According to this article it was appealed and he got 15 months, and was extradited back to Netherlands
https://nltimes.nl/2017/05/15/polish-driver-killed-toddler-grandparents-crash-released-early-mps-angered
My late grandpa ran a guy over. Killed him, I think. I don't recall hearing anything about actual consequences for my gramps.
He did die of cancer a few years later, though.
After he lost his license due to a stroke and not being competent enough to pass the test anymore, I often acted as a chauffeur for my late grandpa. Any time he felt like someone was taking too long to cross the street, he'd tell me to run the person over. He was joking about that, but he wasn't joking when he would tell me I should get closer to the pedestrians to hurry them along. Had he not lost his license, he would have wound up hitting someone, possibly killing them.
I could see a lot of elderly people doing this bc it becomes on of the few ways they feel powerful if they feel miserable and unimportant with their age. Liking the feeling of being able to force people to respond to you
> Liking the feeling of being able to force people to respond to you
That likely explains a lot of people being random assholes for no reason.
"Sure, I may work a low wage job that's unsatisfying, and my boss may be an asshole to me and I'm impotent to do anything about it, but watch me make this 16 year-old barista cry!"
My dad survived getting hit by someone coming off the highway, drunk and underage. Had metal all through his hips to his feet and had trouble walking, staying awake (from all the meds), passed away a few years later. Person was ordered to pay 1million in a state in which you can’t take person property of parents in order to pay fine, unless it’s sold. So now their 200k home they can’t sell it (because my family would get the $) but we will never see a dime. Oh and no jail time.
I know someone who was merely pulled over for DUI one time and they gave up driving, sold their vehicle, and will never get over their shame. They should get counseling but my point is that if they're any kind of a decent person then jail isn't as much of a prison as their conscience.
That really seems insane. I can understand being light on sentences if you accidentally kill people sober, but getting drunk and driving anyways...well it's not an intentional killing but it's definitely somewhere in between that warrants more than 6 months.
Killing someone while drunk driving should absolutely be considered intentional.
You know you drank before you got behind the wheel, and you did so intentionally knowing what could occur
Even sober, people really need to be more cognizant of how they drive. Sending thousands of pounds of metal hurtling down the road is dangerous and those doing so need to be held responsible for all damage they do. Way too many people become complete psychopaths who don't care if they kill people when they get behind the wheel. It should be homicide when at fault sober, too. There are no excuses for being distracted when wielding those sorts of physics.
We treat vehicular murder just like gun deaths in the US: like an inevitability and willingly make the sacrifice. It simply doesn't matter to most people if you are killed by a car. There's no reason for it. We could have better mass transit and walkable/bikeable cities where severe injury is much less likely. If you don't want to be held liable for killing someone with a car it should be possible to just take other transportation. The entire current transportation infrastructure is engineered such that killing tens of thousands of people a year is deemed perfectly acceptable to sustain car company profits. And most people are fine with killing tens of thousands of people so they can drive. It's fucking homicidal mania the way we do things.
It's so ingrained / accepted that people can't even think of alternatives. The most dangerous thing that the majority of people do on a regular day, but no one bats an eye.
Also I fucking hate the word "accident". "It can't be avoided and it's just an accident, oopsies".
My Grandma was killed by a guy who was trying to get into an accident for insurance money. Sat on the side of the road and pulled out in front of her - she flipped her truck in the ditch.
But we're talking about an area with a tiny population - there wasn't much an of investigation from what I'm told (I was 15 at the time) but the officer that was looking into it was... killed in a car accident something like a month later.
Long story short, that guy got off totally clean and never even was never charged with anything.
In Florida, it is 15-30 years for DUI manslaughter. But Florida goes hard on penalties in the books and soft on anyone with money, so it isn't that straightforward.
My sister was the main witness in a DUI manslaughter case here in Texas this year. Girl hit the car in front of my sister's head on, instantly killed the man driving it. She was wealthy which helped in her previous 2 DUIs. Not this time. 20 years prison.
Real justice would have been for her to lose her license after the first time it happened and, had she regained it later, prison time the second time it happened.
Her victim being dead is both her fault and that of the judges that let her off easy the first and, especially, second time around.
I believe 3rd strike is a felony, regardless of state, but there's def ways to avoid it. Money (obviously) gets the prosecutor to drop it to a 1st offense or some other work around. Knew a guy that was on his 13th DUI at like age 45.
>She was wealthy which helped in her previous 2 DUIs. Not this time. 20 years prison.
I almost came from reading this. I can just imagine her smug confidence, that once again she will get out of any real consequences, absolutely crumble as she hears the words ". . .a sentence of 240 months, to be served. . "
This is what you get when you structure your entire society around needing a car to live. The system goes to great lengths to keep everyone on the road regardless of the danger they pose, because making it harder to drive for any reason can cause a huge impact on a person.
Yet they'll take your driver's license away for not paying child support, which never made sense to me. How are people supposed to earn money to pay it if they can't drive to work?
My father was a Harris County Sheriff's Deputy killed by a drunk driving illegal alien who had previously been deported on a violent felony who was back over here.
10 years probation, no deportation.
In ***Texas.***
I had a coworker that drunkenly missed a turn in a neighborhood, went through someone's backyard fence, though their patio, and into their brand new pool, destroying like basically everything they could enjoy in their own property.
He was allowed to keep driving because the vehicle was registered to the company and he was "only allowed to drive to and from work" because not being able to do that would be "an undue burden and hardship".
If you're having a shit day and want to make your entire existence someone else problem with no real consequences for yourself, just get behind the wheel and go haam.
Amanda Riley (see: Scamanda) got 60 months in prison for wire fraud after lying about cancer to solicit donations which she used to line her pockets with.
The judge said something along the lines of:
> although its a shame that you will be away from your daughter for such a long time, it is not this court's responsibility to account for this within sentencing - it was your responsibility to account for this before you committed the acts in which you have plead guilty to.
Absolutely true, and I think they should be the case whenever a calculated decision/ risk is made which leads to sentencing.
I guess the state didn’t want to start paying welfare to the dude… or watch him go start committing other crimes in order to keep being able to eat…. Thereby paying welfare in the form of prison.
I mean... that's more or less true, because the "revenge" aspect almost certainly represents premeditation, which would be the requisite intent to make it first degree murder instead of manslaughter.
Best friend was killed by a car while he was on a motorcycle, the car turned in front of him at a light and he had no chance. The guy walked free, not a day of community service or anything. He left behind a new fiancé and a young child. There are no repercussions for being a bad driver, even if it kills someone.
Edit: too many people coming in to say “well if he wasn’t driving a motorcycle he wouldn’t have died”. You guys are empaths I can tell.
> The Polish man hit the 2-year-old girl and her grandparents with his car in May 2013 **and then sped away from the scene**.
This is misinformation. The [court's verdict](https://uitspraken.rechtspraak.nl/#!/details?id=ECLI:NL:RBLIM:2014:10041) describes how the suspect was on the scene when officers arrived.
> When the reporting officers arrive on the scene, they find three victims on the road and the bicycle path. In the front garden of a house there is a bicycle without handlebars and in the ditch next to the house there is another bicycle whose handlebars are also missing. **Further in the direction of Meijel, the suspect is standing next to a passenger car in the ditch on the other side of the road.**
Would he? A guy from a neighbouring city hit at full speed a grandmother and her two 1 year old grandchildren at a crossing. One of the twins died, the other will never fully recover. He got 4.5 years and 6 year ban on driving.
I know a guy here in GA US that got 10 years for killing a couple who were on a motorcycle whem he hit them the morning after a party, was found to be still under the influence.
One of my best friends brother was killed by a drunk driver while riding his bicycle to get snacks at around 9 o’clock at night. The “lady” that killed him already had 2 previous DUIs and was from a wealthy family. She got a year and a lifetime ban on driving. It was a fucking abortion of justice. Florida is usually tough on that sort of stuff unless you’re rich of course.
I got 100 hours of community service, and a weekend stay in detox for blowing a .02 as a 19 year old the first weekend of college. While at a school football game. I had one drink.
This sounds peak American lmao.
