This week in mother-blaming: child runs onto road, mother convicted

102 thoughts on This week in mother-blaming: child runs onto road, mother convicted

1. That. Is. OUTRAGEOUS.

   My heart goes out to that woman. I am so angry hearing this.

2. Pingback: This week in mother-blaming: child runs onto road, mother convicted | Spilt Milk

3. Not only is this mother blaming, but now if her conviction means jail time, we’re also punishing the other two children, by denying them of their mother. This makes my heart hurt so much.

   1. Not only is this mother blaming, but now if her conviction means jail time, we’re also punishing the other two children, by denying them of their mother. This makes my heart hurt so much.

      I know, it’s horrible. Such separation from her other children would compound her grief as well as theirs, too.
      This just hits home for me as the mother of a three year old who occasionally tries her hardest to squirm out of my grasp when we are near traffic. That she could be hit by a car is a very real fear of mine, and to think that I could have that grief compounded by blame, even if I was present with her and actively trying to keep a hold on her? Awful to contemplate.

      I’m trying to get my head around how child abuse can so often go unpunished and, at the same time, society can punish parents who love and care for their kids. Does. Not. Compute.

4. Agreed. That poor woman. I can’t imagine how devastated she must have felt to have lost her beloved child…and now she is facing jail time on top of her own personal tragedy. I was floored to read that the jurors who convicted her have NEVER taken a bus themselves. This is really, really horrible.

5. OMG. I came into this thread because I was reminded of all of the people I know who let their children play in the roads around here knowing full well that people speed all the time, but this, O.M.G.

   I am horrified to learn that a mother can get a manslaughter sentence and prison time that should have belonged to the drunk driver, simply because the mother was the mother of a child that did what many little children that age do, run into the road.

   This poor woman and her other children. OMG.

6. Despite my best efforts, I’ve _had_ nieces and nephews ignore my directives and run out into the street. Thankfully, none of them have gotten hit, but I suppose it’s comforting on some level that if they had, blond-haired-blue-eyed-pink-skinned-middle-class me probably wouldn’t have been charged for it. :-/

   Speaking of which, remember that case a few months back where the mother was convicted of fraud for enrolling her kids in the wrong school district? I noticed at the time, that articles which didn’t include a picture of the (brown-skinned) mom got a lot more sympathetic comments from readers than those that did. I wonder if this will be the case here?

7. Something else I just realized: The drunk driver could have just as easily hit the kid if mom _had_ walked all the way to the crosswalk. How can any intelligent jury ignore that?

8. It’s important that people know that this went down, and that a family was devastated because: 4 yr olds are 4 yr olds.,city bus routes are poorly planned. And idiots get drunk and drive.

9. Dammit dammit dammit. Agreed to all of the comments above about the likely on-going impacts of this on the woman and her kids. I gather from the post that she hasn’t been sentenced yet, so I hope the judge uses hir better judgement to give no prison time.

   This is, incidentally, why I’m not automatically opposed to tethers/leashes for kids – sometimes it’s the most reasonable, practical, and humane thing you can do to keep a little one close in a dangerous situation. I got into a fight with a friend over this a while ago because he could just not imagine a situation that would warrant it, but he’s never lived in an apartment next to a highway with no straightforward crossing and more kids than hands can hold.

10. Jadey:
    This is, incidentally, why I’m not automatically opposed to tethers/leashes for kids – sometimes it’s the most reasonable, practical, and humane thing you can do to keep a little one close in a dangerous situation. I got into a fight with a friend over this a while ago because he could just not imagine a situation that would warrant it, but he’s never lived in an apartment next to a highway
    with no straightforward crossing and more kids than hands can hold.

    Yes. Sometimes parents have good reasons for the choices that others may frown upon, particularly others with little understanding of that parent’s reality. (No all choices that all parents make are sound, I realize.)

11. Spilt Milk: Yes. Sometimes parents have good reasons for the choices that others may frown upon, particularly others with little understanding of that parent’s reality. (No all choices that all parents make are sound, I realize.)

    I know that we all have different circumstances and experiences and that someone might have very good reasons for opposing something, but the few times I’ve come across people ranting about the evils of the toddler-leash, I couldn’t help but think: “Two year olds! Have you met them?”

12. What’s with people? I mean… &&%#@$*I(O@

    OK, coherence reinstalled. What is with society to blame innocent people for tragedies? Why wasn’t the drunk driver charged with vehicular manslaughter? The driver of the freakin’ car that killed the kid? Hello? Anyone with a brain? That poor woman was doing the best she could. She was not being neglectful or abusive or inattentive. She was a good mother who got handed the blame for what a drunk driver did and should have been charged for.

