A felony vehicular manslaughter conviction is punishable by 2, 4 or 6 years in state prison.
Colorado:
Under Colorado law, vehicular manslaughter in the second degree is considered a Class 4 felony, as outlined in Colorado Revised Statutes Section 18-3-106. The potential penalties for this offense include imprisonment for a term ranging from 2 to 6 years and a fine between $2,000 and $500,000
A driver, allegedly watching youtube, runs over and kills 2 children of 12 and 14 at a crosswalk. But they were only charged with the lesser vehicular manslaughter, not felony vehicular manslaughter.
Those laws exist, but if it is a legitimate accident, and the person doesn't have a criminal history otherwise it is very likely that they walk away without any jail time.
Define "accident". There are very few circumstances where correct attentive driving technique ends up as an "accident". Most so called accidents are not "accidental". It had a predictable causation chain caused by the driver's behavior. Personally, I hate that word, much prefer "incident".
Driving too close is not an accident. Driving too fast for the conditions is not an accident. Weaving around in traffic to gain a spot. Not looking at who is in the crosswalk before driving through it. Not yielding at a merge. Racing the lights to get there before it is red/or just after. Not having your brakes, tires, lights, suspension, etc in correct working condition. Driving too tired, or under the influence. Sure, most of the time nothing happens, so people get used to thinking these are how driving is done (and it is in the US). But just because one normally gets away with it does not mean these are not dangerous behaviors, and they're absolutely under the drivers control.
Not accident, incident.
Read up on "normalization of deviance" (wiki page is pretty light but it is a start: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalization_of_deviance). Aviation has long recognized this and training emphasizes not getting caught in that behavioral trap.
Aviation is a great example of how a culture of safety can be built up. Driving culture in the US is markedly different. It's absolutely normalized to overtake a slow moving vehicle even when it's not safe and passing conditions are unclear, to be distracted and use your phone, to drive drunk, to drive along the shoulder of a crowded highway if you're in a hurry, to double park in an urban area if you "just need to stop and pick something up". The enforcement aspect is just the lagging edge of that. Hearing people talk, you'll casually hear "oh I accidentally bumped the car next to me in the parking lot while parking oops, I just reparked somewhere else." It shows; the US has the highest car crash incidence among developed nations by a long shot, with Canada a distant 2nd place.
The reason the US is considered a driving culture is only partially legislation and only partly infrastructure, it's due to a culture that treats driving as a loosely enforced activity where faults should be given the benefit of the doubt. This is the opposite of aviation where safety is emphasized in every part of the process and scary moments are encouraged to be reported anonymously through ASOS. Infrastructure is stressed as the ideal solution because it involves very little cultural change but due to a reluctance to raise taxes and aforementioned driving culture, people resist infrastructural changes which help non-drivers.
For aviation, I believe the fact that the "driver"'s life is at stake helps (also consider the perspective of the passengers). Comparing that to the imbalance between the drivers in a protective shell and the pedestrians on the road.
Pedestrian runs across the street and doesn't notice the oncoming car; driver starts to brake but the car doesn't stop in time. That is a very common type of accident that occurs even when the driver is going below the speed limit and is paying full attention. It is so common that drivers in suburban areas pay extra attention to the behavior of pedestrians, who very often run into the street for one reason or another.
Contrary to the popular narrative, not everyone who drives a car does so drunk, high, and/or too fast - a lot of people are actually very good drivers. Many (most?) of them do all of the recommended maintenance on the car in a timely manner. That doesn't mean that every driver has the reflexes of a racecar driver, and nor can you expect them to.
Blaming every accident on the driver by default and expecting jail time for anything with bad consequences is pretty toxic. Even the FAA doesn't do that for pilots.
Not a popular opinion, but in my mind every driver should at all times be prepared for a child to chase a ball onto a street. What that means in practice is a whole lot of inconvenience for drivers - but it is their responsibility and they should own it. Roads (other than motorways/expressways/etc) are not the exclusive domain of cars and people shouldn't assume that they are.
I will say this more directly than above: pretty much every driver going through a suburban neighborhood does prepare for a child to chase a ball into a street. Not all of those collisions are preventable, however. It takes time to engage the brake and it takes time for the car to stop after the brake is engaged. In that time, the car travels forward. In some cases, crushing a child. Even if the driver does everything right, a child still dies.
> pretty much every driver going through a suburban neighborhood does prepare for a child to chase a ball into a street.
Strongly disagree with this as a general statement. I live on a street near one of the several exits to my neighborhood. It’s not a sleepy street, but it’s also not a major road or anything overly busy. Being objective, I’d estimate that far less than 20% of drivers passing my house are truly prepared to stop for an unexpected obstacle and maybe ~2% are outright reckless (~50mph in a 35, DUI, fixated on phone, etc). The rest, and that’s most of us here, think they’re driving safe but are caught up in thoughts about their project at work, late for kid’s soccer practice, worried about a relationship, etc… and are mostly on autopilot for the conditions they routinely experience, but are not actively prepared for an outlier event.
pretty much every driver going through a suburban neighborhood does prepare for a child to chase a ball into a street
Where do you live? That's not how it is in my neighborhood, despite a 25mph sped limit that turns to a 20mph zone in front of my house (due to the proximity of a playground), drivers routinely drive 35+ mph. Neighborhood complaints have so far gotten a "Slow - Children" sign posted.