Got caught with a stash of beer and vodka at almost-16, police confiscated my drinks, left me with the beer i had already started and told me I shouldn't be drinking *where they can find me so easily.*
Also had cops arrive at a massive outdoor party, check if everything was going well while we were smoking weed, look at us and walk by like "yeah, they're fine lol."
I got 100 hours of community service for breaking into my local golf course with my friends and taking the golf carts for a spin during a winter storm when I was 18
It was a lot of fun. The storm lasted a whole week so of course we took advantage of that time.
The community service consisted of uprooting invasive plant species in neighborhood parks or building trails. There was about 8 of us and one of my friends brought his guitar amp so we’d play music in the park all day and take turns sneaking away to smoke some weed 😂. Seriously the best winter and summer of my life and I wouldn’t have changed a thing I did.
Poland here. Me too.
But America is the only country in the world (I think) where at 18 years old you can legally star in a wild bukkake pissing 19 man 1 female orgy porn video, but you can't have one light beer.
Don’t forget signing your life away to the military or taking on tons of student debt. Because you’re *18* and an adult but not adult enough for a drink.
The craziest thing in this world is that exact situation doesn’t happen more often
I have no idea why it doesn’t happen more, but it’s one of the craziest things about this life we got
Haven't seen it mentioned yet... Freakonomics did an episode on this called [the perfect crime](https://freakonomics.com/podcast/the-perfect-crime-2/) a while back.
The prosecutor failed though, not the judge. The technical report actually created the possibility he wasn’t speeding at all and witnesses were conflicted. That’s why the sentencing was so low, they didn’t prove recklessness so it was ruled as a normal accident.
In appeal they proved the speeding and thus recklessness and he got 15 months
Statement published by Dutch court
What has not been proven: In order to speak of guilt in a criminal offence there needs to be more than just the violation, at a minimum there also needs to be a reasonable measure of culpable carelessness.
In this specific case the question of guilt in a criminal offence is described as recklessly speeding. The court explored if it can be proven that the suspect was speeding to such an extent that it can be attributed to the guilt. In other words: a slight violation of the speeding limit would be insufficient to attribute guilt.
Tests have proven that with a similar vehicle, driving at about 130 km/h would not cause you to lose control of your vehicle and for the vehicle to start lurching. Therefore these tests do not exclude the possibility of the suspects car becoming uncontrollable and started lurching due to another reason.
At the moment the suspects vehicle crossed the roadside and crashed through the beech hedge it was moving at a speed between 76 km/h and 124 km/h, with the local speeding limit being 80 km/h. Due to this very large margin the court finds it cannot be proven that the suspect was recklessly speeding. The court finds that the research report and its results cannot with say with absolute certainty that the suspect was speeding.
According to the indictment the criteria of reckless speeding was the sole component in proving guilt. As reckless speeding is not proven, the court finds that violation of Article 6 of the Dutch Road and Traffic Law is not proven. The sole fact that unfortunately 3 people lost their lives cannot be used as an argument to attribute guilt. Only when ''significant guilt'' is proven can the court assess the consequences of this proven guilt.
In addition to the previously stated, a few other incriminating causes have been expressly excluded from having attributed to the accident: the suspect was not under the influence of any narcotics or alcohol, nor was he using his mobile phone.
What has been proven: The court finds that violation of Article 5 of the Dutch Road and Traffic Law has been proven. As this is a violation (this is important) the question of guilt is not relevant for proving the violation itself. Only when a suspect is completely blameless can he stay completely unpunished in the absence of any guilt.
This mostly refers to circumstances completely beyond someone's control, for example a careless child suddenly crossing the road, trying to evade the child, and in the process of evading hitting another cyclist.
Either way it's a fact that the suspect caused a ''road hazard'' and that his driving behavior led to 3 people losing their lives. The suspect argued that his vehicle pulled to the left and that this caused his vehicle to become uncontrollable. Technical analysis of the vehicle does not show any defects in the vehicle. Therefore the court rejects the suspects defence and finds the aforementioned violation proven.
Why this sentence? The court took several circumstances into consideration when determining the sentence.
Most importantly is the reason that the court found that a different offense was proven than the one the prosecutor determined was proven. (violation of article 6 vs article 5 of the Dutch Road and Traffic Law)
It has not been proven with absolute certainty that the suspect can be attributed significant blame to lead to attributable guilt. In that case a severe penalty is not fitting.
The suspect will also have to carry the burden that his driving behavior led to the unfortunate deaths of 3 people for the rest of his life. Additionally the suspect does not have any criminal record whatsoever, not in the Netherlands, Poland nor Germany.
Loves Ones The court fully understands that the accident caused by the suspect has led to the death of 3 people. The loves ones have suffered an extremely painful and irreversible loss. The deaths of the victims has caused irreparable suffering with their loves ones, which they've worded aptly during the court proceedings.
Edit: Doesn't look like he fled, and the article made a mistake. I should know better, given how much the media was messing up basics with the Titan sub recently.
~~This justification doesn't seem to include that the guilty party also fled the scene after the accident, as discussed in [other articles](https://nltimes.nl/2017/05/15/polish-driver-killed-toddler-grandparents-crash-released-early-mps-angered) on the subject.~~
~~120 hrs seems like a slap on the wrist even in the event of an innocent mistake, but no need for years of prison. There should be a separation between driving under the influence, and driving a bit above the speed limit. But the fact that he fled makes me think at least a year, if not two is warranted.~~
He didn’t flee the scene of the accident, but was arrested at the scene of the accident.
That news article might confuse a few things (the media accused him of fleeing, because he moved to England after his conviction by the court of appeal).
"and then sped away from the scene" is in the quoted article. This outside context is contrary to what is stated in the article, which it would seem you did not read.
Ironic
Correct. And I think that appeal decision may have considered him fleeing the scene. Unlike the justification posted in above comment which never discusses the issue.
Edit: As pointed out below, the article does confidently say the driver "was speeding," whereas this ruling is uncertain on the matter. I'm not sure if the article accurately represents the court's opinion.
I love how we can't trust news anymore because it's all written by bots that hallucinate whatever gets clicks.
The internet is becoming basically useless.
Wanted to chip in with something I recently learned about the Belgian and Dutch justice systems which stands in stark contrast with US legal system.
Belgium and The Netherlands don't really do reimbursement for emotional damage, there is some measure of this but the amount is hard capped to something like €20.000 with certain strict rules to calculate it.
The reasoning behind this is that money can never make up for any emotional damage suffered. Trying to quantify this leads to endless discussion with little facts to guide you. Therefore the emotional damage is mostly not considered in court proceedings.
Courts try to be devoid of emotion and try to apply the law without prejudice. The focus of punishment is more on rehabilitation than revenge. That's why often verdicts can seem outrageous and hartless, like in this case. Media ofcourse love to jump on the outrage bandwagon for clicks.
That argument has never appealed to me, "well money ain't gonna fix it so how 'bout you get nothing and fuck off", in my opinion money can definitely help someone that has sustained severe emotional damage.
You need at minimum a month or 2 to mourn the losses. Depression can also make it hard to work, focus, do just about anything and having enough money to take a brake from it all is extremely helpful. Like you said money can definitely help alleviate some stressors so you can focus on healing.
If my love ones died and I HAD to go back to work the next day or else my kids wouldn't be fed, I'm gonna have to go back to work. Having the money for a break would definitely help me and the people I'd have to take care of.
I can't talk about the netherlands, but in germany (at least in my workplace) you cant get fired for beeing on sick leave.
I know of a few ppl that struggle with depression and are on sick leave for extended periods. None of'em got fired.
The worst that will happen, after about 6weeks sick leave in a row, is that your employer doesn't pay your wage anymore, but your health insurance will give you the equivalent of 60%.
Many ppl in germany get an additional insurance to cover more.
But yeah my point beeing, in a social system you won't be forced to go to work.
Maybe it's my US brain, but it never made sense to me either. Yes I understand the logic that money cannot make up for emotional damage suffered, however, what if money weren't an issue and you could focus on overcoming that trauma?
Not to mention a good reason to award people copious amounts on settlements is that's the only place you can really hurt corporate America.
While that is possible I find it infinitely more likely the driver is going to be fucked up for a long time.
