Gwazi Magnum

Driver who killed teen now suing dead boy's family

News story here

Ran across this story here.

Though, when showed this story I was also showed a Devils Advocate post that people might also want to look at.

Devils Advocate

You're driving home one evening on a dark road. You're sober, you're paying attention to the road, you're not texting or even adjusting the radio. You might have edged a bit above the speed limit hurrying home, but doesn't everyone? The road is clear and you're the only one around.
Suddenly you see a flash of bicycles immediately in front of your headlights and slam on brakes a split second before feeling the horrible bump and crunch. Someone is screaming. You're stunned for a moment in complete disbelief - where could they have come from? You never took your eyes off the road! How could you not see them?
You push it from your mind and jump from the car to help. One kid is running up from a ditch, screaming his friends' names as he runs to the nearest. That boy is howling in agony, severely injured but alive. As you approach, both start swearing at you, calling you names and telling you to get away, to call the cops. You saw another bike go flying over your car, so you run back to a shadowy figure on the road behind, dialing 911 as you go.
Dear god. That kid is torn to pieces. You've never seen a human being in that shape before and you have no idea what to do. How do you aid him? Do you touch him? You try talking to him while you look for an uninjured place to lay a hand for comfort. Maybe you try to hold his hand and keep it together even as you want to panic, retch, run, scream. How the fuck did this happen?
You're pretty traumatized during the questioning, but sometime the next day you're allowed to go home. Nothing in the world looks the same though. The boy you tried to talk to is dead, another might not make it. It's weird to see the sun shining and cars driving by like nothing happened as your spouse drives you home. He calls a psychiatrist as soon as you've settled into a chair, staring out a window, replaying everything that happened. Your mind relentlessly questioning why didn't you see the boys. Telling you this was your fault. If only you hadn't left so late. If only you'd had your high beams on. If only...something.
Your story makes the local news and you see the memorial, the grieving family. You wish you could do something for them. Go to the funeral, send flowers, tell them you're sorry. But they don't want to hear from you. To them, you're their son's killer. You understand, so you sit home, unable to eat or even talk. In fact, by the time the police return to talk about the investigation, you're suffering from PTSD as surely as any war veteran.
The cops tell you that the two survivors and evidence have painted a clear picture. The boys were wearing dark clothing on bikes with hardly any reflectors. They road three abreast and did not move to the shoulder even though they surely saw and heard you coming long before you could have seen them. It was a tragedy, but it wasn't your fault. It could have been anyone. Nobody would have been able to see them and stop in time. There will be no charges.
It's little comfort to you, though. Survivor guilt eats at your mind as you go through the motions of daily life. Nothing will ever be the same after seeing what you saw that night. You haven't driven since and never want to again. Just riding in a car makes you panicky and distraught. You can't go back to work. You can't resume your normal activities. Happiness ended that night, and you're just going through the motions now, no matter who was at fault.
But for the sake of your sanity and your family, you try. The psychiatrist is helping a bit. You're holding up as best you can. Your attorney tells you that the families aren't happy with the investigation results; their child is gone and they want someone to be held responsible. You try to be understanding. They're grieving and want more answers. You cooperate and wait for the second investigation to be finalized.
Then your friend or your son or someone else says, hey...I gotta tell you something before you hear it elsewhere. That's when you learn that the parents are spreading rumors. They say you were drunk or texting. They're telling everyone and it's spreading like wildfire. People stare and whisper at the grocery store. Maybe someone even yelled "murderer!" as you picked up your mail. Prank calls start, maybe some anonymous mail or ugly posts online show up. You tell the police and shut down the avenues people have to harass you, alienating yourself from your extended family and friends as you do.
Then it hits: you're being served with a massive lawsuit, formalizing those allegations. They want to take everything from you and from your family, to leave you bankrupt if they can. The panic attack hits like a freight train as you digest the news. You break down completely and terrifyingly. Maybe it is your fault. You deserve this. Why weren't you the one who died? You've killed a child, you've ruined your family.
Those around you are outraged. They know you didn't text and weren't drunk. You don't deserve this. They want you to heal and move on. You're so emotionally wrecked, you can barely even speak with your own attorney. But your husband is standing strong and tells him to fight it. You've already lost thousands in missed work, paying doctors and psychiatrists and lawyers for something that wasn't even your fault. It's not right, and someone is going to fight for you in this.
The attorney tells you that the best course is to offset their demands with a counter-suit for all the suffering the accident has caused you. You are also a victim here, but instead of letting you heal, these people have dragged matters out, ruined your reputation, unraveled your mental and emotional progress and now threaten you with financial ruin, all for an accident that the police already determined wasn't your fault.
But even this gets taken out of context by the family's lawyers who want to torture you further. They feed a story about how you're suing the victims you killed, as if that's all anyone needs to know. On Reddit, they've rushed to judge you a psychopath, a worthless piece of garbage.
But really, you just wish it had been you who died that night. You don't want this lawsuit, but you do want this nightmare to end. It won't though. The nightmare of running over three kids will replay in your mind for the rest of your life."