The one thing that helped for about a week was when they parked a radar speed trailer on the side of the street, it would flash a bright blue light when drivers exceed the speed limit by 5mph.
After they took away the trailer, cars started speeding again.
> pretty much every driver going through a suburban neighborhood does prepare for a child to chase a ball into a street
So why do most drivers appear to be much more cautious in a parking lot?
If drivers were truly taking more responsibility for the dangers they create for others, whenever they travel on a street alongside parked cars they would limit themselves to a speed that is at least unlikely to cause a pedestrian fatality (<30km limits are sometimes justified on this basis).
I mean, I get it - it would be incredibly inconvenient for drivers and as a society we have implicitly accepted the consequences of this convenience, but it doesn't abrogate the moral responsibility of drivers in my opinion. Just because everyone else does something doesn't make it morally okay.
That is a very common type of accident that occurs even when the driver is going below the speed limit and is paying full attention.
Do you have a source for this being a common source of pedestrian accidents?
Contrary to the popular narrative, not everyone who drives a car does so drunk, high
No one is claiming that.
and/or too fast
Ok, I'll make this claim, people routinely exceed speed limits, whether on 25mph residential streets or 65mph highways.
Blaming every accident on the driver by default and expecting jail time for anything with bad consequences is pretty toxic
The driver is in the 3000 lb vehicle, he should shoulder more responsibility. If drivers thought they'd face serious consequences if they hit a pedestrian, they'd manage to actually look for pedestrians instead of just giving a token glance. Try to cross on a walk signal in any busy town or city and you'll see how few drivers pay attention to pedestrians, I've actually been in the crosswalk and had to stop for a right-on-red turning car who didn't manage to see a person in the street in broad daylight.
> Roughly 68 percent of crashes resulting in a pedestrian fatality occurred at non-intersections in 2010
Also half of these pedestrian-driver crashes involve someone (pedestrian or driver) being inebriated, but they certainly do occur when the driver is paying full attention.
> I've actually been in the crosswalk and had to stop for a right-on-red turning car who didn't manage to see a person in the street in broad daylight.
I've been in the same position as you here, but I've had a lot more drivers wait for me. I've also seen drivers (particularly in Florida) acknowledge my existence by making eye contact before rudely turning directly in front of me. This particular piece of American car culture drives me crazy, too, but is not an indication of broad negligence or disregard for the lives of others.
I'm not sure how that backs up your statement that it's very common for a pedestrian to run across the street in front of a car that not only saw them and started braking appropriately, but was also going below the speed limit.
You want people thrown in jail for accidents where negligence was not involved?
Do you drive at all? You could be a perfect driver, fully sober and alert, and one moment's distraction can easily kill. Maybe a sudden glare in the window, or your misbehaving kid in the backseat throws something. It happens every day.
I don't see any social good to be gained from jailing people when negligence isn't involved. Human beings have failure rates. You're talking about taking an already horrible situation and destroying more lives and families.
Yes, I do. That should be a risk that you accept when you get in the driver's seat. It would affect behaviors positively by disincentivizing driving.
If you're unable to see what's in front of your 2-ton mile-a-minute machine because of a glare, maybe you shouldn't be driving a mile a minute? Clean the windows before you leave. Wear sunglasses. If the glare is "not that bad" so you don't regularly clean the windows and don't make sure you have sunglasses and occasionally someone dies because of this that is unacceptable. Glare does kill, as evidenced by increased collision rates when the sunrise aligns and misaligns with peak traffic - change the incentives so that people take steps to mitigate this.
If you're responsible for managing the behavior of a kid and also piloting a car, maybe you should have a second adult in the car. Maybe the kid should be in a seat they can't easily unbuckle, or not have access to toys they can throw in front of you. You should think about the risk to other road users and your potential jail time when you take your eyes off the road to handle some other responsibility.
Yes, I drive. Professionally! I deliver industrial equipment and travel all over the Midwest to perform upgrades, maintenance, and bug fixes on it. I take the safety of myself, pedestrians, and fellow drivers seriously when I have 20,000 lbs of steel on a gooseneck - more seriously than a lot of drivers I see around me. When I'm not traveling, though, I bike to work for 9+ months a year. And I've had my share of beer cans thrown out windows, and rearview mirrors hitting me in the butt, and coal rolled in my face, and panic from people scrolling TikTok and not seeing me until the last second. I haven't been killed yet, but I keep my life insurance paid up.
The burden of proof of negligence is problematic. Until we surrender additional privacy to a "more objective" monitoring system, it's too easy to murder someone with your vehicle and claim innocence.