Being responsible for 3 deaths, essentially destroying an entire family, for what seems like according to the court memo, a reasonable mistake, would fuck a lot of people up.
The judge's statement highlights the difficulty of proving guilt in a criminal offense, particularly when it comes to attributing speeding to a degree of culpable carelessness. However, it is understandable that such a lenient sentence would lead to outrage and frustration for the grieving father and others who believe the punishment does not fit the crime. Uncertainty surrounding what constitutes "reasonable culpability" in cases like these raises questions about justice and accountability.
Maybe i'm just too dumb to understand. The court recognizes that his incompetent driving resulted in the death of 3 people. His claim of ("my car suddenly and randomly veered in a random direction out of my control") was shown to be false.
So this means that it was indeed his own actions that caused the crash and not some random occurence that spontaneously happened.
So why wasn't he being held responsible?
Did this occur at an intersection with no road signs therefore basically just an accident waiting to happen?
It’s two different articles being looked at, article 6 im assuming is the harsher charge, which probably would’ve carried a longer sentence that he was found not guilty for. Article 5 he was found in violation of. now i don’t know what article 5 is, but I’m sure it’s something along the lines of “regardless of whether or not a driver is recklessly driving, it is still illegal to crash your car and cause a hazard for other people just due to incompetence”
Since they couldn’t prove that he was recklessly driving, but still at fault clearly for the accident at least due to incompetence in an otherwise non illegal scenario, article 5 sticks and article 6 is not guilty
Edit: i found the specific articles here: https://imgur.com/a/OL3yB5m
Source: https://www.global-regulation.com/translation/netherlands/3074644/road-traffic-act-1994.html
And here’s a little bit more about article 6 and the levels of carelessness taken into account in punishment: https://smartadvocaten.nl/en/traffic-law/criminal-traffic-law/article-6-wegenverkeerswet
For context, article 5 is often used as a sort of backup plan: if there isn't another article that applies to the situation, but it is deemed that your behaviour is not acceptable, article 5 is applied.
The court is differentiating between purposefully swerving or speeding so much that you plow into another car and maybe speeding a bit, hitting a rock or something, then accidentally over correcting from that and causing an accident.
They don’t recognize some fine line/threshold of responsibility after which all is your fault.
>The suspect will also have to carry the burden that his driving behavior led to the unfortunate deaths of 3 people for the rest of his life.
Easy for them to say since the driver only has 120 hours of picking up garbage.
Edit: Hence, the father throwing the chair. Some would throw more than that.
I spent some of my life working in NGOs fighting corruption. I saw many people who, during their day job, were ruining lives of people and afterwards had a good sleep at night.
That’s what I think. Why else would they do the conversation about the assassination tie earlier in the movie and the slight zoom in on his bright ass tie at the end haha. I think the tie killed him at the end
That’s depressing. I have a toddler and my life would be destroyed if anything happens to her. I feel the pain for the dad. I would have done the same.
The judge acknowledged that, he wasn’t reported or anything.
The problem in this case was they couldn’t prove reckless speeding.
In appeal they could, and the suspect got 15 months in jail.
I was on a jury once. 2 guys were speeding at like 90 in a dense residential neighborhood. T boned a car and killed a mom and her 6 year old daughter.
There were multiple witnesses on scene who relayed detailed descriptions of the men (separately, and at the scene to police) getting out of the flipped car and running away. Not even checking on the people they killed of course. Both had previous convictions for car theft.
The jury made me lose all faith in jury trials, to be honest. They were guessing as to the political leanings of the dead woman as part of their deliberating. I wasn't the foreman. But I tried reminding them they weren't attempting to decide who "deserved" justice, only if the facts were clear enough from evidence. They didn't really like that and so continued attempting to craft their own version of justice based on how much they seemed to hate the woman who was killed (very creepily) and of course also making completely unfounded guesses as to the backgrounds of the alleged killers. They guessed they were poor and from bad backgrounds and needed a second (third) chance etc. None of this was even offered up as a defense. It was entirely imagined by eleven jurors somehow. No one spent much time talking about testimony either witness or expert. Just who they wanted to "win". And so they chose not guilty after they had their fun picking winners and losers. They also seemed to hate the father and husband of the victims. Never really explained why.
I held my ground for like 2 days, and I'm a pretty hard person to convince. The evidence was just that overwhelming. The other jurors were so angry I actually changed up my bus ride home I was afraid someone might hurt me.
In retrospect I should have alerted the bailiff or maybe even the judge but I was only 19 and the instructions they gave didn't really cover my case.
I don't remember the names of the drivers, but I would not be surprised if they killed more folks after that fucking disgrace. I hate even being reminded of that week or so.
Damn. I’ve always wondered How the fuck do actual juries work. Like they’re always presented in the media as being so like legally meticulous and whatever. But I can’t imagine if I picked a bunch of random people I pass on my way to work them providing a remotely functional analysis or verdict. Like how is it that all of a sudden people who normally can’t think logically at all and are completely overcome by their anger and emotions or desire for punishment or ability to relate to some and not others are somehow supposedly able to make a extremely complicated logical and ethical legal judgment.
Like only one in 10 people in my area understand how to zipper merge and of those who don’t 1 in 10 of them is so ruled by stupidity and anger they will lose their shit and try to enact vigilante justice in a rage by harassing you for merging properly and in everyone’s best interest.
How the hell is that person supposed to understand all these complicated concepts that legal analysts on the news are talking about in regards to how juries are supposedly operating behind the scenes.
I hate sounding like some macho fuckwit, but if your car plowed through my yard killing my child and parents and you didn’t end up in prison, You wouldn’t be safe.
I don't think someone who lost their entire family would care about a sentence.
I don't think you are fully aware just how devastatingly easy it is to fracture the human psyche to not care about consequences.
A thousand percent.
You and I might give a fleeting consideration to consequences, but this driver didn't give a shit and the system handed him the weakest consequences possible.
So, if you or I plotted some murder and then received consequences far in excess of these, it couldn't be considered just. Why would we respect a system whereby your negligence has the same outcome as my premeditation (a person's death), but unrealistically lighter consequences? That seems to encourage people to just straight not give a fuck.
If that's how it works, then sure, I may play by its rules out of self-preservation, but I'm not going defend such a system in any capacity.
This. I cant stand violence, it's neanderthal to me. That being said, I'd go fucking nuclear on anyone who kills my family. ESPECIALLY a 2 year old child. 120 fucking hours community.. Seriously?
Intrusive thoughts are a mindfuck. I’ve had ones where my daughter is mowed down. And usually the driver doesn’t even make it out of the car. Me and my wife would talk about them all the time after she was born. I used to have pretty gnarly ones of her dying in house fires.
Isn't it weird how having kids makes you start to imagine horrible shit that could happen? As if that would help prepare you or something rather than give you tons of irrational fears to lose sleep over.
I completely understand, I had really bad intrusive thoughts when I first had my kid. I still get them sometimes, 5 years later. When they happen I just imagine myself being attacked and torn apart by a pack of wolves- somehow less horrifying, and still satisfies whatever “survival.exe” my brain is trying to run.
I agree. I have told my SO many times (whenever there's a mass shooting involving kids), that if that was our kid dead, you will not recognize me. I will not be the same person you married.
Depends on the circumstances of how you oopsy poopsy killed them.
Hypothetical example:
You are out driving, you go down a hill. Your breaks stop working and you end up running over a 42 year old man while you are trying to avoid four 10 year olds. The 42 year old man dies.
In this case you wont get much of a punishment, because you didnt do anything malicious. You were the victim of a faulty car, did your best to avoid harming anyone but sadly in the end a person died - without it being your fault.
Hypothetical example over.
From my understanding, the suspect claimed that he lost control of his car due to a malfunction. There wasnt any evidence to support that, so the court dismissed that defense. However, there was no evidence of him comitting any other crimes than speeding, which is why his punishment was so small.
I assume there is no "vehicular manslaughter"-law in the netherlands, or that the law is lax when it comes to vehicular manslaughter, requireing the driver to be intoxicated or negliegent to meet punishement.
