"I lived with a ghost, with this child inside me, speaking to me."
September 22, 2017 1:02 PM   Subscribe

The Sorrow and the Shame of the Accidental Killer. How do you live after unintentionally causing a death? There are no self-help books for anyone who has accidentally killed another person. An exhaustive search yielded no research on such people, and nothing in the way of therapeutic protocols, publicly listed support groups, or therapists who specialize in their treatment. But there is AccidentalImpacts.org, a support group site started by social psychologist and educator Maryann Gray, who at age 22 struck and killed a child with her car.
posted by showbiz_liz (41 comments total) 40 users marked this as a favorite
 
Nothing close to this has happened to me, but I recognized some of the trauma responses described in the article. When I was a kid, I accidentally knocked over and badly injured a favorite teacher. Like many of the profiled people say, I have absolutely no memory of the event, and it was also a very long process to personally figure out how much guilt or responsibility or culpability I had or ought to have. My heart goes out to these people.
posted by showbiz_liz at 1:08 PM on September 22, 2017 [14 favorites]


This article also reminded me of a couple others which also stuck with me:

Fatal Distraction (previously).
Forgetting a child in the back seat of a hot, parked car is a horrifying, inexcusable mistake. But is it a crime?

Subway Deaths Haunt Those at Trains’ Controls.
Operators who go five years without a “12-9” — transit code for a passenger under a train — should count themselves lucky.
posted by showbiz_liz at 1:13 PM on September 22, 2017 [4 favorites]


reminds me of a news story from a year back. A guy had hit and killed a kid who'd run out in front of his car, and was aggressively pursued for it by the kid's parents and their lawyers.

In the end, after an exhaustive investigation, it was concluded that:

A. the guy was not speeding, was in fact traveling well below the limit,
B. the kid ran from behind a parked van to directly in front of the guy's car, giving him no time to even apply the brakes,
C. if there was any blame to be apportioned, it was to the kid's parents who were not even aware he was outside of the house at the time.

Long story short, the guy who hit the kid made a point of going public with how badly he'd been treated throughout, including having no access to anything like victim's services, because he was utterly traumatized by it.

Sad and messed up and a reminder that sometimes accidents really are accidents.
posted by philip-random at 1:38 PM on September 22, 2017 [48 favorites]


"To Kill a Child" by Stig Dagerman
posted by alexei at 2:17 PM on September 22, 2017 [4 favorites]


Yeah, one of the podcasts that was following the hot car death last summer, during the discussion of the father's affect upon finding his son, played a 911 tape of a different father who found that he had left his son in a car and that his son had died. I will never forget the sound of that anguish. I have a strong stomach for true crime podcasts, but that 911 call was too much for me.
posted by janey47 at 2:24 PM on September 22, 2017 [2 favorites]


I got hit by a car when I was nine and was very, very seriously injured. I remember nothing - I lost about a month of my memories, from both before and after the event. While, sure, it was in large part the fault of the guy driving the car, there were a bunch of other factors that contributed to it. The school bus driver decided my bus stop didn't exist anymore, and that I had to get off a few blocks up the street. The crossing guard at that intersection had already gone home (my middle school was across town, so by the time the bus came it was already pretty late in the afternoon). I probably wasn't paying attention, but kids cross the street without paying attention all the time and nothing happens. It was just bad luck, with terrible consequences.

It's under better control by now, but when I first started driving I wrestled with the constant feeling that I could be on the other side of that situation now, that I could just as easily have such bad luck and cause someone harm. It was stressful just as a hypothetical; I can't imagine the anguish someone would actually feel.
posted by hopeless romantique at 2:25 PM on September 22, 2017 [25 favorites]


A while back I saw a woman roasted online because she appeared in the NYT Vows section (of all places) and discussed her own personal tragic journey of having accidentally killed a child on a back road. She got this because the article made her sound about as shallow and self-serving as you would expect any white lady in the Vows section to be, but nonetheless I felt something for her. Just because she was -- well, what she was -- didn't mean she hadn't been in pain.

