Texting driver kills 13

[Evil Midnight Bomber]

I don't think sending him to prison for six years makes it any better.

And I don't think sending him to prison makes it any worse.

Again, what are you gaining out of this? You have ignored that question each and every time in favor of telling me about your feelings, regardless of what language you couch it in.

What am I gaining out of this? Personally, absolutely nothing. I also don't get anything personally out of it when a guy who got behind a wheel of a car drunk and runs over a family goes to prison. Again, my view on the matter is that if you are criminally responsible for the death of 13 people you should go to prison. I ignore the question because the question is immaterial. It's not about feelings for me. Outside of this action...I don't know anything about this guy....and I really don't care. He chose to put other peoples lives at risk with his actions...and people died because of it. I get that he didn't intend to kill anyone but he's still responsible for 13 deaths.

You say this is about my feelings...but I think it's about yours. So, let me ask you the opposite question. What do you get out of letting this guy get away with killing 13 people? What separates him from all the other reckless drivers whose actions have resulted in the deaths of others?

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Love it, within the first page it turns into a liberal circlejerk bashing republicans/right.

The governor is right. Babysitting with laws wouldn't have prevented this from happening

Do you feel the same way about laws against drinking and driving?

[Evil Midnight Bomber]

So basically your entire case is nothing but arbitrary feelings. Great. Exactly the sort of thinking that shouldn't be let anywhere near anything we wish to call a "justice system," unless your goal is to make a mockery of the entire thing.

We create one less person with a permanent black mark on his life, despite the fact that said black mark likely has little to nothing to do with his ability to be a generally functioning member of society. We avoid spending tax dollars to feed and house him, instead letting him participate in the economy normally and perhaps generate value. I mean if you want to send a message to him, take away his license and order a ton of community service. At least then we'll get something out of it. There are really a lot of very practical reasons not to send people to prison if it can be avoided. I find it baffling that you should even need to hear them listed. They're not exactly hard to think of.

But nice try with the feelings bit. Betting on my emotions being the foundation of my argument is a losing bet. Don't even waste your time trying.

Generally functioning members of society don't drive erratically for 15 minutes and cause the death of 13 people because of it. Did you not even read the article?

Kuchler, 55, a self-employed welder, said he and his girlfriend were driving back to their home in the nearby town of Leakey when he came across a truck that was driving erratically across the road.

"He kept going off the road and into oncoming traffic and he just kept doing that," said Kuchler, who followed the truck for at least 15 minutes.

Kuchler said he called the sheriff's offices for both Uvalde and Real counties and told them "they needed to get him off the road before he hit somebody."

This is not a case of a guy looking at his phone for a second.

[Evil Midnight Bomber]

I'm not sure why you even think this is a counterargument.

Believe me, I am at least as confounded by your position on this matter as you are with mine.

[Evil Midnight Bomber]

Am I just supposed to spontaneously agree with you and your pitiful non-argument in favor of your position if you repeat the situation to me over and over? I've made it pretty clear why I don't think putting him in prison is doing anyone any favors and rather than directly argue in favor of doing it, you just keep saying over and over that it's your position that he should be put in prison and responding with incredulity towards my position. You don't give any justification. You just repeat yourself as though that's somehow supposed to sway anyone. Again, what does putting him in prison achieve? Why is that better than the other options? You ignore those questions each and every time I ask them, but they are the entire point of this discussion. Until you figure out how to answer them, there's no sense in talking to you because whatever it is that you're doing, it's not discussing.

I don't expect you to agree with me on anything at this point. I think you might argue with me if I told you that if I jump into the pool I will get wet.
I fully understand that not all crimes deserve prison time. I disagree with you that this is one of those times. I don't think a slap on the wrist is in anybody's interest here. I don't think this man is a generally functioning member of society. He made a choice to willfully endanger the lives of everyone around him and as a result 13 people are dead. Putting him in prison serves the same purpose it does for anyone else. It shows that people are held accountable for their crimes. It hopefully provides a little bit of peace to the victims and/or their families. It takes a dangerous person off of the streets.

To me this man is no different than a drunk deciding he's okay to drive home.

[AeneasBK]

No one really gives a fck about driving offenses or the punishments would in any way resemble the seriousness of the outcome.

1 year per person killed. LOL. Fucking joke. REAL detterent to the uncountable retards out there who think speeding/ driving drunk/ driving whilst otherwise distracted with text messages or social media "isn't that big a deal"

[Mehrunes]

Huh, so 20 years old criminals are still "just stupid kids and kids will be kids". Interesting, the cutoff seems to get higher. At what age can one apply some standards of behavior then? 25? 30? Older? Likewise, negligent homicide is just a mistake now. Similar question here. Does it stop being just a mistake at involuntary manslaughter? Voluntary? Murder? Mass murder? Genocide?

Yeah, I'm not a fan of the moral luck element of the "justice" system either. If you make a bad decision while driving, the difference between no punishment and serving hard time isn't really based on what you did, but who was standing where you did it.