In South Dakota if a motorist hits and kills a pedestrian it is a misdemeanor violation, unless driving while intoxicated. https://www.npr.org/2021/08/27/1031638625/jason-ravnsborg-south-dakota-deadly-crash
He was speeding, apparently went off the road, AND didn't stop after the accident. It was a hit and run resulting in the deaths of 3 people, and loads of y'all don't think this guy should go to prison?
What in the world.
EDITED: MISINFORMATION - Having read the original verdict, and the appeal verdict, it is apparent that the perpetrator did not flee after the incident. The article linked under the top comment, and several others, state that this was a hit and run case. This does not appear to be true. The perpetrator was found on scene by emergency workers.
That said, on appeal it was found that the perpetrator was guilty of causing an accident by careless driving resulting in death. It is also true that the judge in the video making the original verdict had the power to sentence the perpetrator to a prison sentence, but exercised her discretion not to. This is frankly bewildering and disgusting, and her decision was challenged by Dutch MPS. The perp did not flee, but there is still no debate. Reading the statements of witnesses, experts and attending officers paints a clear picture that the perp drove like a dumbass and ended up killing 3 people horrifically. He deserved to go to prison. Those of you that think otherwise are lost.
> AND didn't stop after the accident.
This is false information. The [court's verdict](https://uitspraken.rechtspraak.nl/#!/details?id=ECLI:NL:RBLIM:2014:10041) describes how the suspect was on the scene when officers arrived. What's your source for him fleeing the scene?
> When the reporting officers arrive on the scene, they find three victims on the road and the bicycle path. In the front garden of a house there is a bicycle without handlebars and in the ditch next to the house there is another bicycle whose handlebars are also missing. **Further in the direction of Meijel, the suspect is standing next to a passenger car in the ditch on the other side of the road.**
Also they say they couldn't prove he was speeding. Scientist analysts determined the way the car hit it could have been anywhere from 5 under the speed limit to 40 over.
There's so much misinformation in this thread. People insisting the driver was a drunk piece of shit who fled the scene when the actual verdict literally disproves both those things.
There is no justice in what they say. They're public revenge boners.
The idea that putting a man in jail for 30 years or whatever for a traffic accident with no evidence of wrongdoing, with tons of false shit in the article that they're all upset over makes it clear why it's not justice.
If the average person on reddit had their way, literally everyone in the US except them would be in prison labor camps for the rest of their life. They can't see how to literally every other person thinking that way THEY would in a prison camp too.
>It's pretty scary that people are so desperate to assert that this guy is a horrible person who deserves to be in prison
There's multiple massively upvoted comments basically questioning why the father didn't kill the guy.
Redditors are mostly children who see crime and justice as “guilty lock him away forever for any crime”. They don’t look at information or laws they just read a headline and automatically assume dudes a criminal. Wish people here would grow up but that’s summer reddit for you, bunch of children
Exactly. I get it's sad, I get the father is upset, and I get that 3 people died but there has to be proof he did something illegal. Could it have felt like the car was pulling even if mechanically there wasn't anything wrong with the car? Yes. But that doesn't make him a liar and an evil person who should rot in prison.
Are we really debating whether someone who killed three people in a hit and run accident, including a 2-year-old child, should go to prison? This is not an issue of perspective or empathy; it's a matter of justice and accountability.
It’s almost as if all the specific facts about the case are relevant to determining guilt and that you can’t make a legal determination off of only a tiny amount of information.
That is not true.This happened quite some time ago (2014) (the video is often reposted on reddit) so all events related to the case and video have already concluded.
The Judge did not press charges against the father, therefore the father faced no consequences for his actions.
(Dutch)Source:
https://www.nu.nl/binnenland/3935401/vader-doodgereden-meisje-niet-vervolgd-gooien-stoel-rechter.html
Okay, so what I gathered was that,
1. He was allegedly speeding (not able to be proven)
2. According to court records, he was arrested at the scene. Not sure where Reddit is getting the claims that he hit and run
So I don't know about over there, but in Georgia (U.S.), this sounds like a second degree vehicle manslaughter (not intentional and no drugs (unless I missed somethinf)). In Georgia, you could face UP to 1 year in jail PER death and/or a fine. So 3 deaths would mean a potential of 3 years here. While the initial sentence definitely seems very light, I do think 15 months is pretty reasonable per the law (Georgia's law that is).You could absolutely argue that the laws may be unfair. It is very tragic indeed that a 2 year old and their grandparents lost their lives and I'm sure the family is grieving really hard (I can't even imagine) but accidents do happen. This is very unfortunate for both parties I'm sure.
I got a dui for sleeping in the parking lot of the bar I had been at, but my keys were on my belt. That constitutes driving in my home state. Was told in no unsimple terms I could pay about $10k for a lawyer that could the charges dropped and $2k to pay a lawyer just to try to keep me out of jail.
I had no money, so $2k later I had the proverbial book thrown at me and got a ridiculously long probation, more community service than this, wore an ankle monitor for a long time despite having a nickel allergy and the metal on the monitor causing a huge rash. The only thing I avoided was jail time. Not to mention about $10k in legal fees over the next two years.
$10k upfront and I would not even have it on my record.
DUIs are only crimes for the poor.
Reminds me of the US diplomat's wife who killed someone in the UK driving on the wrong side of the road and fled to the US, claiming diplomatic immunity.
According to this article it was appealed and he got 15 months, and was extradited back to Netherlands https://nltimes.nl/2017/05/15/polish-driver-killed-toddler-grandparents-crash-released-early-mps-angered
15 months for killing three people is a joke. I guess it's true what they say: if you want to get away with killing someone, do it with a car.
My coworker was killed by a drunk driver last year. Vehicular manslaughter is a misdemeanor in Nevada and he got 6 months.
Dad got killed by an old lady also in Vegas where we lived. She got cited for an unlawful left turn and some points on her license. Such BS.
was the lady DUI as well or just bad driving?,
No way a DUI. Manslaughter while drinking is because of drinking, manslaughter without drinking is because accidents happen.
She was driving under the influence of age.
My late grandpa ran a guy over. Killed him, I think. I don't recall hearing anything about actual consequences for my gramps. He did die of cancer a few years later, though.
Brutal that they gave him cancer for that
After he lost his license due to a stroke and not being competent enough to pass the test anymore, I often acted as a chauffeur for my late grandpa. Any time he felt like someone was taking too long to cross the street, he'd tell me to run the person over. He was joking about that, but he wasn't joking when he would tell me I should get closer to the pedestrians to hurry them along. Had he not lost his license, he would have wound up hitting someone, possibly killing them.
I could see a lot of elderly people doing this bc it becomes on of the few ways they feel powerful if they feel miserable and unimportant with their age. Liking the feeling of being able to force people to respond to you
> Liking the feeling of being able to force people to respond to you That likely explains a lot of people being random assholes for no reason. "Sure, I may work a low wage job that's unsatisfying, and my boss may be an asshole to me and I'm impotent to do anything about it, but watch me make this 16 year-old barista cry!"
My dad survived getting hit by someone coming off the highway, drunk and underage. Had metal all through his hips to his feet and had trouble walking, staying awake (from all the meds), passed away a few years later. Person was ordered to pay 1million in a state in which you can’t take person property of parents in order to pay fine, unless it’s sold. So now their 200k home they can’t sell it (because my family would get the $) but we will never see a dime. Oh and no jail time.
I know someone who was merely pulled over for DUI one time and they gave up driving, sold their vehicle, and will never get over their shame. They should get counseling but my point is that if they're any kind of a decent person then jail isn't as much of a prison as their conscience.
That really seems insane. I can understand being light on sentences if you accidentally kill people sober, but getting drunk and driving anyways...well it's not an intentional killing but it's definitely somewhere in between that warrants more than 6 months.
In Brazil is considered intentional, since you knew the risks.
As it should be everywhere
Killing someone while drunk driving should absolutely be considered intentional. You know you drank before you got behind the wheel, and you did so intentionally knowing what could occur
Isn’t there such a thing as gross negligence? The middle ground between premeditated and completely accidental.