As someone with an anxiety disorder and a swirl of OCD, I know what it is to be afraid that every thump on the roadbed is an animal or God forbid a person that you didn't notice. If it happened to me, I don't know if I could survive it.
posted by Countess Elena at 2:34 PM on September 22, 2017 [2 favorites]


I still think about the driver from this FPP. I cannot imagine the horror, or the haunting guilt: I wouldn't wish it on anyone. I'm glad that there are groups giving support for this kind of trauma.
posted by Ten Cold Hot Dogs at 3:18 PM on September 22, 2017


Someone accidentally killed my uncle and young nephew, and I often wonder about them, too. Not as much as I think about my relatives, but I definitely wonder about him and what his life is like, and hope he has found some kind of peace. There was a trial, it was sad, it was just really really sad. I wish there were more of an understanding of how to support people who go through this kind of trauma.
posted by sockermom at 3:23 PM on September 22, 2017 [3 favorites]


I have two close friends (from different times in my life) who each accidentally killed someone in a vehicular accident.

In one case, two college students (drunk and underage) were horsing around on the sidewalk on a major thoroughfare near their college, and one friend shoved the other into traffic, as a joke. MY friend was the car he was shoved in front of. She was only going 30 mph, but it was enough. It was awful. She was put on leave at work pending the investigation. She was so traumatized she couldn't leave the house for days. She was consumed with thoughts of having killed someone else's child, and got very fearful about her own child leaving the house. She had not been drinking, but of course there was a breathalyzer at the scene, and she gave up drinking for the next FIVE YEARS like just in case someone got shoved in front of her car again. There was a TON of publicity because it was "promising young college student killed by car near campus." The cops found the two students at fault (and her at zero fault), and even told her she could recover the costs for her car damage against the students' families, which of course she did not. (Not even her insurance company thought that was a very good idea.) She had to get a new car because she couldn't keep driving that one -- after she eventually got it back after it was impounded as evidence, and then had all the blood and, uh, other stuff cleaned out of it. It took several weeks before she could return to her normal life, and five years before she "felt" normal. One infuriating coda, the students who set up a memorial fundraiser for the kid didn't have a particularly tidy narrative, so they donate the proceeds to Students Against Drunk Driving, which means every year my friend gets infuriated afresh when there's a fun run to remember "a kid who got killed by a drunk driver" as it rapidly became elided to. Because, as she points out, there isn't really a charity cause for "DON'T FUCKING PUSH YOUR FRIENDS INTO TRAFFIC, YOU DRUNK FRAT BRO ASSHOLES."

The other one hit a car and killed two people at what was known as one of the most dangerous intersections in the state. It was blind for the cross street, and the main street (which he was on) was signposted too high, had a curve and a hill, and you came down the hill into the flashing sun so you were blind when you came to the hidden cross street that couldn't see traffic on the main street. The other car was at fault because it had a stop sign and pulled out in front of him, but he killed two people, both fathers, and he had to go into a mental hospital and be put on suicide watch and take a leave of absence from work because he was so devastated. He expunged his demons (more or less) via a multi-year campaign to force the state to upgrade the intersection so that it couldn't happen again (there had been some ridiculous number of fatal accidents there). But he still prefers his wife drive and he will pull over if the sun's too blinding.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 3:25 PM on September 22, 2017 [44 favorites]


On New Year's Eve, Larry's girlfriend knocked on the door to tell me that Larry (a large man) had passed out while checking the fridge, and she and her daughter wanted help moving him so that they could close the fridge. As it turned out, in the process of moving Larry, and making smalltalk with his girlfriend, I forgot some basic facts, like Never Leave Someone Passed Out On His Back. Larry was purple, and as they argued about calling 911 (a recent law said that if someone does while using drugs and you were present, you could be charged with negligent manslaughter) I awkwardly excused myself and skulked back home. The next day I found out that Larry had died. It took a long time to deal with that, and I'll probably still be dealing with it, to some degree, for the rest of my life.
posted by idiopath at 3:26 PM on September 22, 2017 [18 favorites]


Fatal Distraction (previously). Forgetting a child in the back seat of a hot, parked car is a horrifying, inexcusable mistake. But is it a crime?

This is scarily relevant and eerily timed to a news story I just watched minutes ago about a child that was left in the backseat by a child-care worker. I was thinking to myself, “How does one live with something like that?”

I don't know what I'd do. I already struggle with mental health and that is my own brain that I fight again. Fighting against my own brain and the guilt/emotions of an act that took the life of another.

...
posted by Fizz at 3:27 PM on September 22, 2017 [1 favorite]


I have some ptsd from an incident like this that I will carry forever. I read the article when it came in our mailbox, and deeply appreciated it. I am hoping that forum might help a bit.
posted by Dashy at 4:40 PM on September 22, 2017 [3 favorites]


I think it's important to remember that we are discussing accidents. A lot of you are keen to point out who was at fault in your anecdotes. A person was killed and it was not intentional. There is still a person at the other end, at fault or not.
posted by Brocktoon at 5:13 PM on September 22, 2017 [2 favorites]


I was a passenger in a fatal single-car accident in which my best friend and her boyfriend died on-scene. The vehicle was driven by a friend-of-friend who I had only met that weekend, and who I never saw again once he left the hospital after recovering from his own injuries (non life-threatening).

