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Comment by kayfox | Hacker News Reader

I don't know if you haven't noticed, but California has been having massive wildfires in the same area for years now.

This idea that crashed cars or small planes explode in a ball of fire is from Hollywood. When a car or small plane crashes it just crumbles into hunks of metal debris. It has no relationship to the concept of fire starting.

Every action done here is completely orthogonal to fire risk and completely independent of the fire risk of the region.

Under your logic Making an illegal campfire is much much more of a crime here. And this logic makes more sense to me.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/10/27/plane-...

https://www.skybrary.aero/articles/light-aircraft-post-crash...

Only a ratio of 0.04 of accidents resulted in a post-impact fire.

Again to reiterate my point. It's rare.

“Your honor my actions only had a 1 in 25 chance of causing a wildfire” is not a great defense in a state where in recent memory wildfires have destroyed tens of thousands of homes and killed hundreds of people. We’ll see how that one plays out.

I live in that state, and the actual numbers compared with the actual people living in that state unfortunately trivializes the events. More people die in car accidents so it's not like it's a huge tragedy that's on everyone's' minds. It may be if you are affected or close to people who are, but in general it's not top of mind.

It won't go there for the judge, it's too hypothetical. Likely gross negligence at worst without specifying details of a fire. The fire is just a hypothetical for discussion here.

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