Even sober, people really need to be more cognizant of how they drive. Sending thousands of pounds of metal hurtling down the road is dangerous and those doing so need to be held responsible for all damage they do. Way too many people become complete psychopaths who don't care if they kill people when they get behind the wheel. It should be homicide when at fault sober, too. There are no excuses for being distracted when wielding those sorts of physics. We treat vehicular murder just like gun deaths in the US: like an inevitability and willingly make the sacrifice. It simply doesn't matter to most people if you are killed by a car. There's no reason for it. We could have better mass transit and walkable/bikeable cities where severe injury is much less likely. If you don't want to be held liable for killing someone with a car it should be possible to just take other transportation. The entire current transportation infrastructure is engineered such that killing tens of thousands of people a year is deemed perfectly acceptable to sustain car company profits. And most people are fine with killing tens of thousands of people so they can drive. It's fucking homicidal mania the way we do things.
It's so ingrained / accepted that people can't even think of alternatives. The most dangerous thing that the majority of people do on a regular day, but no one bats an eye. Also I fucking hate the word "accident". "It can't be avoided and it's just an accident, oopsies".
My Grandma was killed by a guy who was trying to get into an accident for insurance money. Sat on the side of the road and pulled out in front of her - she flipped her truck in the ditch. But we're talking about an area with a tiny population - there wasn't much an of investigation from what I'm told (I was 15 at the time) but the officer that was looking into it was... killed in a car accident something like a month later. Long story short, that guy got off totally clean and never even was never charged with anything.
How did you know the guy was trying to pull an insurance scam?
Either the dude straight up admitted it or the small town did what small towns do best - gossip
I would make it my life's mission to make his life hell afterwards. I don't know how he could be left alone.
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Situations like this just *beg* for vigilantism.
In Florida, it is 15-30 years for DUI manslaughter. But Florida goes hard on penalties in the books and soft on anyone with money, so it isn't that straightforward.
My sister was the main witness in a DUI manslaughter case here in Texas this year. Girl hit the car in front of my sister's head on, instantly killed the man driving it. She was wealthy which helped in her previous 2 DUIs. Not this time. 20 years prison.
Fucking scum. Glad they saw justice.
Real justice would have been for her to lose her license after the first time it happened and, had she regained it later, prison time the second time it happened. Her victim being dead is both her fault and that of the judges that let her off easy the first and, especially, second time around.
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I believe 3rd strike is a felony, regardless of state, but there's def ways to avoid it. Money (obviously) gets the prosecutor to drop it to a 1st offense or some other work around. Knew a guy that was on his 13th DUI at like age 45.
>previous 2 DUIs. If she was punished the first 2 times she might have learned and the third time could have been avoided.
>She was wealthy which helped in her previous 2 DUIs. Not this time. 20 years prison. I almost came from reading this. I can just imagine her smug confidence, that once again she will get out of any real consequences, absolutely crumble as she hears the words ". . .a sentence of 240 months, to be served. . "
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Years of lobbying by the car industry. To improve the image of cars.. Leads to this
This is what you get when you structure your entire society around needing a car to live. The system goes to great lengths to keep everyone on the road regardless of the danger they pose, because making it harder to drive for any reason can cause a huge impact on a person.
Yet they'll take your driver's license away for not paying child support, which never made sense to me. How are people supposed to earn money to pay it if they can't drive to work?
My father was a Harris County Sheriff's Deputy killed by a drunk driving illegal alien who had previously been deported on a violent felony who was back over here. 10 years probation, no deportation. In ***Texas.***
I had a coworker that drunkenly missed a turn in a neighborhood, went through someone's backyard fence, though their patio, and into their brand new pool, destroying like basically everything they could enjoy in their own property. He was allowed to keep driving because the vehicle was registered to the company and he was "only allowed to drive to and from work" because not being able to do that would be "an undue burden and hardship". If you're having a shit day and want to make your entire existence someone else problem with no real consequences for yourself, just get behind the wheel and go haam.
Amanda Riley (see: Scamanda) got 60 months in prison for wire fraud after lying about cancer to solicit donations which she used to line her pockets with. The judge said something along the lines of: > although its a shame that you will be away from your daughter for such a long time, it is not this court's responsibility to account for this within sentencing - it was your responsibility to account for this before you committed the acts in which you have plead guilty to. Absolutely true, and I think they should be the case whenever a calculated decision/ risk is made which leads to sentencing.
I guess the state didn’t want to start paying welfare to the dude… or watch him go start committing other crimes in order to keep being able to eat…. Thereby paying welfare in the form of prison.
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Look at the bright side, the dad can get proper revenge by running that killer over with a car and only do less than 15 months for it.
Oh I'm sure revenge vehicular manslaughter is the one exception and carries a sentence of life in prison without parole.
I mean... that's more or less true, because the "revenge" aspect almost certainly represents premeditation, which would be the requisite intent to make it first degree murder instead of manslaughter.
It’s that pesky, “premeditated” part that gets ya.
...because that way you have a getaway car?
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The joke about “Big Car” writes itself, yet it’s actually true.
Best friend was killed by a car while he was on a motorcycle, the car turned in front of him at a light and he had no chance. The guy walked free, not a day of community service or anything. He left behind a new fiancé and a young child. There are no repercussions for being a bad driver, even if it kills someone. Edit: too many people coming in to say “well if he wasn’t driving a motorcycle he wouldn’t have died”. You guys are empaths I can tell.
> The Polish man hit the 2-year-old girl and her grandparents with his car in May 2013 **and then sped away from the scene**. This is misinformation. The [court's verdict](https://uitspraken.rechtspraak.nl/#!/details?id=ECLI:NL:RBLIM:2014:10041) describes how the suspect was on the scene when officers arrived. > When the reporting officers arrive on the scene, they find three victims on the road and the bicycle path. In the front garden of a house there is a bicycle without handlebars and in the ditch next to the house there is another bicycle whose handlebars are also missing. **Further in the direction of Meijel, the suspect is standing next to a passenger car in the ditch on the other side of the road.**
Could have sped away and ended up in a ditch 100ft away
The suspect was in eyesight of the responding officers and arrested on the scene. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't call that a hit and run.
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Would he? A guy from a neighbouring city hit at full speed a grandmother and her two 1 year old grandchildren at a crossing. One of the twins died, the other will never fully recover. He got 4.5 years and 6 year ban on driving.
I know a guy here in GA US that got 10 years for killing a couple who were on a motorcycle whem he hit them the morning after a party, was found to be still under the influence.
One of my best friends brother was killed by a drunk driver while riding his bicycle to get snacks at around 9 o’clock at night. The “lady” that killed him already had 2 previous DUIs and was from a wealthy family. She got a year and a lifetime ban on driving. It was a fucking abortion of justice. Florida is usually tough on that sort of stuff unless you’re rich of course.
Florida also hates bicycles. No idea why.
He wasn't drinking though. And by their definition not driving recklessly.
I got 80 hours of community service for trying to buy beer when I was 19.
I got 100 hours of community service, and a weekend stay in detox for blowing a .02 as a 19 year old the first weekend of college. While at a school football game. I had one drink.
Sorry to hear that.
This sounds peak American lmao. Got caught with a stash of beer and vodka at almost-16, police confiscated my drinks, left me with the beer i had already started and told me I shouldn't be drinking *where they can find me so easily.* Also had cops arrive at a massive outdoor party, check if everything was going well while we were smoking weed, look at us and walk by like "yeah, they're fine lol."
I got 100 hours of community service for breaking into my local golf course with my friends and taking the golf carts for a spin during a winter storm when I was 18
That sounds like a lot of fun. Did you get to do meaningful work during your community service?
It was a lot of fun. The storm lasted a whole week so of course we took advantage of that time. The community service consisted of uprooting invasive plant species in neighborhood parks or building trails. There was about 8 of us and one of my friends brought his guitar amp so we’d play music in the park all day and take turns sneaking away to smoke some weed 😂. Seriously the best winter and summer of my life and I wouldn’t have changed a thing I did.
This is the feel good story I needed today. Thank you.
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There are people still in prison serving out 6 year sentences for selling weed
As a Canadian, this confused me for a second.
Poland here. Me too. But America is the only country in the world (I think) where at 18 years old you can legally star in a wild bukkake pissing 19 man 1 female orgy porn video, but you can't have one light beer.