I've thought about him often and only wish him peace. I've never felt any anger or frustration toward him, just regret and sadness for how that day must have completely changed his life (and of course many others). I've thought often that it was a blessing he didn't know my friends well - that they were essentially loosely connected strangers. I thought it might have meant less of an emotional burden for him. But, now I don't know - maybe it didn't matter.

The cause of the accident was written down by the police as related to him speeding, but I never believed that - as unbelievable as this may sound, we had been watching the speed limit changes as a group throughout the drive, and we had confirmed the speed limit as a group just a minute or two before the accident. I have had a hunch (unconfirmed) that he may have swerved the car to "spook" us, as we were just college kids driving on a lonely dark rural road, and he lost control. This thought has made me feel so terrible for him - I can only hope if that was the real cause of the accident, that he has blocked that memory out completely. Or, maybe he has no idea what really happened either, and is just as confused.

I don't have a way to contact him now, 10 years later, and no sense on whether that would even be appropriate. I hope his life is turning out OK.
posted by samthemander at 5:28 PM on September 22, 2017 [14 favorites]


Samthemander, your experience reminds me of something that happened to an acquaintance of mine.
Driving his entire family of spouse and 6 or so children, he saw a cat on the side of the road. As a joke, he announced, "Watch this, I'm going to kill that cat!" and lightly swerved the van towards it, not intending to actually hit it.
Of course, the cat jumped in front of the van and he hit it.

According to him, it took him literally DECADES to regain his family's trust to the point where his being a cold-blooded murdering sociopath wasn't brought up when emotions ran high. Of course he is "at fault" for his negligence, but the consequences are so outsize to the magnitude of the mistake that it can keep one up at night.
posted by Krawczak at 5:48 PM on September 22, 2017 [8 favorites]


Just yesterday I was walking through a parking lot, and an unattended child popped out (without looking, of course) from between two cars. It really spooked me, because the distance was such that if I had been driving, there was a good chance I would have hit the little girl with no chance at all of stopping. It can happen so easily even when you are doing things right, and then you add in answering a text or being distracted by a conversation... It's a sobering thought.
posted by Dip Flash at 5:50 PM on September 22, 2017 [1 favorite]


A would-have-been niece was killed by a taxi driver before I married the sister of the neice's mother. I don't really know what my wife's family thinks of all that, and have no idea what happened to the taxi driver. But I drive carefully only in part to avoid hitting you...there's a significant component of self-interest in me driving slower than the guy behind me might prefer.
posted by spacewrench at 6:03 PM on September 22, 2017 [2 favorites]


Self-driving cars can't come soon enough.
posted by leotrotsky at 6:22 PM on September 22, 2017 [20 favorites]


When I was in high school, a classmate of mine accidentally crashed her car. She was ok, but her younger brother was killed in the accident. It was her fault in the sense that the cause of the crash was human error, but it wasn't her fault in the sense that she was doing anything wrong other than being an inexperienced teenaged driver. I've thought about her a lot over the years, and I thought about her last week when I read this article. It's such an incredibly unfair thing: it could have been any of us who had to live with that burden. I was an inexperienced teenaged driver with a younger sibling in the car. Almost everyone I knew was at one time or another.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 6:28 PM on September 22, 2017 [4 favorites]


My brother was stopped at a stop sign and two kids on bikes speeding down a hill ran into him. One was killed. I know he still thinks about those kids.
posted by emjaybee at 6:31 PM on September 22, 2017 [4 favorites]


For a while years ago I worked with a young woman who accidentally shot and killed her brother with a hunting rifle. They were young teens when it happened. Her parents pretty much never mentioned the episode to her again after the funeral.
posted by ThatCanadianGirl at 8:02 PM on September 22, 2017 [3 favorites]


There are some many places in everyone’s life where this didn’t happen just because of luck. Like that time my cousin and I played King of the Tree and he landed on his shoulder and not his head. Or the time my friend and I jumped off a porch roof with umbrellas to stop our falls and landed on our feet instead of our heads. Or that time driving when I was young and not paying attention and I ran a stop sign and hit a car but no one was hurt.

