for what was an accident. Normally, such sentences are only given in cases of major negligence, like intoxication, or going at a very high rate of speed.

sure, but high beams is sort of really temporary and often sort of sudden. I mean if someone is going the speed limit what does slowing down considerably look like in that instance?

for some reason that got downvoted, but I thought my reasoning was clear and of course reasonable. Poor vision caused by fog is different than poor vision caused by high beams, you should slow down considerably in thick fog, but coming over a hill, high beams in your eyes you probably should probably just ease up a bit.

If there's an oncoming car with high beams on a straight empty road I'm more inclined to speed up so I pass them by faster.

If you're blinded, you should slow down or even stop until you'll be able to see again. Driving blinded is irresponsible.

My country's driving rules say that explicitly.

I said the judgment is reasonable but reserve my judgment on the sentence. I’m saying people should drive safer. That’s all.

A good portion of my reasoning comes from my daily dealings with my kids. This case bears many strong resemblances to arguments they come to me with.

Edit to clarify: when my kids come to me with an argument because one was careless and hurt another, the defense is usually that they were acting as reasonably cautious as could be expected. My justification in grounding them (after getting the facts and eyewitness testimony) is that I would have acted more cautiously than they did given the circumstances, and would not have caused the same injury, so that their caution wasn’t really as cautious as should reasonably be expected.

Do your children drive? I’m not sure what you mean by saying that these arguments bear a resemblance.

If this judging happens as much as you imply here and in your other comments in this thread, you should probably look at the parenting dynamic you have created and look for ways to change it. It sounds like are encouraging your kids into a dysfunctional competition for your approval and by extension love. You should be teaching them to work out their own differences, not teaching them to appeal everything to you. The former is a great life skill, the later is not.

We try to teach them to resolve problems on their own. But when one of them is negligent to the point of hurting another, then we have to administer justice. Usually writing a sentence a few dozen times to instill the idea for a need of being more careful. Sometimes a grounding, if our judgment is met with a stubborn defense claiming pure innocence despite the evidence, and belligerent accusations of us being unjust judges (ie. “contempt of court”).

Unfortunately, pepole go to prison in Russia for lesser things. I've met a guy who has spent 8 months shared between a jail, a Russian prison and a penal colony (the worst of the three) because he was dumb enough to say he had a bomb in his souvenir bag when an aiport guard kicked it and asked what the (obvious) item was. He wrote a book about the aforementioned experience. So be extra careful what you say or do if you happen to travel to Russia.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41023722-the-million-dol...

That happened around 2006? It’s 2 years after Beslan school siege, when terrorists took hostage 1100 children and 334 died. It’s a stupid thing to say, especially when country is still mourning and on high terrorist alert. Try making a joke at a US airport in 2003 that you have a bomb. I’m pretty sure you’d have weapons drawn on you in a second and ending up worse than spending 8 months in a jail.

Yes, it is very stupid. At least read the book's description, it's a bit more complicated than that, a bit surreal. Maybe he just snapped under stress.

I wish we were as sympathetic to drug dealers and theft as many on HN want us to be towards a programmer who ran someone over in their motorcycle.

I am. You can check my prior comments on our prison system.

I think both the US and Russia should dramatically rethink their approach to non violent crime. Both countries have ridiculously high incarceration rates.

I may be wrong, but I believe most people on HN feel the same way.

Also, to be clear, are you sympathetic to the incarceration of drug dealers and thieves but not sympathetic to the incarceration of someone who accidentally killed someone in an auto-pedestrian accident?

> Also, to be clear, are you sympathetic to the incarceration of drug dealers and thieves but not sympathetic to the incarceration of someone who accidentally killed someone in an auto-pedestrian accident?

Didn't see this because you added it in an edit. I think we should generally avoid prison time as much as possible, for all of these cases.

I just get frustrated when I often seem to see people defending people with similar social status to themselves, but having apparently no sympathy for people of different social circumstances.

Clearly the consensus on HN is not entirely the same way, as some of the other replies to my comment show.