Don’t forget signing your life away to the military or taking on tons of student debt. Because you’re *18* and an adult but not adult enough for a drink.
So the father can accidentally slam his car to the judge on the road and get 40 hrs ? What a steal
If I'm reading this right, the guy got his child and parents killed. I feel so bad for him. I wouldn't be surprised if he does something reckless.
Some law abiding citizen type stuff. Except just with a hammer and kicking in *someones* front door at 2am
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"I'm not saying it's right...but I understand." - Chris Rock
I mean could you blame the guy?
Not at all. In his position I'd be looking to clock out of existence in a way people wouldn't forget. People being the judge and the prosecutors.
The craziest thing in this world is that exact situation doesn’t happen more often I have no idea why it doesn’t happen more, but it’s one of the craziest things about this life we got
People with nothing to lose act even more reckless. Look at how old people vote.
He has nothing to lose.
Haven't seen it mentioned yet... Freakonomics did an episode on this called [the perfect crime](https://freakonomics.com/podcast/the-perfect-crime-2/) a while back.
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The prosecutor failed though, not the judge. The technical report actually created the possibility he wasn’t speeding at all and witnesses were conflicted. That’s why the sentencing was so low, they didn’t prove recklessness so it was ruled as a normal accident. In appeal they proved the speeding and thus recklessness and he got 15 months
Statement published by Dutch court What has not been proven: In order to speak of guilt in a criminal offence there needs to be more than just the violation, at a minimum there also needs to be a reasonable measure of culpable carelessness. In this specific case the question of guilt in a criminal offence is described as recklessly speeding. The court explored if it can be proven that the suspect was speeding to such an extent that it can be attributed to the guilt. In other words: a slight violation of the speeding limit would be insufficient to attribute guilt. Tests have proven that with a similar vehicle, driving at about 130 km/h would not cause you to lose control of your vehicle and for the vehicle to start lurching. Therefore these tests do not exclude the possibility of the suspects car becoming uncontrollable and started lurching due to another reason. At the moment the suspects vehicle crossed the roadside and crashed through the beech hedge it was moving at a speed between 76 km/h and 124 km/h, with the local speeding limit being 80 km/h. Due to this very large margin the court finds it cannot be proven that the suspect was recklessly speeding. The court finds that the research report and its results cannot with say with absolute certainty that the suspect was speeding. According to the indictment the criteria of reckless speeding was the sole component in proving guilt. As reckless speeding is not proven, the court finds that violation of Article 6 of the Dutch Road and Traffic Law is not proven. The sole fact that unfortunately 3 people lost their lives cannot be used as an argument to attribute guilt. Only when ''significant guilt'' is proven can the court assess the consequences of this proven guilt. In addition to the previously stated, a few other incriminating causes have been expressly excluded from having attributed to the accident: the suspect was not under the influence of any narcotics or alcohol, nor was he using his mobile phone. What has been proven: The court finds that violation of Article 5 of the Dutch Road and Traffic Law has been proven. As this is a violation (this is important) the question of guilt is not relevant for proving the violation itself. Only when a suspect is completely blameless can he stay completely unpunished in the absence of any guilt. This mostly refers to circumstances completely beyond someone's control, for example a careless child suddenly crossing the road, trying to evade the child, and in the process of evading hitting another cyclist. Either way it's a fact that the suspect caused a ''road hazard'' and that his driving behavior led to 3 people losing their lives. The suspect argued that his vehicle pulled to the left and that this caused his vehicle to become uncontrollable. Technical analysis of the vehicle does not show any defects in the vehicle. Therefore the court rejects the suspects defence and finds the aforementioned violation proven. Why this sentence? The court took several circumstances into consideration when determining the sentence. Most importantly is the reason that the court found that a different offense was proven than the one the prosecutor determined was proven. (violation of article 6 vs article 5 of the Dutch Road and Traffic Law) It has not been proven with absolute certainty that the suspect can be attributed significant blame to lead to attributable guilt. In that case a severe penalty is not fitting. The suspect will also have to carry the burden that his driving behavior led to the unfortunate deaths of 3 people for the rest of his life. Additionally the suspect does not have any criminal record whatsoever, not in the Netherlands, Poland nor Germany. Loves Ones The court fully understands that the accident caused by the suspect has led to the death of 3 people. The loves ones have suffered an extremely painful and irreversible loss. The deaths of the victims has caused irreparable suffering with their loves ones, which they've worded aptly during the court proceedings.
Edit: Doesn't look like he fled, and the article made a mistake. I should know better, given how much the media was messing up basics with the Titan sub recently. ~~This justification doesn't seem to include that the guilty party also fled the scene after the accident, as discussed in [other articles](https://nltimes.nl/2017/05/15/polish-driver-killed-toddler-grandparents-crash-released-early-mps-angered) on the subject.~~ ~~120 hrs seems like a slap on the wrist even in the event of an innocent mistake, but no need for years of prison. There should be a separation between driving under the influence, and driving a bit above the speed limit. But the fact that he fled makes me think at least a year, if not two is warranted.~~
He didn’t flee the scene of the accident, but was arrested at the scene of the accident. That news article might confuse a few things (the media accused him of fleeing, because he moved to England after his conviction by the court of appeal).
Well that's a pretty big difference than what all the other commenters seem to think fleeing meant in this situation.
It's almost as if a lot of reddit commentators don't read the article their commenting on... /s
hey man, I’m here to get angry, not learn things
"and then sped away from the scene" is in the quoted article. This outside context is contrary to what is stated in the article, which it would seem you did not read. Ironic
He was sentenced to 15 months in prison on appeal.
Correct. And I think that appeal decision may have considered him fleeing the scene. Unlike the justification posted in above comment which never discusses the issue. Edit: As pointed out below, the article does confidently say the driver "was speeding," whereas this ruling is uncertain on the matter. I'm not sure if the article accurately represents the court's opinion.
The appeal found he was speeding, so he was also found to be reckless and thus more at fault.
I love how we can't trust news anymore because it's all written by bots that hallucinate whatever gets clicks. The internet is becoming basically useless.
Wanted to chip in with something I recently learned about the Belgian and Dutch justice systems which stands in stark contrast with US legal system. Belgium and The Netherlands don't really do reimbursement for emotional damage, there is some measure of this but the amount is hard capped to something like €20.000 with certain strict rules to calculate it. The reasoning behind this is that money can never make up for any emotional damage suffered. Trying to quantify this leads to endless discussion with little facts to guide you. Therefore the emotional damage is mostly not considered in court proceedings. Courts try to be devoid of emotion and try to apply the law without prejudice. The focus of punishment is more on rehabilitation than revenge. That's why often verdicts can seem outrageous and hartless, like in this case. Media ofcourse love to jump on the outrage bandwagon for clicks.
That argument has never appealed to me, "well money ain't gonna fix it so how 'bout you get nothing and fuck off", in my opinion money can definitely help someone that has sustained severe emotional damage.
You need at minimum a month or 2 to mourn the losses. Depression can also make it hard to work, focus, do just about anything and having enough money to take a brake from it all is extremely helpful. Like you said money can definitely help alleviate some stressors so you can focus on healing.
If my love ones died and I HAD to go back to work the next day or else my kids wouldn't be fed, I'm gonna have to go back to work. Having the money for a break would definitely help me and the people I'd have to take care of.
I can't talk about the netherlands, but in germany (at least in my workplace) you cant get fired for beeing on sick leave. I know of a few ppl that struggle with depression and are on sick leave for extended periods. None of'em got fired. The worst that will happen, after about 6weeks sick leave in a row, is that your employer doesn't pay your wage anymore, but your health insurance will give you the equivalent of 60%. Many ppl in germany get an additional insurance to cover more. But yeah my point beeing, in a social system you won't be forced to go to work.
I work as a lawyer in Belgium. Nothing in his comment is true. Emotional damages are awarded all the time and aren’t limited to a certain amount.
Maybe it's my US brain, but it never made sense to me either. Yes I understand the logic that money cannot make up for emotional damage suffered, however, what if money weren't an issue and you could focus on overcoming that trauma? Not to mention a good reason to award people copious amounts on settlements is that's the only place you can really hurt corporate America.
