Wednesday, May 09, 2007

More Than One Offender

An auto accident happened last week (no, not mine.) Currently, it's all over the local news. 19 year-old drunk driver hits an SUV full of family members heading to a reunion. Well worth reading the article. The one thing that I didn't hear mentioned or answered while reading is... "What are 9 people doing inside an SUV?" Yes, if you read through the article, 9 people were in the SUV during the accident. A toddler, an infant, two young boys and a 32 year-old were killed in the crash. 5 died. 4 more were hospitalized. I don't know what kind of SUV fits 9 people safely. That toddler, infant and two young boys deserved seatbelts, booster seats and car seats. 3 of the hospitalized were adults, 1 was a child. That's lousy odds for those children.

I'm not letting the 19 year-old off the hook here. Of course, he wasn't thinking as he was impaired. He will be held responsible, likely serve time in jail, lose any job he may have held, lose the chance at education he may or may not have been working on or toward and have the guilt of the many lives he had taken on his back forever. But, I don't let the family off either. I do doubt we will get an answer to why so many were in the car and I don't expect a reporter to ask.

7 comments:

Teri said...

I actually heard that it was a mercedes that had seat belts for 8. They only mentioned that the youngest was in a saftey seat. I am not sure if the rest were wearing seatbelts at all.

David Amulet said...

Good point -- and smart to look at both sides of this one. The drunk driver has to pay for his actions, but the vulnerabilities of the SUV passengers should be examined, too.

-- david

Beth said...

All in all, a horribly tragic situation.

LoraLoo said...

Even with 8 seatbelts there's no way you're getting 8 in there safely. There was an infant and a toddler, and I didn't see how old the other two boys were who died. If they were under 6, then that would have called for 4 carseats/booster seats. Even two for the two youngest would have been serious space hogs. I can't see how they could have possibly fit 8 or 9 people in that Mercedes. Were the children properly restrained? No one is talking about that. Perhaps it doesn't matter, since the car did catch fire?

I agree that the young man should definitely be punished for his crime, and don't want to take away from that serious tragedy.

Anonymous said...

This is very sad what happened and while perhaps it was not the best choice to have so many people piled into the auto(c'mon in all probability we have all done that at some point in time) they are not at fault for this accident. The drunk driver is entirely at fault. He alone was driving while intoxicated and he alone ran the stop sign.

Anonymous said...

Whether properly or safely restrained or not, those kids would have died anyway since the vehicle caught fire.

I saw the scene photos and it wasn't pretty.

I have nothing but sympathy for the people who survived that crash. The 19 year old for having to live with the fact he killed those people for the rest of his life. He's young, he's going to get to live with that. Ugh.

I feel sorrow for the remaining family members of the deceased. Horrible tragedy

Lucy Stern said...

I wish people wouldn't drive while drunk! It is a tradegy for both sides.....