I am sorry for having assumed intentions that you don't have, though, more trying to comment on a general trend I've observed.

Why? Those people chose to do something bad. The programmer was not doing anything intentionally wrong.

He drove his motorcycle into two people, one of whom was standing and helping their friend who was intoxicated on the ground.

In 2020 hindsight, operating a motor vehicle in conditions and a manner resulting in the death of a human being represents at the least negligence.

Circumstances as described possibly mitigating some aspects of this, but driving (or motorcycle riding) is an inherently and widely known dangerous activity. Situational awareness is a requisite practice.

So you can not envision any scenario where a person could "operate a motor vehicle in conditions and a manner resulting in the death of a human being" being completely avoidable accident?

Your question seems unclearly phrased and with a literal meaning at odds with its tone.

But yes: a proper respect for circimstances and situation might have avoided the accident.

So I choose to jump off of an overpass and happen to land straight in your vehicle's path and now you're somehow negligent?

At night time, coming over a hill, coming up to a crosswalk, being met with oncoming headlights, it’s reasonable to expect a little more caution than just driving the speed limit as if it’s broad daylight on a flat road. The report seems to indicate that one person was on the ground and the other was helping them up. This doesn’t sound as completely unavoidable as your example.

The guy was moving at 60kmh which is about 37mph.

The only way you do not notice incoming shit at this speed riding a bike is because the shit literally jumps at you.

I know only too well what the "courts of law" are like in Russia. My opinion is that the guy got a wrong lawyer who either could not pass a bribe to the judge, or the other side passed a bigger bribe.

I think this is the correct take from this. It's also one of those situations where US law would be superior over poorly coded civil law (like Russia apparently has). As I understand they only evaluate that the violation occurred (i.e.: person dead, in crosswalk, done by attacker on vehicle). Absent additional information like cam footage showing them jumping out of a bush at the last moment into the crosswalk for insurance fraud, the case will result in a conviction.

It is simply the case that things happen out of a driver's control. In the US you'd be looking at a consideration for involuntary manslaughter charge (or perhaps a lesser negligence charge) if it was found that they were speeding or impaired. Absent those circumstances, it's unlikely any charge would be brought forth. There are some other ways a similar charge could be brought in an investigation, but that's generally how it goes.

A final note on the topic of getting drunk and playing in traffic. I highly recommend you get people that do stuff like this to sign up for organ donation. I have a good friend who had a congenital heart defect that benefited from a heart transplant. This was after the donor walked into traffic blitzed on holiday. So it might be that out of the tragedy of a wasted life they might be able to save someone else's.

> I think this is the correct take from this.

The correct take is jail time for non-violent crime and no jail time for programmers who (regardless of whether we believe his story) killed someone?

why are you equating laws with morality? Just because there's a law does not de facto might is right or wrong.

> I’m convinced the judgment is reasonable.

And I'm not. The Russian justice system convicts 99.75% of those accused. The police work may or may not have been reasonable, but the judgment is a rubber stamp.

I think it is worth including the fact that:

a. He was driving a motorcycle and b. One of the victims was not lying on the road, but instead standing and trying to pull up the other (or so I've read)

If he was driving a car there would have been two corpses.

This is the only difference.

I haven't read the full coverage, but it does appear it occurred at a pedestrian crossing, and there doesn't appear to be any dispute that it was properly signposted.

Most countries require greater care at pedestrian crossings.

Yes, but they were lying flat on the road, intoxicated.

If the google translation wasn’t too faulty, one was still lying down, one was getting up and probably trying to get out of the way.

The main impediment to seeing them seems to be the headlights of oncoming cars, possibly while coming over a hill. I always slow down in exactly those circumstances (hill and oncoming headlights) for similar reasons: you just don’t know what’s over the hill, and it’s an extra few seconds of travel time. There’s no downside and only extra caution and safety for all involved.

There's a medium between being a super careful driver like you and I, and being a grossly negligent driver who drove in such a grossly negligent manner that they deserve over a year in a harsh prison system.