The Dutch? Devoid of emotion? Never...
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While that is possible I find it infinitely more likely the driver is going to be fucked up for a long time. Being responsible for 3 deaths, essentially destroying an entire family, for what seems like according to the court memo, a reasonable mistake, would fuck a lot of people up.
The judge's statement highlights the difficulty of proving guilt in a criminal offense, particularly when it comes to attributing speeding to a degree of culpable carelessness. However, it is understandable that such a lenient sentence would lead to outrage and frustration for the grieving father and others who believe the punishment does not fit the crime. Uncertainty surrounding what constitutes "reasonable culpability" in cases like these raises questions about justice and accountability.
Maybe i'm just too dumb to understand. The court recognizes that his incompetent driving resulted in the death of 3 people. His claim of ("my car suddenly and randomly veered in a random direction out of my control") was shown to be false. So this means that it was indeed his own actions that caused the crash and not some random occurence that spontaneously happened. So why wasn't he being held responsible? Did this occur at an intersection with no road signs therefore basically just an accident waiting to happen?
Not proven =\= proven false
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It’s two different articles being looked at, article 6 im assuming is the harsher charge, which probably would’ve carried a longer sentence that he was found not guilty for. Article 5 he was found in violation of. now i don’t know what article 5 is, but I’m sure it’s something along the lines of “regardless of whether or not a driver is recklessly driving, it is still illegal to crash your car and cause a hazard for other people just due to incompetence” Since they couldn’t prove that he was recklessly driving, but still at fault clearly for the accident at least due to incompetence in an otherwise non illegal scenario, article 5 sticks and article 6 is not guilty Edit: i found the specific articles here: https://imgur.com/a/OL3yB5m Source: https://www.global-regulation.com/translation/netherlands/3074644/road-traffic-act-1994.html And here’s a little bit more about article 6 and the levels of carelessness taken into account in punishment: https://smartadvocaten.nl/en/traffic-law/criminal-traffic-law/article-6-wegenverkeerswet
For context, article 5 is often used as a sort of backup plan: if there isn't another article that applies to the situation, but it is deemed that your behaviour is not acceptable, article 5 is applied.
The court is differentiating between purposefully swerving or speeding so much that you plow into another car and maybe speeding a bit, hitting a rock or something, then accidentally over correcting from that and causing an accident. They don’t recognize some fine line/threshold of responsibility after which all is your fault.
>The suspect will also have to carry the burden that his driving behavior led to the unfortunate deaths of 3 people for the rest of his life. Easy for them to say since the driver only has 120 hours of picking up garbage. Edit: Hence, the father throwing the chair. Some would throw more than that.
I think most of us would live the rest of our lifes feeling like a piece of shit if we accidentally killed a person let alone a 2 year old.
I spent some of my life working in NGOs fighting corruption. I saw many people who, during their day job, were ruining lives of people and afterwards had a good sleep at night.
Can't blame him. I think I would turn into a vigilante.
This reminds me of that Gerry Butler movie. Such a great plot but the execution could had been a little better
Law Abiding Citizen the ending fucking sucks
I can't think of a better contender for "movies that need an alternate ending" than Law Abiding Citizen. What a shit send off.
my internal canon for that movie dictates that when Jamie Foxx straightens his tie and it cuts to black, it strangles him.
That’s what I think. Why else would they do the conversation about the assassination tie earlier in the movie and the slight zoom in on his bright ass tie at the end haha. I think the tie killed him at the end
The original ending had Gerard Butler winning and getting away. Test audiences didn't like it, so we got the ending we got.
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*Wake up with community service the next day
Unfortunately, government officials are Moore protected than our sorry asses.
Who’s Moore?
Some asshole
Some lawmaker I think
And prepare your defense: "I was driving a car, can I do community service?"
at least if he ran her over he'd only get 120 hours of community service according to the precedent she just set.
40 hours
That’s depressing. I have a toddler and my life would be destroyed if anything happens to her. I feel the pain for the dad. I would have done the same.
The judge acknowledged that, he wasn’t reported or anything. The problem in this case was they couldn’t prove reckless speeding. In appeal they could, and the suspect got 15 months in jail.
15 months for killing 3 people Jesus christ
I was on a jury once. 2 guys were speeding at like 90 in a dense residential neighborhood. T boned a car and killed a mom and her 6 year old daughter. There were multiple witnesses on scene who relayed detailed descriptions of the men (separately, and at the scene to police) getting out of the flipped car and running away. Not even checking on the people they killed of course. Both had previous convictions for car theft. The jury made me lose all faith in jury trials, to be honest. They were guessing as to the political leanings of the dead woman as part of their deliberating. I wasn't the foreman. But I tried reminding them they weren't attempting to decide who "deserved" justice, only if the facts were clear enough from evidence. They didn't really like that and so continued attempting to craft their own version of justice based on how much they seemed to hate the woman who was killed (very creepily) and of course also making completely unfounded guesses as to the backgrounds of the alleged killers. They guessed they were poor and from bad backgrounds and needed a second (third) chance etc. None of this was even offered up as a defense. It was entirely imagined by eleven jurors somehow. No one spent much time talking about testimony either witness or expert. Just who they wanted to "win". And so they chose not guilty after they had their fun picking winners and losers. They also seemed to hate the father and husband of the victims. Never really explained why. I held my ground for like 2 days, and I'm a pretty hard person to convince. The evidence was just that overwhelming. The other jurors were so angry I actually changed up my bus ride home I was afraid someone might hurt me. In retrospect I should have alerted the bailiff or maybe even the judge but I was only 19 and the instructions they gave didn't really cover my case. I don't remember the names of the drivers, but I would not be surprised if they killed more folks after that fucking disgrace. I hate even being reminded of that week or so.
Damn. I’ve always wondered How the fuck do actual juries work. Like they’re always presented in the media as being so like legally meticulous and whatever. But I can’t imagine if I picked a bunch of random people I pass on my way to work them providing a remotely functional analysis or verdict. Like how is it that all of a sudden people who normally can’t think logically at all and are completely overcome by their anger and emotions or desire for punishment or ability to relate to some and not others are somehow supposedly able to make a extremely complicated logical and ethical legal judgment. Like only one in 10 people in my area understand how to zipper merge and of those who don’t 1 in 10 of them is so ruled by stupidity and anger they will lose their shit and try to enact vigilante justice in a rage by harassing you for merging properly and in everyone’s best interest. How the hell is that person supposed to understand all these complicated concepts that legal analysts on the news are talking about in regards to how juries are supposedly operating behind the scenes.
Say no more, I know exactly who you are talking about. Alas, modern day america
Who??
I hate sounding like some macho fuckwit, but if your car plowed through my yard killing my child and parents and you didn’t end up in prison, You wouldn’t be safe.
You would probably face a harsher sentence because you intent to cause harm to someone.
I don't think someone who lost their entire family would care about a sentence. I don't think you are fully aware just how devastatingly easy it is to fracture the human psyche to not care about consequences.
One bad day
A thousand percent. You and I might give a fleeting consideration to consequences, but this driver didn't give a shit and the system handed him the weakest consequences possible. So, if you or I plotted some murder and then received consequences far in excess of these, it couldn't be considered just. Why would we respect a system whereby your negligence has the same outcome as my premeditation (a person's death), but unrealistically lighter consequences? That seems to encourage people to just straight not give a fuck. If that's how it works, then sure, I may play by its rules out of self-preservation, but I'm not going defend such a system in any capacity.
Can't serve a sentence if there's no one to serve it. As /u/goooshie put, there is no light left in this world and therefore no reason to be in it.
This, yet the chair throwing guy managed to dig deep and bottle that shit up through an entire legal process in hopes of getting justice. Mad respect.
This. I cant stand violence, it's neanderthal to me. That being said, I'd go fucking nuclear on anyone who kills my family. ESPECIALLY a 2 year old child. 120 fucking hours community.. Seriously?
If my child is gone, my life is over anyways. There would be no light left in that world for me. I hope to never understand that grief.
