brumby33 wrote: ↑Sun Oct 20, 2024 9:27 am
There is no real difference in hitting another human on a bicycle or on foot by deliberate action than shoving a knife in his gut or shooting him with a gun, the result is the same but the former is swept under the carpet.
They aren't the same because of intent. To be murder there must be a clear intent to kill. There's few reasons to draw a gun and fire it that don't involve intent to kill. There are a lot of reasons to drive a car that don't involve intent to kill.
Manslaughter is when you kill but you didn't seem to intend to. You did something monumentally stupid or aggressive and someone died but you didn't mean exactly that to happen.
Again it is a hell of a lot harder to prove (and remember, innocent until proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt) that someone doing something in a car knew the stupid thing would kill and did it anyway.
Cars are a couple of ton of lethal weapon being swung about. It's what they are, it's what they do. Hundreds of thousands of them on the roads in Australia every single day. Swinging knives or guns is not the same. If someone has a knife or gun then it is reasonable to assume they intend harm. Driving a car, no.
ALso, every story we see in the news is, if you are lucky, a couple of hundred words. What is said in the courtroom is orders of magnitude more. We can't know from the news what the reality is. But as it is our ox being gored we are upset about it!
I do think we need more legislation and guidance about driving. You know where the sun is, if it is in your eyes you slow down and asssume there's something in the way so if you can't see you don't proceed. It shouldn't be allowed as an excuse. Driving towards the sun is common, doing it correctly needs to be the assumption on the part of the court just as driving on the correct side of the road is. Sun in your eyes should be no more of an excuse than "I wanted to pass so I just pulled out, didn't care if there was a car coming the other way" would be.
The way we get change is via parliament not the courts because the courts go by what was done before and the only thing that changes that is leglislation. You want change be a pain in the arse to your local member and every senator in your state.