    Our society really likes throwing stones and mothers tend to be favorite targets.

    1. @Randomosity The drunk driver was actually charged and convicted, too.

       Our society really likes throwing stones and mothers tend to be favorite targets.

       I agree with you there.

13. What I want to know is if every one of those jurors respects pedestrians in crosswalks, stays out of the way of walk signals, looks extra hard when they’re turning to make sure they’re not startling or impeding the path of any pedestrians, etc. Honestly, as someone who crosses eight busy lanes of traffic every day to get to her bus stop after work, waiting for the “right” time and place to cross just blows. I want to know if every one of those jurors honestly respects those cross walks and walk signals, if they believe it was such an obvious alternative.

    (Newsflash: Crosswalks ESPECIALLY do not make you immune to drunk drivers.)

    I don’t have the perspective of a POC or of a mother, but the bus rider/pedestrian in me is furious for her right now.

14. Ah, yes, mother-blaming. All the more toxic when you add race and poverty to the mix. Awhile back, during a discussion of how nice it is that my husband takes responsibility for parenting, my mother mentioned a few news stories in her area about children who had died at the hands of their mother’s boyfriends when the mothers had left the kids in their care. I agreed that this was terrible.

    “Yes,” she said, “I mean, what’s wrong with these women? The kids are probably fathered by a rival gang member or something.”

    I was like, “What?!?!?” She said, “you’d think they could get together and watch each other’s kids or something.” Fail, on so many levels. I hope the apple falls far from the tree…

15. This sounds bizarre.

    Reading up on Georgia law, she may have been guilty according to the letter of the law (“homicide by vehicle in the second degree” seems to just mean that she broke traffic code laws and someone died because of this), but what about prosecutorial discretion?
    How can anyone think this conviction serves the common good?

    According to what I can find the absolute maximum sentence would be one year for that charge and it might (depending on the judge) be just a fine. Is the rest of the “36 months” referred to above due to other charges?

    I hope those 3 years is the theoretical maximum so that at least the sentence will be far less.

16. Man, I *was* that kid when I was little. Had a number of very close calls when I was almost run over, and it wasn’t because my parents and grandparents were criminally negligent. One time I went chasing after a balloon in a parking lot, another time I just wandered off the sidewalk when we were on a walk. I think there is another incident I have no memory of. I was old enough to know that the road was dangerous in the abstract, but was oblivious that it was dangerous at that moment, but luckily tragedy was avoided each time, but it could have easily gone the other way. I remember those scoldings more than almost any other time I got in trouble (I remember my parents telling me they weren’t going to let me outside by myself until I was 10 years old and thinking that that was roughly a billion years away), but that didn’t stop it from happening multiple times. How they can hold this mother criminally accountable, I can’t imagine. Sometimes bad things just happen, and putting this woman in jail accomplishes *nothing* and would cause so much more pain where there’s already enough grief to go around I’m sure.

17. I am reminded of the case from the late 90s where a girl was killed in Buffalo in a very similar situation—crossing a busy highway/road after getting off a bus—because the mall wouldn’t allow public buses on their property. The case was settled out of court for $2M. (http://www-personal.umich.edu/~gmarkus/Wiggins.html)

    Structural racism and classism: it kills people.

18. ataralas: because the mall wouldn’t allow public buses on their property.

    I don’t think I heard about this case; I was probably a little too young to hear or care much about non-local news at the time. I’m sighing so hard right now.

19. matlun: Reading up on Georgia law, she may have been guilty according to the letter of the law (“homicide by vehicle in the second degree” seems to just mean that she broke traffic code laws and someone died because of this), but what about prosecutorial discretion?

    I have heard of a number of cases in which a vehicular homicide (or vehicular assault) charge seemed to be applied in a way that was really inappropriate. In my state, at least, it’s a strict liability offense, so if the facts fit the charge, you can be charged, regardless of motive, intent, negligence, etc. That said, there IS prosecutorial discretion, and sometimes it is abused. Hopefully, the judge will use discretion at sentencing and give her probation.

20. The bus that I normally take stops on a busy street without a crosswalk. It’s a quarter mile to either crosswalk. And, of course, right across from fixed rent housing.

    Ugh, and I can’t tell you how many times apparently SOBER drivers have not stopped at a crosswalk in front of my house that has a yield sign. They sometimes give me the “oh, I’m so sorry, but what can you do” shrug or handwave. I’ll tell you what you can do. Yield to the fucking pedestrians.

