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Meaning that at least the police recognise that the fault may lie with the parents OR the driver, even if some of you can't grasp that fact.
If she crashed into a tractor then the woman certainly drove very badly.
If she crashed into a sheep i'd say that's the sheep's fault, not that the sheep probably has the mental capacity to judge that it would be dangerous to be on that road in the dark but i certainly wouldn't place much blame in the woman. And if Reverend Desmond Tutu was walking along the road and not right up the side of the road, with no lighting after dark i'd say he was pretty damn stupid too. If you meant Reverend Tutu was driving then that's a completely different matter and judging from what we know there would be an equal chance of it being either parties fault.
Basically all the examples you've listed have very little relation to what happened in the story we're debating here.
I don't understand what you mean here at all......
And i thought my point was simple but quite relevant.
I knew someone would say this........ You're just taking what i said and twisting it to try and make me look stupid. I never said never let kids out of the house, i was just pointing out if they had been in the house (or anywhere but driving that quad bike down a dark country lane) there is no way in hell this could have happened and if the other driver had been at home this still could have happened.
There are different levels of risk and as a parent I'd think you'd always have to weigh up the risks and benefits of the things your child wanted to do.
Letting your kid out to play with friends down the park, in a cul-de-sac or whatever, or letting them catch a bus, or go to an activity park with school..... all minimal risks that can be rather helpful in the kids development. But i don't know about you but i never rode a quad bike down a dark country lane and i turned out fine.
It was a really, really stupid thing for the parents to do, i don't know how you can disagree with that
Well you'd be wrong. The law hold you responsible if you hit a sheep in the New Forest because it's the drivers responsibility as the one in control.
Unless the girl veered into the path of the car it IS the driver fault. Hitting a vehicle with lights on the other side of the road (no matter who was driving it) constitues careless driving. There's no argument about it. The issue is whether or not the girl veered into the path of the car.
All of which is totally irelavant to the cause of the crash.
The issue is not what she was doing (we've established that the law was being broken), but what caused the crash i.e who's responsible for the accident.
We havn't. :banghead: This is not what we are arguing. The fact that they were stupid doesn't mean the driver didn't cause the crash.
You think, You don't know. You pity the driver even though it still coudl have been her careless driving that resulted in this crash? :rolleyes: And that is what we are trying to highlight. The blame may not lie with the parents.
WE DON'T KNOW
the father has been given a suspended sentance for negligence
I'm glad the judedgement was a sensible one. I remember a few posters here argued that there was nothing wrong with a small child operating a quad on a public road and tried to shift the blame to the vehicle that collided with her without even knowing the facts.
I remember there were a few posters on here who thought that doing something fairly innocuous with tragic consequences meant he was unfit to be a father.
Would anyone have complained had the accident not happened? I was arguing for consistency. It's easy to jump up and get on the soapbox but none of us had the evidence and some just wanted blood really. How many kids ride their bicycles on the road with just the same potential for disaster?
It was an accident, but because a quadbike was involved, everyone screamed murder. It was a tragic accident and should have been treated as such.
The parents have suffered enough and I'm sure he meant no ill to her daugther, but there could be little doubt of where the responsibility for the accident lies. Yet some people were arguing there is nothing wrong with allowing children to operate quads on a public road- which there is. A lot of it.
You've got your opinion and I've got mine, we're both coming from different perspectives so that's understable. You're a mother so maybe it's struck a nerve as it's close to your heart - I'm a student who has been trained over the last few years to take everything with several pinches of salt.
There's nothing wrong with a healthy scepticism to what we read in the papers - obviously he shouldn't have let his kids on the road in the dark but 'good chance' [of fatal consequences] seems a bit of a leap of faith. Surely then all the kids who are out after dark cycling on the roads would be falling down in their droves?
Without knowing to what -extent- the quad was responsible for the kids death then it can be difficult to judge exactly. In the court case, he pled guilty, and the judge called him a fool for letting his daughter ride it in the dark, and gave him a non-custodial suspended sentence.
What he did was foolish but what parent is perfect? It's hardly child neglect or abuse. Yet it *seems* to me that's what you would like him branded as.
I've still not seen any sources that directly say that the quad bike was responsible for the accident - just that it collided with the other landrover. The daily mirror I think said that she lost control but the tone of the article was heavily loaded i.e. 'killer dad freed'.
I think my being a parent is probably relevant in the sense that im more aware of what a child of seven is likely to be capable of, whereas i wouldnt expect a young student with very limited experience of children to understand that to the same degree.
If some (say) seventeen year old was looking after a child and let them do something stupid because they didnt realise the (im)maturity levels of even quite an advanced 7 year old, then itd probably be different to if an experienced parent made the same misjudgement
So it's only fair from the legal point of view that regardless of the circumstances, the person in charge of the quad, or more appropriately her legal guardian at the time, should be at fault.
It would have still been irrelevant if the car that hit the poor child was being driven carelessly or was at fault. Ultimate responsibility lies with the person in charge of the child who allowed her to enter a public road on a quad.
I'm not for crucifying the father or claiming he's not fit to be one, but I wouldn't say the outcome of the trial was unfair either.
:yes: It seemed the right result to me - justice tempered by mercy.
I didn't even say that, jesus christ! You're just so hostile, I can't even get a word in. Of course you're going to have a different viewpoint from me, just you seem to have a problem admitting that different viewpoints can both be valid, only yours is.
Aladdin, I pretty much agree that the sentence is fair, I just wanted to defend myself from when you said that some in the thread thought that he'd done nothing wrong at all, and just clarifying my position further that it was an unfortunate incident and that the fact the father was irresponsible needs to tempered by some calm headed balancing of the facts (none of us who have them all available to us) as to how the accident happened. Letting a kid ride a bike in the dark doesn't equal giving a kid a loaded handgun, for example, but both could have tragic consequences. It seemed to me early on in the thread that some disregarded what led up to the consequences and just focussed on the ultimate consequence and that no matter what happened prior, it should be dealt with as severely as basically killing your own child.
I think it's important for a fair and just legal system to make a distinction between 'foolishness' and 'gross systematic negligence'.