I think that’s why so many people search for someone to blame when an accident happens, so we can distract ourselves from all the times we got lucky and didn’t kill someone by making it clear that the person did *something* wrong. Otherwise we’d be crippled by the fear of dying or causing death at every turn.
posted by teleri025 at 8:47 PM on September 22, 2017 [17 favorites]


It took me about 7 years for my PTSD to diminish to the point that I could at all enjoy driving again after I was involved in a pedestrian accident as a driver. I'm still a bit afraid to really write much about it. The legal and insurance proceedings that follow it feel interminable, when you already feel terrible. And the judgment for stuff like this—both externally and internalized—is so harsh. It kind of reminds me of the judgment that accompanies the notion of infidelity, actually. I'm not morally equating the two things, but I do recall reading that very few books and studies out there address such emotional experiences in an at all objective way, perhaps to our collective detriment.

The difference, of course, is that accidents are accidents; infidelity is a choice. The way people respond to hearing anything whatsoever about them can be similar, though. At least in my experience, people tend to look at you askance when you tell them that you once accidentally hit someone with your car.

I'd gotten engaged and promoted in the weeks prior to that and had been turning out of my work parking lot to meet colleagues and celebrate when the accident occurred. Basically the pedestrian walked into the side of my car as I was turning out of a gated parking lot. The only thing I saw was a flash of her clothing and hands next to my window. Neither of us had seen the other in the murky dusk; the timed streetlights hadn't been adjusted for the end of daylight saving time. Ultimately 50–50 fault was assessed. But the incident cast a shadow over everything. I never did hang out with those colleagues thereafter, though I worked there another 5 years. For the 6 months following the accident, while everything was worked out between parties, I barely did more than go to work and go back home. That was a dark winter.

And yet I feel lucky and thankful that the pedestrian survived her brush with the side of my car with a compound fracture. Even at low speed, it's terrifying how much damage can be sustained. I feel for anyone who goes through anything like that, and I'm glad we're having these conversations through articles like this.
posted by limeonaire at 9:04 PM on September 22, 2017 [7 favorites]


Actually, I've been on the wrong side of a teen driver's bumper too -- T-boned on my bike by a girl who was turning left from a side street, but who was only looking to the right to see if she could beat the pickup (who, thankfully, didn't FINISH ME when I ended up on my back in his lane).

I don't bear her any ill will, but my family might feel differently if she'd killed me. Or maybe not; I'm pretty well-insured. Anyway, I hope she's learned to look left when turning left.
posted by spacewrench at 9:15 PM on September 22, 2017 [5 favorites]


If only the road engineers, policymakers, and politicians who sustain deadly, largely shitty North American road design felt any of this guilt and trauma. They're to blame for about half of road deaths, I reckon.
posted by anthill at 9:23 PM on September 22, 2017 [17 favorites]


I was working in the neonatal ICU in residency, almost 20 years ago now. The NICU was right next to the maternity ward and there were always a dozen or so pregnant women who were long term admissions because of threatened premature labor or other various pregnancy complications that necessitated being on bedrest and close to an operating room and a tertiary care neonatal unit. Many of these women would be there for weeks trying to stretch their gestations as long as possible to give their babies the best chance of survival. Every time there was some complication or change of condition the NICU team (me) would talk with the mothers about options -- deliver now and face consequence X or give medicine and do a procedure and face consequence Y. Some of these women I spoke with multiple times over their stay and you get to know and empathize with the slow motion life or death stress they would endure for weeks on end.

One such patient had finally made it to the magical 34 week point when delivery is considered reasonably safer and when she started contracting again, her tocolytic medications were held and she progressed through an uneventful labor and delivered a completely healthy baby boy.

In those days, the hospital had no rules about co-sleeping with babies and, as any exhausted new mother knows, sometimes when the baby's done breast feeding and falls asleep you just gently roll them off to the side and drift off blissfully yourself, pressed against your newborn for a precious hour of sleep.

It was late evening and we were just getting things tucked in for the night when I heard her screaming and running out of the room. We coded that baby for almost an hour before he was able to maintain a steady heartbeat and could be moved over to the unit so the mechanical ventilator could take over for my aching hand that was working the bag. Nearly an hour of inadequate brain perfusion in a 34 weeker who started off with tenuously little reserve before his face got wedged between his mother's arm and the hospital bed.

What followed was an agonizing 3 weeks of the most complicated critical care course I'd ever witnessed. Intracerebral hemorrhages. Ventilator associated pneumonia. Inflammatory lung injury. Bowel ischemia and necrosis with emergent intestinal surgery. Repeated cardiac arrest. The whole time, his devastated parents hovering, praying, and bearing witness.