    This makes me so angry.

21. I live in metro Atlanta. Drivers here play chicken with pedestrians. They will drive straight at you to see if you get scared enough to stay on the curb or jump out of their way. I’ve been in the middle of a legal crosswalk with a green walk signal and had left turning drivers barrel toward me blaring their horn. Maybe the driver was just totally wasted, but I can imagine an Atlanta driver doing such a thing deliberately to scare people out of his way, and losing control of the situation. I often wonder if drivers here really think about what would happen if they couldn’t stop. I guess now they can figure the pedestrian is to blame for not getting out of their way. Great.

22. I’m not defending the sentence she was given (and I am utterly appalled that the actual drunk driver got a slap on the wrist), but how is it NOT a foreseeable circumstance that if you cross a busy road in the middle of the night in a place where it’s difficult to see pedestrians, while trying to wrangle three hard-to-control small children, you or one of your children might get hit by a car?

    I live not far away from this area and I’m familiar with this road, and in my opinion, it was very irresponsible to try to cross the road there with small children, especially after dark.

23. Ellie:
    I don’t have the perspective of a POC or of a mother, but the bus rider/pedestrian in me is furious for her right now.

    This. Clearly Nelson’s being a mother and a POC contributes to the victim-blaming, but pedestrians and cyclists who are killed/injured by drivers are always blamed, even if they were traveling in a legal manner. Even if it’s proven that the driver was drunk, or otherwise totally in the wrong, there is always an undercurrent of “walking and biking are so dangerous!” Because cities are made for cars, not people, don’t you know.

24. Shoshie: Ugh, and I can’t tell you how many times apparently SOBER drivers have not stopped at a crosswalk in front of my house that has a yield sign. They sometimes give me the “oh, I’m so sorry, but what can you do” shrug or handwave.

    Yep, this, yes, yes. Crossing in the crosswalk does not solve this problem. It’s not foolproof. Many, many drivers just have little to no regard for pedestrians. I don’t want to derail this thread into a conversation about how inconsiderate drivers can be, but trust me, I have so much experience with being scared for my life at a crosswalk. With a walk signal and a stop light and everything.

    What it comes down to is that this woman does not have good transportation resources & options. She should have had a closer store. She should have had a better bus transfer. She should have had a safer bus stop. All the cards are stacked against her, and now she’s being penalized for it.

25. Good grief. My heart goes out to this woman.
    Is there no way for her to make an appeal? (I’m not familiar with the justice system in America, so forgive me if that sounds like a silly question.)

    And what was the driver’s sentence?

26. Jenn:
    I’m not defending the sentence she was given (and I am utterly appalled that the actual drunk driver got a slap on the wrist), but how is it NOT a foreseeable circumstance that if you cross a busy road in the middle of the night in a place where it’s difficult to see pedestrians, while trying to wrangle three hard-to-control small children, you or one of your children might get hit by a car?

    Um, yeah, that’s why juveniles are treated differently from adults in many areas of law – because they’re children, they may not yet exercise good judgment, so adults ARE responsible for them. It’s a really sad situation, but I don’t see the mother as lacking culpability simply because the driver was intoxicated.

    I suspect this would be treated differently if the driver was sober, or elderly, or perhaps a bus driver or ambulance.

27. Jenn: I live not far away from this area and I’m familiar with this road, and in my opinion, it was very irresponsible to try to cross the road there with small children, especially after dark.

    It may not be safe. It may be irresponsible on some level. But is it criminal? Is it manslaughter? Should she go to jail for it? What do we think about the fact that she’d already had such a difficult journey, and that going to the nearest crosswalk would have added considerably to an already far-too-difficult trip?Is there something we can do here beyond judging her for her irresponsible decision?

28. RE: Bus stops

    Tangent: my city moves the bus stops (the metal stake with the sign on it) a lot as school pickup/dismissal routes, construction projects, and development changes. Like every year. There isn’t, and can’t be, a crosswalk at every stop, and have all of that change frequently – it would require curb cuts, concrete, painting – I mean, it could happen, but it would likely surpass the entire city budget. So I am not surprised that a bus would provide a stop that people could choose for their drop-off that didn’t include a crosswalk right there.

29. BHuesca– can you think of any other solutions, that don’t involve putting an even greater burden on this already very burdened woman? Creating more bus stops, or slower speed limits, or more frequent buses, encouraging bus ridership, etc.?