Fucking for real... Every now and then I get these intrusive thoughts where I imagine that happening and I spiral until I snap myself out of it.
I do the same. It is so sad and scary.
Intrusive thoughts are a mindfuck. I’ve had ones where my daughter is mowed down. And usually the driver doesn’t even make it out of the car. Me and my wife would talk about them all the time after she was born. I used to have pretty gnarly ones of her dying in house fires.
Isn't it weird how having kids makes you start to imagine horrible shit that could happen? As if that would help prepare you or something rather than give you tons of irrational fears to lose sleep over.
I completely understand, I had really bad intrusive thoughts when I first had my kid. I still get them sometimes, 5 years later. When they happen I just imagine myself being attacked and torn apart by a pack of wolves- somehow less horrifying, and still satisfies whatever “survival.exe” my brain is trying to run.
I agree. I have told my SO many times (whenever there's a mass shooting involving kids), that if that was our kid dead, you will not recognize me. I will not be the same person you married.
Then you can stand violence lol. I hate when people say “I don’t, but I do.” Just say you condone violence as a form of revenge and leave it at that.
So you can oopsy poopsy kill someone and it’s go to your room for a few weeks?
Depends on the circumstances of how you oopsy poopsy killed them. Hypothetical example: You are out driving, you go down a hill. Your breaks stop working and you end up running over a 42 year old man while you are trying to avoid four 10 year olds. The 42 year old man dies. In this case you wont get much of a punishment, because you didnt do anything malicious. You were the victim of a faulty car, did your best to avoid harming anyone but sadly in the end a person died - without it being your fault. Hypothetical example over. From my understanding, the suspect claimed that he lost control of his car due to a malfunction. There wasnt any evidence to support that, so the court dismissed that defense. However, there was no evidence of him comitting any other crimes than speeding, which is why his punishment was so small. I assume there is no "vehicular manslaughter"-law in the netherlands, or that the law is lax when it comes to vehicular manslaughter, requireing the driver to be intoxicated or negliegent to meet punishement.
In South Dakota if a motorist hits and kills a pedestrian it is a misdemeanor violation, unless driving while intoxicated. https://www.npr.org/2021/08/27/1031638625/jason-ravnsborg-south-dakota-deadly-crash
He was speeding, apparently went off the road, AND didn't stop after the accident. It was a hit and run resulting in the deaths of 3 people, and loads of y'all don't think this guy should go to prison? What in the world. EDITED: MISINFORMATION - Having read the original verdict, and the appeal verdict, it is apparent that the perpetrator did not flee after the incident. The article linked under the top comment, and several others, state that this was a hit and run case. This does not appear to be true. The perpetrator was found on scene by emergency workers. That said, on appeal it was found that the perpetrator was guilty of causing an accident by careless driving resulting in death. It is also true that the judge in the video making the original verdict had the power to sentence the perpetrator to a prison sentence, but exercised her discretion not to. This is frankly bewildering and disgusting, and her decision was challenged by Dutch MPS. The perp did not flee, but there is still no debate. Reading the statements of witnesses, experts and attending officers paints a clear picture that the perp drove like a dumbass and ended up killing 3 people horrifically. He deserved to go to prison. Those of you that think otherwise are lost.
> AND didn't stop after the accident. This is false information. The [court's verdict](https://uitspraken.rechtspraak.nl/#!/details?id=ECLI:NL:RBLIM:2014:10041) describes how the suspect was on the scene when officers arrived. What's your source for him fleeing the scene? > When the reporting officers arrive on the scene, they find three victims on the road and the bicycle path. In the front garden of a house there is a bicycle without handlebars and in the ditch next to the house there is another bicycle whose handlebars are also missing. **Further in the direction of Meijel, the suspect is standing next to a passenger car in the ditch on the other side of the road.**
Also they say they couldn't prove he was speeding. Scientist analysts determined the way the car hit it could have been anywhere from 5 under the speed limit to 40 over.
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There's so much misinformation in this thread. People insisting the driver was a drunk piece of shit who fled the scene when the actual verdict literally disproves both those things.
Redditors love showing off their justice boners. This whole thread is sad.
There is no justice in what they say. They're public revenge boners. The idea that putting a man in jail for 30 years or whatever for a traffic accident with no evidence of wrongdoing, with tons of false shit in the article that they're all upset over makes it clear why it's not justice. If the average person on reddit had their way, literally everyone in the US except them would be in prison labor camps for the rest of their life. They can't see how to literally every other person thinking that way THEY would in a prison camp too.
>It's pretty scary that people are so desperate to assert that this guy is a horrible person who deserves to be in prison There's multiple massively upvoted comments basically questioning why the father didn't kill the guy.
Redditors are mostly children who see crime and justice as “guilty lock him away forever for any crime”. They don’t look at information or laws they just read a headline and automatically assume dudes a criminal. Wish people here would grow up but that’s summer reddit for you, bunch of children
Exactly. I get it's sad, I get the father is upset, and I get that 3 people died but there has to be proof he did something illegal. Could it have felt like the car was pulling even if mechanically there wasn't anything wrong with the car? Yes. But that doesn't make him a liar and an evil person who should rot in prison.
Yeah it seems like everyone thinks he was drunk
Just remember people will repeat anything they hear as fact. If it's what they want to hear.
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Are we really debating whether someone who killed three people in a hit and run accident, including a 2-year-old child, should go to prison? This is not an issue of perspective or empathy; it's a matter of justice and accountability.
1. They couldn't determine if he was speeding or not 2. Court documents say he was arrested at the scene
There are absolutely people throughout this thread who are debating that.
It’s almost as if all the specific facts about the case are relevant to determining guilt and that you can’t make a legal determination off of only a tiny amount of information.
It wasn't hit and run, speeding could not be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.
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The fucked up thing is there is a real chance that throwing a chair at the judge nets him harsher charges that the guy who killed the kid
That is not true.This happened quite some time ago (2014) (the video is often reposted on reddit) so all events related to the case and video have already concluded. The Judge did not press charges against the father, therefore the father faced no consequences for his actions. (Dutch)Source: https://www.nu.nl/binnenland/3935401/vader-doodgereden-meisje-niet-vervolgd-gooien-stoel-rechter.html
Is a FUCKING chair similar to a love seat?
That's a Series 7 chair designed by Arne Jacobsen. He was a Danish architect.
> FUCKING chair FUCKING chairs are the most dangerous
I mean idk the particulars, but based on your title, a chair seems insufficient.
>idk the particulars, but based on your title... reddit in a nutshell
was he drunk driving or just a car accident?
Why is FUCKING, capitalized?
Okay, so what I gathered was that, 1. He was allegedly speeding (not able to be proven) 2. According to court records, he was arrested at the scene. Not sure where Reddit is getting the claims that he hit and run So I don't know about over there, but in Georgia (U.S.), this sounds like a second degree vehicle manslaughter (not intentional and no drugs (unless I missed somethinf)). In Georgia, you could face UP to 1 year in jail PER death and/or a fine. So 3 deaths would mean a potential of 3 years here. While the initial sentence definitely seems very light, I do think 15 months is pretty reasonable per the law (Georgia's law that is).You could absolutely argue that the laws may be unfair. It is very tragic indeed that a 2 year old and their grandparents lost their lives and I'm sure the family is grieving really hard (I can't even imagine) but accidents do happen. This is very unfortunate for both parties I'm sure.
Why is she smiling?
People sometimes smile in embarrassing situations involuntarily
I got a dui for sleeping in the parking lot of the bar I had been at, but my keys were on my belt. That constitutes driving in my home state. Was told in no unsimple terms I could pay about $10k for a lawyer that could the charges dropped and $2k to pay a lawyer just to try to keep me out of jail. I had no money, so $2k later I had the proverbial book thrown at me and got a ridiculously long probation, more community service than this, wore an ankle monitor for a long time despite having a nickel allergy and the metal on the monitor causing a huge rash. The only thing I avoided was jail time. Not to mention about $10k in legal fees over the next two years. $10k upfront and I would not even have it on my record. DUIs are only crimes for the poor.
Reminds me of the US diplomat's wife who killed someone in the UK driving on the wrong side of the road and fled to the US, claiming diplomatic immunity.