In the end, it became clear this baby would never survive and would continue to suffer greatly while everyone tried to fight the inevitable. I had rotated off service by the time everyone, parents included, agreed to let go.

It was just another tragic neonatal ICU drama where stories like this are ongoing and routine. I hated the NICU, hated it with fury. As much as I would like to say I think about that woman and hope she found peace, the truth is I don't and that's by necessity and by choice.

The reason there are so few resources and support groups for people who caused accidental deaths is that some grief is so unimaginable, so overwhelming, and so pointless that few of us can go to such a dark place and return with an answer that makes any sense. Normally I'm as empathetic as anyone, but in some situations my brain just has to shut down and nope out or I'd have no way to move on. It's a nice thought that there might be comfort and support and healing for these people but it's not something I'm able to wrap my head around and process. I wish blessings upon the people who find themselves having to try.
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 11:26 PM on September 22, 2017 [19 favorites]


When I was in college, my best friend, Daniel, was killed in an accident. Only days after buying a motorcycle, he was riding it and slid on a sandy road and under the wheels of a pickup. Which was driven by the man who had sold him the motorcycle. I never blamed the pickup driver, and I don't think Daniel's family did, either. It was an accident. But until now I have never given any thought to how that man might have felt then and might feel today.

My friend's death was when I began to understand that a second or two one way or the other often means the difference between a normal day and tragedy.
posted by bryon at 2:16 AM on September 23, 2017 [4 favorites]


Every single day we strap on armor and go into combat.

Every time we go to work, every time we need groceries, every time we get our hair cut, we go into combat. In a sequence resembling the gearing-up montage from every action movie, unlock the door, strap into the seat, key in ignition, and we're in the thick of the action. A giant gladiatorial ring where the object is to get where you're going, not hit anything, and not get hit. While moving at inhuman speeds, in giant suits of armor, in tight quarters, with participants at all skill levels, and random obstacles, some of which are humans.

We take it for granted, but step back every so often and look at it. I don't know anyone whose life hasn't been affected by a car accident.

Combat used to be a rarity in peoples' lives. Wars happened, but not all the time. I can't think of a period before the invention of the car when violence was an integral part of peoples' lives, day in and day out, every single day. I don't think we're built for this; how often are adrenal glands triggered in daily commutes? How well adapted are our bodies to this regular wash of chemicals?

And if that wasn't bad enough, every mile we drive is another nail in the coffin of our once-stable ecosphere.

Every single day we strap on armor and go into combat. Mostly, we get to where we're going, and we don't even register a sense of relief. Sometimes, we get hit. Sometimes, we hit someone else. Lives are ended, bodies are broken, minds are devastated. We trust to our reflexes, the reflexes of others, the wiles of traffic engineers, automotive safety regulations, and sheer random chance to keep us safe, and we've learned to not think about the consequences when things inevitably go wrong. We bravely go into combat anyway.

There were 1.25 million road traffic deaths globally in 2013.

About 30,000 people died as a result of armed conflict in 2013
posted by MrVisible at 8:35 AM on September 23, 2017 [19 favorites]


You guys should read up on Vision Zero and associated projects. It focuses on redesigning transportation infrastructure for safety. I can only speak to NYC, but since it was adopted here around 10 years ago, it's noticeably reduced traffic deaths and injuries. My nonprofit estimates it's prevented about 150 deaths in NYC so far and thousands of serious injuries.

One tiny thing you can do is replace 'accident' with 'crash' in your vocabulary, which we encourage because 'accident' implies 'these things just happen.' We also refer to injuries and deaths from crashes as 'traffic violence.' Even if no one directly involved in a crash is at fault, there's almost always SOMETHING that could have been done to prevent it, often by changing the design of the road.

(Also I should mention that the original article and group include people who've caused accidental deaths by any means, not just crashes. Though that's probably the most common way.)
posted by showbiz_liz at 9:27 AM on September 23, 2017 [6 favorites]


I can't think of a period before the invention of the car when violence was an integral part of peoples' lives, day in and day out, every single day.
Dude. You don't know very much about history, do you?
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 9:37 AM on September 23, 2017 [9 favorites]


Dude. You don't know very much about history, do you?