    We can’t keep on just dumping on the poor and the burdened because it’s the only option. Also unrelated to this story, politicians where I live are proposing all kinds of cuts and changes and price increases to the bus system, because they “can’t afford” it. Which just means that the poorest people in my city need to walk farther. They need to transfer more. They need to wait longer. They get dumped at horrible, dangerous intersections.

    Why does it seem like it’s always the already disadvantaged people, who are expected to sacrifice even more?

30. BHuesca:
    There isn’t, and can’t be, a crosswalk at every stop, and have all of that change frequently – it would require curb cuts, concrete, painting – I mean, it could happen, but it would likely surpass the entire city budget. So I am not surprised that a bus would provide a stop that people could choose for their drop-off that didn’t include a crosswalk right there.

    Considering the amount of cash that goes into building new highways and interstates every year, the cost of building multiple crosswalks is negligible. I don’t know how much crosswalks cost, specifically. But I do know that you can paint like 200 miles of bike lane for the price of one mile of new interstate. According to a Google search, Georgia has several ongoing highway projects so I find it hard to believe that they can’t allocate 0.00001% of that budget to protect pedestrians from the folks in the two-ton death machines. Much less deserving projects soak up city budgets every year.

    Alternatively, how do you feel about an upper speed limit of 25 MPH within cities? It might or might not have prevented this murder, but it’s well-known that slower speeds = fewer fatalities.

    But of course, god forbid drivers don’t get to crank their engines up to maximum speed and have a direct route to wherever they want to go. “Get out of my way, I’m a motorist!” /Mr. Burns

31. Here is an article from the Atlanta paper last year which includes an interview with Ms. Nelson giving an account of how the accident happened. Obviously this was before she knew she would be so outrageously prosecuted:

    http://www.ajc.com/news/jaywalkers-take-deadly-risks-527488.html

    You can email the Cobb County Solicitor who brought these charges against the unfortunate Ms. Nelson here:

    Barry.Morgan@cobbcounty.org

32. Erica: Considering the amount of cash that goes into building new highways and interstates every year, the cost of building multiple crosswalks is negligible. I don’t know how much crosswalks cost, specifically. But I do know that you can paint like 200 miles of bike lane for the price of one mile of new interstate. According to a Google search, Georgia has several ongoing highway projects so I find it hard to believe that they can’t allocate 0.00001% of that budget to protect pedestrians from the folks in the two-ton death machines. Much less deserving projects soak up city budgets every year.

    What it usually comes down to in many cities is that you can’t afford safety measures for pedestrians, but you can afford enormous convenience measures for motorists. God forbid it take Mr. Driver an extra five minutes to get to work because he could use another lane, but crosswalks? We can’t afford the paint.

    Pedestrians (read: often poor or disabled people) get the shit end of the stick.

33. Erica: Considering the amount of cash that goes into building new highways and interstates every year, the cost of building multiple crosswalks is negligible. I don’t know how much crosswalks cost, specifically. But I do know that you can paint like 200 miles of bike lane for the price of one mile of new interstate. According to a Google search, Georgia has several ongoing highway projects so I find it hard to believe that they can’t allocate 0.00001% of that budget to protect pedestrians from the folks in the two-ton death machines. Much less deserving projects soak up city budgets every year.

    The cost of putting paint on the road is obviously not the issue. It is not as if you could just put crosswalks everywhere and magically reduce traffic deaths. Perhaps the situation with this bus stop and road should have been improved, but then again perhaps not.

    This was an accident. This was not the first child to run into traffic to be killed, and it will not be the last.

    (TBH: City planning in many US cities is really not friendly to pedestrians. As an European, this was a bit of a shock to me the first time I visited.)

34. Some more public transportation fun – snowy climates. Every single bus stop in my area gets plowed in by street plows, forcing people to either stand waist-deep in dirty snow, or standing in either the plowed out entraces to parking lots or IN THE STREET.

    The muncipality says its the NFTA’s job to clear stops out, the NFTA says its the municipalitys. Wev, guys, just make sure to never do anything about it until someone gets killed and then blame them for needing the bus.

    Douchebombs.

35. Truly a WTF moment here!

36. Don’t surprise me. At all.

    My personal view, as a parent of two (8 and 5), is that a huge, HUGE chunk of the population has the sense that they would be awesome wonder-parents whose kids would never act out and would have the manners of an English butler and the wisdom of a Buddhist Monk, all wrapped up into a 30″, 35lb package. Vis a Vis, anyone whose kids do in fact act out or disobey directions is a Bad BAD parent who doesn’t deserve the bundle of joy they’ve been blessed with.