"Who was standing there" part alters the "what he did" part quite substantially unless you don't see a difference between "texting while driving" and "texting while driving and killing 13 people". If I throw a grenade out of my window should I not be punished because the people I killed could have stood somewhere else?

We create one less person with a permanent black mark on his life, despite the fact that said black mark likely has little to nothing to do with his ability to be a generally functioning member of society. We avoid spending tax dollars to feed and house him, instead letting him participate in the economy normally and perhaps generate value. I mean if you want to send a message to him, take away his license and order a ton of community service. At least then we'll get something out of it. There are really a lot of very practical reasons not to send people to prison if it can be avoided. I find it baffling that you should even need to hear them listed. They're not exactly hard to think of.

Technically speaking, he has a permanent black mark on his life as it is, unless you postulate not punishing him at all. Which, on one hand, is plausible to a degree given your first post, but on the other hand, that wouldn't lead to community service.

[Felya]

A part of living in a society is the need to react based on the lowest common denominator. You being 20 years old and never being in trouble, while killing 13 people due to a choice you made, is and should be seen, as the same thing as a career criminal doing the exact same thing. The fact that he was 20 and texting, is irrelevant... his actions... his choice... determined the outcome of this tragedy. Laws don't change because you can make an excuse of him being an outlier due to his age or what ever...

It is sucks for the kid, that he will most likely serve more time than the total years the people he killed had left. But, he isn't the one that's dead...

[Deleted]

Yeah, I'm not a fan of the moral luck element of the "justice" system either. If you make a bad decision while driving, the difference between no punishment and serving hard time isn't really based on what you did, but who was standing where you did it.

The resolution of moral luck is simple: segregate the offenses.
Driving while texting is bad and is then assigned equal blame and consequences (perhaps community work, license revocation and/or fine).
And then you assign blame and consequences on the act of involuntarily killing people, and use the fist offense to color the second (in this case: recklessness).

[Noradin]

So did the bus not have seat belts?

It had, but mostly insufficient ones (lap only, not three-point ones) and the passengers were between 65 and 90.

[slime]

meanwhile there is technology that allows you to speak to text and you don't have to look away from the road (if texting is so important to you).

[ParanoiD84]

Life in prison at the age of 20, have fun.

[Xandrigity]

Harsher penalties for texting/distracted by cell phones IMO. I bet 75% of the people I see in a car driving have their cellphone in their left hand and the right on the wheel, while swerving all over the road. Its gotten bad.

[De Lupe]

So did the bus not have seat belts?

Most buses don't have seat belts except for the driver.

[Jtbrig7390]

I get the emotional response, but he's young and it was ultimately an accident.

I'm sorry but ignorance isn't a excuse. There is so much shit on tv these day's about texting and driving.

Should he face life in prison? No but he should face many many many years (2 Years per death so 26 total). He ended 13 lives, His life is forfeit for it. Also he is 20 he knows right from wrong. Give him 26 years and parole in 13.

Other people text and drive all the time, and we don't lock them away for life.

Did those other people also kill 13 people?

[Allybeboba]

Most buses don't have seat belts except for the driver.

This particular bus did. It was a conversion van.

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More info from our local paper here in Houston.

http://m.chron.com/news/local/articl...g-11041354.php

[Evangeliste]

This is why I don't touch my phone when driving. If someone wants me then they have to wait.

They are already an example of how idiotic and dangerous texting is. As for his sentence, I'm glad I'm not involved.

[Allybeboba]

This person only got 5 years texting and killing. And she tried to walk away from the scene. In addition she also has a prior vehicular manslaughter conviction. That was California though, not Texas.
http://www.ddfn.org/texting-driving-can-prison/


Tougher laws will not prevent people from doing the crime. Capital punishment has proven this. People simply think they won't get caught. We just need to make so a driver's phone is disabled while driving. Or at the very least they can't be texting or emailing.

[StayTuned]

nobody here wondering what kind of a shit bus can't protect a single passenger? the accident didn't occur at super high speeds, the guy causing it apparently isn't even heavily injured.

[Allybeboba]

More information from the local here.

http://m.chron.com/news/local/articl...h-11042124.php

[Deleted]

This does not in any way, shape, or form address moral luck. This is just the current system which cares nothing for the concept of moral luck. Involuntarily killing people is an outcome, not an action.

Moral luck is an exercise to probe into, and dismantle, consequentialism. It's not a moral conundrum needing solving to begin with.
If you think it merits exploration, go explore it. I don't, beyond acknowledging it as a fancy quirk arising from an entirely unnecessary holistic approach.
Your following intervention illustrates the very same principle I utilized.

Killing 13 people is an outcome, not an act. If you throw a grenade out your window, you should be punished regardless of whether or not you kill anyone, but the punishment shouldn't be vastly more severe just because you happened to injure or kill someone, aside from maybe a stiff financial penalty to compensate those people or if it seems likely that you'll do it again and there's no way to stop you from doing so.

Precisely.
Texting while driving should be punished regardless of whether or not you kill anyone.
The rest is assigning blame and consequences on the act of involuntarily killing people, like I said, though I didn't consider how (or if) it should.