I highly recommend driving like you say, and do so myself. The last points on my license were were over 15 years ago. But I don't think someone who was failed to be extremely careful to this level deserves 1.5 years in a harsh prison system. Maybe lose his license, but not prison.

If he didn't slow down enough that he could stop in the distance he could see then he was grossly negligent.

I don’t know man. I’m sorry I don’t know the language, looks like Russian? Or something closely related? But based on the parent comment translation, and the translation on the issue page, I’m not sure we should be quick to condemn this person.

The court report says he was going 60kph. That’s barley over 35mph, a normal speed limit for city streets. So it appears he was not speeding.

If it really was a drunk guy, literally lying down in the road, at night time (!?!), I don’t think anyone could be reasonably expected be able to respond to that in time.

We don’t know, but assuming that is actually how it played out, it doesn’t sound like the driver did anything malicious. He’s lucky he wasn’t killed himself. I don’t think it’s fair to say ” Most countries require greater care at pedestrian crossings.”

We have no idea what the road or crossing looks like. An awfully unfortunate series of events for both parties it sounds like. Very sad.

I don’t think anyone is accusing the defender of malice. But it is reasonable to expect that people can at least try to drive cautiously. Especially at night, near cross walks. I’ve seen far too many reckless drivers even in suburban streets, almost always young adults or teenagers, on streets that have kids playing at the edge of their yards. They’re testing Murphy’s law. This isn’t a necessary condition of life. This is preventable behavior. Granted, the solution to preventing it starts when they are young, it starts by instilling discipline and humility and self control in youth before they are sent out into the world. Trying to apply these after the fact is like putting on safety goggles after getting an eye injury.

Edit: To make my main point more simply: when my kids come to me because one hurt the other through carelessness, but they’re defense is that they were reasonably cautious, I would answer them, “it wasn’t reasonably cautious because the outcome was that you hurt someone else in a way I don’t believe I would have because I would be more cautious than you were given the same circumstances.” Driving 35 MPH when it’s marked 35 MPH isn’t as cautious as is reasonable when you add in factors of nighttime, hill, and oncoming headlights (effectively high beams).

> But it is reasonable to expect that people can at least try to drive cautiously

It is. But the underlying point being made by several people appears to be that they believe he _was_ driving cautiously. And that it just so happens that, even doing so, the situation was such that it was still reasonable for him to not be able to avoid the collision.

I've been driving around Poland a bit, one of the things I always watch out for are drunk guys on.tbe road at night. It could happen that one passed out in the middle while crossing.

My uncle told me a story once how he stopped just in front of one, and the only reason why he saw him was because of a reflection from an incoming car didn't look right on the road surface. His intuition is quite good as he's an experienced driver. He just said he slammed on the breaks because it looked funny. I never forget that story and always make sure that I can completely see the surface I'm driving on. I'd imagine it would be the same thing quite common in Russia, or anywhere really... Especially around crossings

We have a clear idea of what the crossing looks like, "переходящим проезжую часть по нерегулируемому пешеходному переходу, обозначенному знаками 5.19.1 и 5.19.2, а также дорожной разметкой 1.14.1," means that it was a "zebra crossing" marked on the road and with appropriate street signs before it.

In Russia, pedestrians have right of way on such a crossing, and drivers are required to be able to stop so that if a pedestrian starts crossing, they can yield (is that the proper term in English road rules?) to that pedestrian - i.e. even if you can't see any people, the marked crossing is considered as a warning to drivers that there might be pedestrians crossing and they must be able to stop and yield there.

So in cases of poor road conditions (e.g. ice) and poor visibility, they would be legally required to choose a speed so that they can do so suddenly if needed. This necessity to drive slower given the street signs and conditions is also explicitly mentioned in the court ruling as part of justification of why the defendant is considered guilty.

So it's not really an analogy of a person lying on the road, because that's not a "normal" stretch of road - if someone decides to drunkenly crawl across such a pedestrian crossing, then that would be stupid and reckless and dangerous, but legally they still would have right of way and cars would required to stop and yield as if they had a red light.