When I'm riding my bicycle in a perfectly legal way on a roadway, and a driver gets irritated and tries to clip me, it's very difficult for me to prove that they acted in malice. If they clip me and I die hitting a guardrail, it's incredibly easy for them to claim it was an accident.
But that's an edge case and this type of culpability problem is common across many facets of humanity. The bigger issue may be that driving isn't treated with the seriousness it should warrant. In conditions where "sudden glare" is possible, one should drive their 4000lb vehicle at a speed that allows them to mitigate all but the most rare (freak) accident, like a 200lb alligator popping out of a manhole cover right in front of them. The human failure rate is real, but there's more we can do with process + tech + practice to mitigate it even smaller.
This level of care as a driver is directly counter to what the automobile industry wants as the image of their product: an easy, convenient and essential tool to be used every day.
> You could be a perfect driver, fully sober and alert
These people should not be jailed.
> and one moment's distraction can easily kill. Maybe a sudden glare in the window, or your misbehaving kid in the backseat throws something. It happens every day
By phrasing it that way, you also admit that driving is incredibly dangerous, essentially murderous in the aggregate. The right response then is that we need to establish a transportation system where a moment of inattention doesn't cause death and destruction. Traffic calming, slower speed limits, more mobility options (walk, bike, bus, train), ... and to the point of the article, smaller and lighter vehicles.
I mean this is just the consequences of our increasingly atomized car-dependent society going further and further down the chain of human misery. The average commute in the US is 26 minutes, meaning people spend roughly 1 in 16 of their waking hours behind the wheel, doing a task most people view as a begrudging obligation. Most people don't like driving, therefore they do not put great effort into driving, or seek to be better drivers which is why the majority of drivers are utterly mediocre at it. And because it's basically a necessity of life here, we can't genuinely punish people too badly for fucking up at it, no matter how deadly it is: our prison population is already massive on a per-capita basis, the last thing we need is even more people in that system.
The real problem is as the parent comment states, CAFE standards which have massively fucked with the incentives for car manufacturers to aggressively market previously SUVs and increasingly pickup trucks as family vehicles that are absolutely ridiculously oversized for their stated purpose (while also being remarkably and hilariously unable to actually carry cargo efficiently) and ludicrously inefficient, with all the blind-spots and difficulty to handle that that implies. Their higher stance and larger bodies make them infinitely more dangerous to pedestrians and smaller vehicles, which also incentivizes other drivers to buy the enormous fucking things, so if they get t-boned by someone driving them they don't have basically no chance of surviving. Which is not to say that a reasonably sized sedan can't also kill a pedestrian, but an Escalade has an infinitely better shot of managing it, both by size, and because the higher ride height greatly increases the odds of people going under the damn wheels.
Speaking of going under the damn wheels, there's been a huge increase in the number of kiddos going under the wheels of these big stupid things in recent decades, which is a uniquely American phenomenon occurring basically nowhere else because these enormous stupid vehicles do not make economic sense anywhere they aren't subsidized like they are here.
Trust me, it's not uniquely American. Cars have been getting bigger in Germany too, and SUVs are the most popular category here too. Ok, most of them are not as big as in the US, but there are some (ex-Dodge) Rams (even the name is scary when you think about it) driving around here too. Every time I see one, I wonder where they find a parking space for the damned thing...
I didn't argue either way. Just saying that the reality is many people walk away. I think your reasoning is the exact logic that a judge/jury use. No sense in ruining the drivers life because someone "ran in front of their car" (as their defense attorney surely argued).
I think appropriate justice is a spectrum and they often get it wrong.
For example, 10+ years ago a friend of mine was rear ended by a drunk driver while sitting at a red light. She died. The driver lost his license (because he was drunk) and got a year of supervision. He probably should've spent sometime in jail imo.
On the other hand, I'm well aware there are people sitting in jail right now that absolutely shouldn't be.
For clarity, the vehicular manslaughter laws referenced by parent commenter are specifically for when [criminal] negligence is involved (and yes parent commenter’s use of “accident” does imply absence of negligence, so I appreciate your calling them out, they don’t seem to understand the law):
> In cases of criminal negligence, the defendant is commonly charged with unintentional vehicular manslaughter.
No, the problem begins when you get in the car and begin driving it. I'm not pro jail in general so I probably agree with you there, but, you're speaking as though "driving at all" is a given. It is not and it is a big part of them problem that people have that view. It's honestly really disgusting to see this blase attitude. You must take responsibility for putting people's lives in danger and when you drive a car you are doing that, you make that choice every time you get behind the wheel. There are better, less convenient ways of transport, if you care about human life at the expense of your inconvenience you would use those, when you don't you make the choice to endanger lives. I still drive, this is the view I take every time I am behind the wheel, it seems the only responsible position.
California:
A felony vehicular manslaughter conviction is punishable by 2, 4 or 6 years in state prison.
Colorado:
Under Colorado law, vehicular manslaughter in the second degree is considered a Class 4 felony, as outlined in Colorado Revised Statutes Section 18-3-106. The potential penalties for this offense include imprisonment for a term ranging from 2 to 6 years and a fine between $2,000 and $500,000