Posted on 01/01/2015 9:41:35 AM PST by eastforker
The driver waited for police and was tested for alcohol. He was found to be intoxicated and arrested for driving while intoxicated. He will not be charged in the accident.
(Excerpt) Read more at click2houston.com ...
Wet is dry, black is white, cold is hot. Bizarro world is here, and can only lead to chaos. As for a drunk driver hitting and killing a pedestrian (never mind the dog), he should be imprisoned. But alas, no consequences for the lawbreaker. Is he an illegal, perhaps? God forbid we fill our prisons with anymore of those lawbreakers.
The guy was crossing the road in an unlit area on the travel portion of hiway. So your saying if he had nothing to drink and still ran over the guy it would have been okay?
You figure that if you’ve been drinking and some nut jumps under your tires, it automatically becomes your fault?
If you cause an accident and intoxicated ,yup, I agree with you. However that is not the case here.
The legal theory usually is that a person with no right to be driving is at fault because no accident would have occurred if he wasn’t there.
Also, an intoxicated person’s reflexes and eyesight are impaired so there is the possibility a non-intoxicated driver could have avoided the pedestrian and dog. Additionally it is the driver’s responsibility to drive in such a manner as to be able to avoid striking anything in the roadway.
Nope. The pedestrian may have been ‘jaywalking” with his dogs, but according to the picture it doesn’t look “unlit” (street lights are on and quite visible). It doesn’t look like a highway either. Perhaps the driver didn’t have his lights on and was less visible to both parties? As far as I’m concerned, anytime a person gets behind the wheel of a car intoxicated (above the legal limit) and kills a pedestrian, whether he’s in the road (changing a tire, jaywalking, whatever) its at a minimum manslaughter. The driver knew he was drinking before he got in his car. Period. It’s the same old crap with these guys. And since the pedestrian is dead, we have only the word of the drunken driver, which is probably less than reliable given the circumstances. Either way, a pedestrian is dead and the drunk driver is responsible.
Uh, that’s the way it works. Don’t drink and drive.
I didn’t gather the pedestrian jumped in front of the driver’s car. And if so, they usually don’t do it with dogs on a leash unless the dog walker was drunk also and decided to take a chance and his timing was as bad as the drivers? Were the drivers lights on? Not enough facts in this news blurb to draw legit conclusions, but the driver probably knew he had too much to drink and got behind the wheel of the car, regardless of the other circumstances. Strike one getting behind the wheel drunk (same old garbage with drinking and driving, they get away with enough until an unexpected circumstance shows up) and strike two, killing a pedestrian in the road way. If the driver wasn’t drunk, his timing probably would have been better and his reflexes as well, and may have swerved enough to avoid sending this guy to the morgue.
The story doesn’t say whether or not the pedestrian was walking drunk when he stepped in front of the moving vehicle.
Which brings the question, how do we know the pedestrian wasn’t intoxicated also?
The story also does not indicate as to what degree he was intoxicated. was it a .08 or less.
There was another not to long ago a guy was pushing a bike on the I10 feeder road. He was also hit by a dui driver, he wasn’t charged either.
How about a guy sitting at a red light thats had a couple beers and there are people in the crosswalk when he gets hit from behind and pushes his car over a pedestrian, is he guilty also?
Here's some Sammy Davis, jr.
That is my point. Some can be intoxicated and distracted at an .06 level while others might be in perfect control and unaffected at .08.
Well, I’d rather not tell you my BA level right now . . . but the law is the law. When I’ve had my share of drinks, I darn well know not to get behind the wheel . . . and it’s not because I am incapable of driving, but because of that 18-year-old kid around the corner who’s texting and driving.
Good point, I brought it up with an earlier post to another person. It’s all a question of the circumstances and facts, and the article doesn’t a whole lot of them. I like your last example as well. Either way, when a person whose been drinking and ends up above the legal limit (and most of us know when you’ve got a buzz going, you’re above the legal limit) you make a conscious decision to get behind the wheel and take your chances. And in the vast majority of cases, if someone is injured or killed, then you are responsible. Most people take chances calculating the odds of something bad happening (or not) however, odds do play out at some point, sooner or later. And the driver made that decision to play them. That’s all. I don’t know anyone off hand who was killed by a drunk driver but I do have a couple of former acquaintances who killed themselves drunk behind the wheel, and given their ages at the time (early 20’s) it wasn’t intentional or expected, but they made the decision, a fatal one in their case. That’s all.
This was at Gessner and Kempwood..
I used to live at Gessner and Hammerly.. just south of there.
In the late eighties Gessner & Hammerly (& Spring Woods High)
went VERY oriental.. like 75-80% of school population.
This change did NOT reach up to Kempwood. That’s a black area.
No idea what this might have to do with anything, just spouting
off my awesome font of local knowledge. For lack of anything relevant.
Similar incident a few days ago near where I live.
http://www.chron.com/news/article/Car-hits-woman-who-tripped-crossing-street-5981973.php
It’s dangerous enough trying to cross a busy street at the intersection with crosswalk lights.
Agreed. I’ve been in some close scrapes with people who were drunk and driving. I do like what they do in Europe - no matter who you are, who you know, what sad story you have, you go to the slammer. Period. And, they index their fines on an ability to pay. There’s no point in having a fine if it doesn’t hurt.
you kill with a car and you’re intoxicated, that’s willful negligence and manslaughter automatically applies, minimum, in my book.
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