tisonlyi

The article is all set up to pin responsibility on the father after a tragedy. Nice. Do we have any idea, aside from sketchy relative positions, of what really happened? Everyone knows that life is more complicated than it's painted in articles like this.

I don't know exactly what happened, the quoted policeman doesn't know, the journalist doesn't know and you don't know. We have some details, framed in a particular manner by the journalist for their own ends.

Was the driver singing, with closed eyes, to a beautiful line from a song important to them? Was the father taking an important call and distracted for a moment? Anyone who has been around kids knows there are times that you lose track of them. It happens. It is NOT negligence in anything but the pedantic sense.

This is a tragedy, plain and simple, likely nuanced with numerous facts that our gracious supplier of ground-out-page-filling-words-to-a-deadline in the media has decided to paint out, for whatever ignorant or (ig)noble reason.

Doesn't running from the point you're left at to judgement and apportioning of blame seem a tad ghoulish and righteous?

Some relatives of the deceased might well be regulars of this forum.

Matthew 7:1

I hope the father - and mother - find a way to cope with their loss.

I hope the driver finds a way to sleep at night.

I hope the little one didn't suffer.

For the rest, I don't know.

__________________
"I do not agree that the dog in a manger has the final right to the manger even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place." - Winston Churchill, 1937 --{ORLY?}--

Tully Mars

Then they have their own deficiencies. Doesn't mean a parent who let his one year old toddler wander off any less at fault when ill happens to that toddler. And it doesn't mean everyone with the opinion that the father actions were less then responsible have these deficiencies.

In a weird way this whole things reminds me of an incident that happened not long after I left the Navy. I went to work at a correctional work camp for juvenile offenders. One of the men, Alan, that worked there was a complete asshole. He was the second guy in charge. He fucked with the kids minds, he screwed with peoples schedules just for the fun of it. One time he fucked with a low IQ kid so bad the kid went out and burned a hole in his hand with a lit cigarette, by the time I got out to talk to him he was shaking and crying so hard he had stuff coming out his eyes, nose and mouth. Alan told him he'd be getting a home visit with his mom, then that he wouldn't, then he would and then back to no. He did this for days, finally the kid snapped. He came in at night and banged one of the co-workers in the back room leaving word if his wife called to tell her he was "out." He was an all around ASSHOLE. A little after a year on the job I came in one day and just walking in the room you could tell something was wrong. I asked "what's going on?" The manager told me maybe I should sit down. Shit I thought something happened to my wife or daughter. I sat and the manager explained to me "Alan, had a massive heart attack last night- he didn't make it." My first thought was "Ok, whats the bad news?" People sat around that office a lamented what a great guy Alan was. No Alan was an asshole, you all hated this guy... with a fucking passion. I didn't say a word. I sat and listened as these people spoke of all the nice things Alan had done, a lot of which was simply fiction. It was as if his dying made him a good guy. My thought was he was a live asshole and now he's a dead asshole, one less asshole in the world. Everyone wanted to go to the service, being low man I was scheduled to work. Fine by me, they gave me a "grief day" later that week. I took my kid fishing and never once thought of Alan. I never expressed to anyone there that I didn't think Alan's death changed the fact he was an awful human being. Nor would I tell the parent involved in this case that I think he's responsible, in any way, for his child death. But post it on a board I'm fairly certain he's never going to see, uh yeah.

To me this is a reckless tragedy. An accident is something that happens when you can't see it coming. To me an acccident would be- "we've been swinming on this beach for years, my parents brought me swimming here as a kid. The water was full of people playing and having fun. I was watching my kid closely, never left my sight. Never even heard of a shark being in these water. Now I have and now my son's gone."

A parent should foresee letting a one year old play several houses away near a street, even a quite street, could easily lead to a dangerous situation.

You have a point, the article is really brief and lacks details. But no one seems to dispute the one year old was several houses away from his parent. Kind of hard to justify letting a one year old get that far away on or near a street, IMO.

And I'm done here. I hear there's titties on the tittes board, this is simply too depressing.

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I used to drink to drown my sorrows, but the damned things have learned how to swim- Frida Kahlo

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Shauk

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/nation..._Daughter.html

This is quite the epidemic lately huh?

tisonlyi

It begs this question:

If you drive cars so ludicrously large and impractical for an urban/sub-urban setting, can you rightfully claim not to have seen a toddler?

Size/weight/angles/etc. Almost everything seems against these cars in terms of driver awareness/ability to effectively perceive and react.

Aren't these SUV/tank things just incredibly dangerous as a concept?

__________________
"I do not agree that the dog in a manger has the final right to the manger even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place." - Winston Churchill, 1937 --{ORLY?}--

Shauk

playing in traffic is a dangerous concept too.

mixedmedia

Big difference is you knew this man. You knew he was cruel. You don't know that about the guy we are talking about here. You don't know if he was smart or stupid or cruel or kind. Not once have I commended this man's actions or attributed them to his superior parenting skills, so I'm not quite sure why you are bringing this story up. Not that it's not an interesting story in its own right.

uh, yeah.

__________________
Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats. - Diane Arbus
PESSIMISM, n. A philosophy forced upon the convictions of the observer by the disheartening prevalence of the optimist with his scarecrow hope and his unsightly smile. - Ambrose Bierce

dd3953

The father should have been paying attention and the drive should have been following the limits put on speed. If either one of them were being responsible that would not have happened.

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[Technically, I'm not possible, I'm made of exceptions. ]