Educate me. At what period in history was nearly the entire population of a country going into combat on a daily basis? Soldiers, civilians, teenagers, all fighting for their lives, every single day, for decade after decade, generation after generation? When has that been normal?
posted by MrVisible at 9:41 AM on September 23, 2017


Pretty sure I'm safer driving a car in America than I would walking down any random street in many parts of the world today and in many parts of the past. And I am not terribly pro-car.
posted by showbiz_liz at 9:45 AM on September 23, 2017 [2 favorites]


There are some many places in everyone’s life where this didn’t happen just because of luck.

This.

A motorcyclist tried to stop as the car in front of him stopped short, and wound up laying his bike down. Meanwhile, I pushed my brakes to the floor and could smell them burning, and wound up coming to a stop just feet from the motorcyclist, very conscious that what might be a light tap to a bumper could kill a man essentially lying in the road.

I wasn't driving fast or abnormally or differently spaced from other traffic, but there's another timeline, not too different from this one, where I maybe had a second less reaction time, where I killed that man.

It's a lot to think about.
posted by corb at 10:04 AM on September 23, 2017 [6 favorites]


At what period in history was nearly the entire population of a country going into combat on a daily basis?
Going into combat is your metaphor, but if you're asking about the ubiquity of violence, I would point you towards the entire history of chattel slavery in the Western hemisphere. And I mean, violence was a major way of enforcing social control throughout Europe into the early modern period. Households were governed by violence. Patriarchs were expected to physically punish their wives and children; masters were expected to physically punish their servants. Public torture and execution were methods of social control and forms of entertainment. Public flogging wasn't abolished in Britain until the 19th century.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 10:08 AM on September 23, 2017 [4 favorites]


I'd say that when the only comparisons that can be brought to bear are slavery and the brutal oppression of entire populations, my point that we've underestimated the effects of automotive violence on ourselves and our society seems pretty solid.
posted by MrVisible at 10:20 AM on September 23, 2017 [3 favorites]


I wish I could ❤️ all of these comments. Thank you to everyone who has shared their experiences. Being able to view tragedies from different perspectives is really powerful.
posted by hopeless romantique at 11:16 AM on September 23, 2017 [4 favorites]


  Self-driving cars can't come soon enough.

They'll still cause pedestrian fatalities, except the party-at-fault balance will be shifted from an individual driver to the vehicle manufacturer or fleet operator. Who will pretty much see to it that the dead ped will always be found at fault.

Also, would you like to be in a driverless vehicle and be powerless to stop it killing someone? There would still be guilt, as your need to travel resulted in someone dying.
posted by scruss at 8:00 PM on September 23, 2017 [6 favorites]


>> Self-driving cars can't come soon enough.
> They'll still cause pedestrian fatalities [...]


I guess yeah, they can't avoid the kid darting into the road from between parked cars, but you better believe that it's going to be a vastly, vastly lower number of fatalities than today. Their programming will inherently be far more conservative than the programmers would drive themselves.

Just wanted to add that I read this article (in dead tree format) and it was incredibly well done.
posted by RedOrGreen at 2:39 AM on September 25, 2017 [1 favorite]


If only the road engineers, policymakers, and politicians who sustain deadly, largely shitty North American road design felt any of this guilt and trauma. They're to blame for about half of road deaths, I reckon.

So, this is part of my job, and from the very beginning of my education as an engineer the prime directive in it all is "Don't Kill Anyone". Always think about the catastrophic failure mode, and do your best to mitigate all the risks, and use our best knowledge of unconscious decision making to guide people.

An example of this, and the struggles engineers face in doing this-recently the town I live and work in repaved and re-striped a road in front of an elementary school with a very high number of kids that walk to it. As part of the re-striping of the road we removed the on street parking the kids would filter through (and come out between cars on a road with a 25 mph average speed-a story with tragic outcomes as several poster before me have told) and replaced it with bike lanes, and made the school district completely redo the bus parking and circulation so that buses don't need to back up or kids walk around). The parents lost their minds that they might have to wait an extra 20 seconds for their little child to get to their car, and there are still letters in the paper about what horrible engineers we are to remove their right to park their (no such right exists btw). So take from this what you will, but people will fight you on any change, no matter how obviously needed, just because it isn't what they are used to.
posted by bartonlong at 4:46 PM on September 25, 2017 [8 favorites]


but there's another timeline, not too different from this one, where I maybe had a second less reaction time, where I killed that man.

Yeah, and today there's another timeline, not too different from this one, where I got hit by the driver who was actively trying to plow into me while crossing the street today. I don't think he'd feel guilty though.
posted by jenfullmoon at 8:14 PM on September 25, 2017


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