Sandi Day convicted on several traffic charges arising from April 24 accident which killed two pedestrians.
The Oregonian’s Joseph Rose tweets the verdict. Sandi Day is guilty on 4 counts of careless driving, one count of failure to yield to pedestrians in a crosswalk, one count of illegal left turn, for her actions in the April 24 2010 incident where the TriMet bus she was driving struck five pedestrians in a crosswalk, killing two.
Total fine was $1,118, plus community service; with possibility of license suspension (Twitter feed isn’t quite clear).
More to come…
4 responses to “Breaking: Sandi Day convicted of careless driving and other charges”
License suspension? For how long? One year (according to the Oregonian)? Does that mean the two people she, through negligence, killed will magically come back to life after 1 year? Oh, no, wait…she ended their lives permanently.
If the “lighting in the area might have been low” and she “was trained primarily on a bus with fewer visual barriers” then perhaps she should have been driving slower, and more carefully.
I’m happy to know that the courts feel that one life is worth about $559 and 6 months of a drivers license.
Will, what do you suppose she should have been charged with, and what do you suppose the penalty should have been, and how does that conform to existing law?
(And, what penalty will, as you say, bring the two people “magically back to life”?)
The penalties she has faced (loss of her job, possible loss of CDL, and a good-sized fine) seem appropriate given the circumstances. Obviously, as Bob notes, nothing she could do or say (or have inflicted upon her), would bring the deceased back to life. Her conduct was careless, according to the relevant legal standards (she has a duty to look; the fact that her vision was obscured by a blind spot is no excuse–drivers have an affirmative duty to ensure that there are no obstacles in the path of their vehicle). However, criminal negligence under the law requires aggravating factors (being drunk, hit-and-run, driving recklessly) which are simply not present here.
punish-to subject to pain, loss, confinement, death, etc., as a penalty for some offense, transgression, or fault: to punish a criminal.
2.
to inflict a penalty for (an offense, fault, etc.): to punish theft.
Punishment in this case would be totally pointless, basically a waste of tax payers money because this whole situation happened as a result of a crazy conflation of circumstances that resulted in a terrible tragedy.
She didn’t intend for this to happen, neither was she “under the influence” of dope, drink, or cell phone.
The real criminal is the gas combustion engine, which reeks havoc on this planet causing over 1,000,000 million deaths and 40,000,000 injuries each year! (facts here) In addition there are Billions of dollars of property damage and unknown environmental damage caused by the gas powered engine.
As far as I am concerned it’s a holocaust right in front of our noses, but nobody cares about it.
We worry about terrorism while your most likely to be killed or injured on the roadways!
Despite the media sensationalism death by bus is extremely rare in this country (FARS) and this was the first type of accident of this sort in Trimet’s history, proving that it was indeed an aberration.
Unfortunately so many of our fellow American’s are just plain stupid and susceptible to media propaganda.
It’s very sad to read some of the comments at some of the less enlightened internet sites, like our local newspapers blog, it’s just pathetic.
It’s just a crazy world, were nothing really makes sense.
This crazy accident is just part of the chaos of life on this planet.