As usually I won't influence starting opinions by giving my own, I'll let people voice theirs first.

Minimum Wage

So Boerd said
Wait wait wait, so you think there will be enough who will offer to work for less that the whole labor force is screwed? It is my body. If I can kill myself, why can't I work for too little?

You're new to OT so I'll just leave it as a warning this time.
It is bad practice to bring up past debate's into a current one, especially when it's being used to disprove someone.
Someone's stance/argument should be judged and evaluated on that stance/argument, not on past arguments they made.

Now, everyone's guilty of slip ups here including me.
But in good practice separate debates should remain separate debates unless if both parties agree to bring it up, but even then it's usually because it's actually relevant to the current debate happening. More often than not though, you'll find thread separation to handle it such as say debating feminism/sexism and one of the topics comes up for women's rights in Abortion. Instead of having an abortion debate inside the feminism debate it is taken to a separate thread to handle abortion specifically.

So Boerd said
Good spin, Brovo, however the number I cited was unemployment, not labor participation. That means, of X black teenagers looking for work, 35 percent cannot find jobs compared with 20 percent of white teenagers.If you want to play booming economy, Black teenage unemployment in 1930, not a booming economy, was lower than white teenage unemployment. So the racists established a minimum wage to keep black workers out.

And Brovo's argument still covered this...
African American's on average are still in less well off cultures and more likely to held up in things like gangs.
And people in those situations regardless of race are less likely to be hired than say people who are in an area that provides a good education and gives people more time to practice hobbies, interest and studying rather than say having to sign up to a gang.

And this is not a case of "minimum wage made to keep out black workers" at all. We've already established the effects of on average less education, worse communities and increases gang activities. All of which make hurt someone's ability/value as a worker. In a time where say minimum wage didn't exist people could get paid for pitiful amounts. On average black people were valued for less, both out of racism and for increased probability of being exposed to things that reduce ones ability to work well. Any smart business person would hire more black people simply because they were cheaper, it makes more economic sense like how MDK highlighted as well.

Once a minimum wage was set though you couldn't do that, you had to pay at least a set amount for the worker so naturally the conditions/requirements went higher. Now instead of paying say 3$ an hour you now have to pay 9$ an hour or something. This would make people act/think along the lines of "Now... if I have to pay a whole 9$ an hour for a worker now... I don't want it spent on someone whose in gangs and has no education, I want it on someone who can focus on the work and have a decent understanding of it", and since do to cultural situations white people on average are better educated/suited than black people it makes sense the employment rate changes by race.

If you go into the black dominant communities though and improve it, give better education, get rid of gang activity etc. Then you'll eventually see them all on an equal playing field, and only then can racism be claimed to be going on if the number's don't match.

Vaccines?

Vortex said
Hell, what if we can't developed new vaccines because the virus has become so evolved? Because the virus is so resistant to drugs?

It would take a long series of micro-changes for it to reach such a point. Where we should be advancing medically fast enough to keep up and have enough time of observation to beat the virus to it. There's still the small chance we might not be able to forever keep up an effective vaccine, but diseases save for a few like Cancer have been becoming very easy to counteract/stop. The main obstacle honestly being human beings who refuse to take the vaccines.

TV Show Suggestions/Favorites

Mr_pink said The IT Crowd

Dammit! >.<

Vaccines?

Vortex said
Now I don't know if this is true so don't judge me by it, but I heard that one day the disease will one day become so evolved that it will have out evolved the vaccine, rendering the vaccine useless. Your thoughts?

That's a confirmed. Everything evolves and adapts, no reason a disease one day would not evolve to a point the vaccine fails to work.
Hell that's basically what I said above in regards to flu shots. However just as the disease evolves/changes so will the vaccines, we'd simply have to come out with new vaccines to deal with the new evolved viruses.

TV Show Suggestions/Favorites

How the hell did I miss firefly too! D:

*Note to self* Don't suggest shows in 4 in the morning, I'll forget too many good ones.

Minimum Wage

In a perfect world? There isn't if it is willing.

The issue is that in the real world such a thing is way to open to abuse (even if say we see this kind of practice a decent amount, example: teenage babysitters).
Like for example sweat shops, and then there's also the matter of it's almost impossible to support one self for 3 dollars an hour. Back when it was legal to pay this much people would pay this little all the time and this was common enough and/or jobs were so hard to get at the time that people were forced to work their butts off for next to nothing because it was that or die.

I'm sure someone else will come in and say this far better than me (with far more info with it to boot), but in a nutshell it's something such as a simple job for a few hours for extra spending cash it should be fine as long as the conditions are actually humane. But if it's a job that's meant to be lived off of, then the person is quite simply not going to survive with such low an income and if they do, they just barely get by and leave nothing for their kids if they have any.

