
How I learned to live again, after running a man over - Mimino123
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/apr/05/i-became-a-killer-fatal-road-accident-forgiveness
======
nickswan
“PTSD continues in unexpected ways. I’m still hypersensitive to noise, anxious
in crowds. I cry at the tiniest prompting, often at kindness and evidence of a
shared humanity.“

I would never associate ptsd with these symptoms. My daughter was diagnosed
with Leukemia in May ‘17 (she’s responded well to treatment so far) and I’m
susceptible to all of these - but I would never have labelled it as ptsd.

~~~
ggm
If you're seeing a mental health professional it's an interesting conversation
to talk about labels for illness, and how people ideate around them. If this
label doesn't work for you, you don't have to wear it.

If you aren't seeing a mental health professional, given the stresses in your
life, it's worth at least thinking about. I value time spent talking to
somebody dispassionate, but interested in my mental welfare for a number of
reasons. It only has upsides, as far as I am concerned.

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tmnvix
The number of comments on that article along the lines of "this happened to me
/ my family member" is illuminating.

I think as individuals we don't have a good understanding of just how harmful
motor vehicles are. This is even though most people know of someone that was
killed or maimed before adulthood. Like suicide, I think the consequences of
motor vehicle crashes are mostly hidden. This doesn't only apply to the fatal
crashes. I'm sure people that are maimed tend to venture into the public
domain less often than the able-bodied. If they were more visible, we might be
more aware of the carnage that happens on our roadways.

I think there will come a time when the idea of guiding a couple of tonnes of
metal at speeds of up to 70km/h within a metre or two of pedestrians will seem
absurd.

~~~
JKCalhoun
It is already absurd. I'm not sure why we, as a society, allowed cars to take
over our "pedestrianways". I suppose it was gradual — only a few cars at
first, traveling relatively slowly back then.

~~~
ryanjshaw
You may be interested in the following article, 'The forgotten history of how
automakers invented the crime of "jaywalking"':
[https://www.vox.com/2015/1/15/7551873/jaywalking-
history](https://www.vox.com/2015/1/15/7551873/jaywalking-history)

~~~
awat
Interesting read, I didn’t realize the jay in jay walking was a slight.

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maxxxxx
Stuff like this makes me wish for self driving cars the most. I am fine with
killing myself with my driving but it would be very hard to deal with killing
another person. I think most of us pretty much every day sometimes don't pay
attention and could potentially cause an accident. It's just pure luck getting
away with these mistakes.

~~~
amelius
> I am fine with killing myself with my driving but it would be very hard to
> deal with killing another person.

This makes me wonder (without judgement) how the engineers at Tesla and Uber
are mentally handling the recent events.

~~~
zpatel
It makes me wonder how folks that work on weapon systems that are used to kill
innocents in poor countries like yemen feel..probably much worse than Tesla
engineers?

~~~
sannee
Why would you chose to work on a weapon system if you are unable to handle the
fact that weapons are used to kill people? It's literally the job description.

That is the difference between them and Tesla engineers - people killing is a
bug in self-driving cars, not a feature.

~~~
zpatel
That's true.

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ilovecars2
> I turned left on to the main road, and began to move up through the gears.
> That’s when a car coming towards me flashed its lights. This used to happen
> to me a lot in the Mini. So much that a couple of years earlier I’d taken it
> back to BMW to get it checked; yes, my headlights were wrongly adjusted and
> I had inadvertently been annoying other drivers. So when this driver
> flashed, I instinctively flashed back: “No, those aren’t my main beams –
> these are, see?” > The time between my flash and the impact was
> infinitesimal.

I’m having a hard time understanding the crash as there is so much information
absent from the article.

What kind of main road was this? Was it in a town or a A road between two
towns? Was it designed for pedestrian usage (there are lots of A roads in the
U.K which are not designed for pedestrian usage. These roads are often known
as BYPASS roads and are designed to keep motor vehicles out of town centres).
Was it street lit? Given the fact that the other driver flashed him I would
think not? What was the speed limit? Was it appropriate for the road?

~~~
derekp7
Here's the spot where I believe he got on A148 based on the description
(heading east out of Holt, turned right around the bend where the road joins
A148)
[https://www.google.com/maps/search/holt/@52.9119877,1.114502...](https://www.google.com/maps/search/holt/@52.9119877,1.1145028,17.72z)

I used streetview to follow along the road, it is a 2-lane that has sporadic
houses and somewhat wooded, there is a sidewalk on the left side or the road.
Speed limit signs say 30 km/h (so just under 20 Mph). After the residential
area (1.3 km), it opens up to mostly farm field for another 1.5 km, then it
hits another residential spot. So the description of "just winding through the
gears" would put it probably at the end of the first group of houses, where it
makes sense that residents would be walking (there is a payphone and a bus
shelter in the middle of that stretch of road).

~~~
ryanjshaw
It says the victim, Rawson, had just exited a bus, and the driver was ramping
up in gears - shortly after the left turn off the A148, as a bend begins to
straighten out, there is a hidden bus stop on the left side of the road:
[https://www.google.com/maps/@52.9118915,1.1132237,3a,75y,231...](https://www.google.com/maps/@52.9118915,1.1132237,3a,75y,231.32h,71.39t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sab0dRvemBgfxooE54GYnbQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656)

There doesn't appear to be any obvious lighting in the area; it may be the
oncoming driver flashed because they could see Rawson was in the road and
realised the oncoming driver wouldn't have seen him, having just come around
the bend.

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ljlkjlasjkd
It's my wish that someday speed limit is strictly enforced. Instead here, the
norm is for people to go 10 to 15 mph over speed limit. If you don't speed,
you will receive harassment from the vehicle behind -- flashing of lights,
honking, or tail-gating.

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thescriptkiddie
Please don't call it an "accident". The Associated Press recommends using the
term "crash" instead.

[https://www.transalt.org/news/releases/9545](https://www.transalt.org/news/releases/9545)

~~~
RickS
>avoid the word “accident” in stories about traffic crashes, saying the word
“can be read as exonerating the person responsible

TFA indicates that the person has indeed been exonerated.

