Comment by gruez | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gruez | Hacker News Reader

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>Yes, he would be banned from driving if he ran over a kid.

Realistically no, unless he was hilariously reckless.

> SMITH: There’s the case that happened with the little boy on the Upper West Side, Cooper Stock. He and his dad were crossing the street. And a driver was making a turn, and he just ran over the little boy, didn’t see him.

> SMITH: So right now all that is is a summons to the driver for failing to yield. But it does not rise to the level of any kind of manslaughter or homicide charge. There was a study that showed that between 2008 and 2012 there were something like almost 1,300 fatal crashes in New York, and there were like 66 drivers arrested.

>Smith says that New York has some of the narrowest standards for conviction in the country. It’s called the “rule of two” — you need two significant violations of traffic laws in order to bring a charge, including some incredibly reckless or criminally negligent act. Otherwise, it’s just … an accident.

https://freakonomics.com/podcast/the-perfect-crime-2/

Maybe it's different in europe, but I doubt that'd be the case either unless there were several aggravating factors.

> Realistically no

And you had that one example to prove it. That settles it.

I know you want to make your point but stacking up fallacies (same in your "Timmy" comment) isn't helping [1]. Most humans grow up having personal responsibility, then at adult age the legal system puts even more on them. A lot more, on them personally, under threat of deprivation of freedom or monetary loss from their own pockets, or in the case of driving even something as small as losing the license. There are exceptions ("daddy pays" sort of thing).

Now contrast that with corporations, especially large ones, where almost every bit of responsibility is diffused behind a corporate veil that allows every single human to sidestep any personal responsibility whatsoever. Some shareholders' money take the plunge. And starting recently you can offload even more responsibility to the computer/AI.

I might lose my license if I cross a red light. Will a company lose the license to operate all autonomous cars when one crosses a red light?

[1]

> My anti-terrorism AI drone escaped the sandbox and shot up gruez's house. The drone was punished by removing its livery. What else can be done? What next, should we punish soldiers fighting terrorists too?"

> I tested my anti-cancer medication in the drinking water of the neighborhood. gruez got hit the hardest by the side effects, God rest his soul. But what can we do, ban cancer research?

When they say "narrowest", they mean that New York is one of the most difficult places to convict a driver. Right above what you quoted:

> Our neighbors have different vehicular laws than we do. Both Massachusetts and Connecticut have vehicular manslaughter statutes that punish traffic fatalities or serious injury that occurs because of simple negligence. New Jersey doesn’t have the same statute as Massachusetts or Connecticut, but even they have vehicular manslaughter statutes that encompass more behavior than what New York has, which is absolutely nothing other than drunk driving. So around the country — in Iowa, Louisiana, Georgia, Nevada, Kansas, California — all over the country, there are states with vehicular statutes that punish a failure to yield as a traffic fatality, that punish the driver.

So this seems to be a peculiarity of New York, I guess. Also, this is from 12 years ago on a podcast that has been widely criticized for inaccuracy and cherry-picking. I'd be curious if this was even true at the time, and if so, if it's still true or if the laws have changed.

Obviously local laws differ and I'm sure there are many exceptions, but it is very common to have your license suspended if you run over someone with your car.

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