Suicide, Tragic or Selfish?

Turtlicious said Ugh, I barely skimmed what you wrote, because again you're doing that thing where you use way more words then necessary.I was just laughing at him for the absolute ridiculous story. I am allowed to find things humurous and state my opinions am I not? Or are you going to try and rile the troops to get me banned again. You know for a group of people who talk about how much they want intelligent discussion, you guys seem to do a to discourage it.

So without even reading it you assume it's too long? :P
Well that's one fast way to remove yourself from a debate, refuse to listen to the other side.

And also, I was never one of the people who tried to ban you.
We discussed this in private before and you know this very well Turt.

ActRaiserTheReturned said
Yes quite. Yet you go on to make a valid point. There's no point in saying "That didn't happen". There are numerous factors that should sink in before trying to neuter such a large claim, such as, "Well why would someone who lived through a horror movie want to give one hundred percent proof of what had occurred?" *I'm talking to Turt here*, Would Turtle like to ask a female victim of assault her Doctor's results of the pap smear? Her STD testing? Etcetera? Would Turtle like to butt in to her therapist's business, have a little talk with her Church pastor, have her show him the putrid crime scene? Not to mention, there are some things that for some reason just don't get reported in the news, even murders. At least not through the news media the way I think he means. What if it not never got reported, what if a lot of other things happened that Turt couldn't know about just because he has nothing to do with it. By the way, just saying, you have something to do with it because I talked about it, isn't an excuse to go making railing accusations and attacking someone's credibility out of, well statistical analysis. People have been known to spontaneously combust. Does it make it any less fucking painful, after surviving being set on fire, God knows how, just because some bumbling, armchair detective, faux lie detecting Internet Tought Guy thinks he has the right to be a pain in the ass?

Holy shit... :/

That completely flew under the radar for me, and you're right. A ton of these cases do get unreported, and on top of that I was totally out of line to imply any claimed victim needs to bring such testimony/proof forward to make claims. Sorry man, I normally try to be careful on this stuff but I dropped the ball hard right there.

That being said, I still need to address future arguments made purely on the basis of the argument and not on the stories you mentioned above, may it influence my reading of your argument in a positive or negative way. That's the point of discussion/debate, to address it on the argument itself, not the individual or history behind it. But I was totally out of line to say proof of any kind should be expected when it comes to such a personal case/incident (and this is one of the rare cases you'll catch me saying something like this. Almost all kinds of things require some evidence to back it up, such as say if this was in court and the case was over charging _______ with rape.

And I'm rambling at this point...
Put plainly, I messed up (badly) and I apologize. I should not expect anyone to ever be required to provide proof for a claim such as being raped.

Suicide, Tragic or Selfish?

So Boerd said I did not choose to have the most potent emotional bond with her. The boyfriend entered knowing the risks, I was given no choice.

I find this only half holds up.
You're right in that you do not choose to be born to your parents, but you do choose to enter a relationship.

But in both cases you do not choose how you feel about them.
For example I did not choose to feel disconnected from my parents (mainly my mother) the way I am, that was just a result of having been raised in a mainly argumentative household.

Clarification cause that on its own makes it sound abusive

I was born with Autism at 3 years old, and was almost immediately being into ABA (Applied Behavioural Analysis) Therapy for the next 12 years of my life. We talked on this recently and she admitted to having reacted to me largely in fear in that if she went easy/allowed certain behaviour's to slip by that it would permanently wire itself as I got older and mess me up. So she was unnaturally paranoid, easy to freak out as a result. Especially when she is typically a very emotional person and I tend to be a very logical and hard facts sort of person.

We're currently working on fixing/improving the relationship. But it wasn't abusive, just we spent so much time arguing growing up I never had a chance to grow close to her.

And at the same time I did not choose to feel close my girlfriend at the time either, it was the natural result of chemistry.
Neither was me consciously going "I'm going to like/have strong feelings for ________ but not for ________".

You can easily end up feeling very close to your parents and not to your partner, very close to both, not close to either or very close to your partner but not your parent (as was my case).
If it ever is a case you feel very close to them, the individual committing suicide will cause mass harm for you regardless of how you know them.
It's just that in your case it's your parents you hold the closest relationship to, while for others it may be a partner, or a friend, a sibling, maybe even a pet. Everyone varies.

Bottom line, regardless of relation suicide hurts if you're close to the person. But it does not change the fact that it's that individuals chose to do what they wish with their life, not your choice.

TV Show Suggestions/Favorites

Jorick said
House of Cards
Breaking Bad
Boardwalk Empire

O_O Holy shit how did I forget these...

Sadly I haven't finished House of Cards for Boardwalk Empire yet. :(
But Breaking Bad is a master piece.
Also if you watch House of Cards, I suggest the original British version.