    Now take this out to a broader view- two possibilities exist here.

    1) POC have higher dropout rates, have higher teen pregnancy rates, etc. etc. Never mind any external factors- it’s obvious that Parents of Color suck and aren’t anywhere near as awesome as these awesome single, white people would be were they put in the same situation. And dammit, they have to be SHOWN that they suck.

    2) People LOVE the idea of law and order. They ADORE the idea of punishing people who are not perfect like they are (see #1). White people who drop the ball are out of bounds, though, because, you know… they’re sorta like them and because they oughta show leniency because this happened and that extenuating circumstance, blah blah blah. People of Color, though, are not like them, and no circumstance could possible excuse what they did!

    I see a mix of both. What an absolute SHOCKER that the mom in question wasn’t white.

    On another note, this is my worst nightmare made real. I literally squirm every time I hear these stories about young children dying, not only for the child, but for the parent, who will be going through a living hell for the rest of their lives. I wouldn’t be surprised if part of that mother believes she deserves to be locked up for what happened- that’s what I would think. The state- and the jury- should know better. The mom needs help right now, not prison.

37. My mother had to put one of my siblings on a leash when she was three. Otherwise, my sister would wander away. She was hyperactive and had ADD.

    Mom wasn’t terribly enthralled with the concept, but had several terrifying close calls where my sister got away in large public gathering. It took close to an hour and a half before we found her one time. So she put my sister on the leash, and as we as a family would walk through a public setting, every so often she would receive the scorn and derision of strangers.

    Their expressions said, How dare you!

38. One of the things that kills me about this case was that the drunk driver was a two-time hit-and-run offender, yet STILL got less time! Why the bloodly hell did this guy still have a license?!

    Of course, when I first read about this case, I just KNEW before I googled her that the mother was black. Please tell me that there is some petition or fund to help this woman!

39. I used to be someone who judged parents for the leashes. There but for the grace of god go I, as my son isn’t yet walking.

    I used to cross a busy two-lane road at a crosswalk that the city of Rockville MD put in because of a bus stop and it was difficult and scary. Yes, cars would speed up, going much faster than the speed limit. And somehow, I was supposed to be patient and wait.

    Ugh. ugh ugh. This story makes me want to cry.

40. With crosswalks, there really does seem to be a lack of knowledge.

    I used to ask people, around Cleveland, “What does a marked crosswalk mean when there’s no stop sign or light?” About half the time or more, drivers would answer something like, “It means you can’t hit the pedestrian.” In all seriousness.

    Hell-o? You’re not ever allowed to hit a pedestrian! The crosswalk has to mean something else, right? (Come on, this isn’t hard.) But asked point blank, it seems like about half of Ohio drivers simply don’t know the pedestrian has the right of way in a crosswalk where there is no other traffic control device.

    That’s why I like those little signs you see in Cleveland and Cleveland Heights sometimes. They’re right in the middle of the road and they say, “Pedestrian has right of way in crosswalk.” I’m not sure how much they help though.

    But on topic to the article: Yeah, seems like an extraordinarily heavy charge for the offense of being tired, poor, and overwhelmed while living in a cheap neighborhood.

41. catfood: That’s why I like those little signs you see in Cleveland and Cleveland Heights sometimes. They’re right in the middle of the road and they say, “Pedestrian has right of way in crosswalk.” I’m not sure how much they help though.

    There are similar ones in pedestrian-heavy parts of Milwaukee. On one of the busiest pedestrian streets in my part of town, with lots of outdoor hangouts and dining, etc. I’ve seen the signs get run over and dragged down the street more than once. *sigh*

42. Erica: Considering the amount of cash that goes into building new highways and interstates every year, the cost of building multiple crosswalks is negligible. I don’t know how much crosswalks cost, specifically. But I do know that you can paint like 200 miles of bike lane for the price of one mile of new interstate.

    I don’t think painting crosswalk lines on the road would help though. It might just make things worse – pedestrians would feel more comfortable crossing there, but cars would be going just as fast and would be just as unlikely to see the pedestrians and stop in time – especially if it were dark, or the driver was distracted, or if (as in this case) the driver was drunk. Putting a cross walk and no traffic signal on a 5 lane speedway seems like an accident waiting to happen (of course, so is putting a bus stop on one side and houses on the other – as we tragically see here). THere would need to be a traffic signal, or a pedestrian over/underpass – or the bus stop could closer to a traffic signal, or the bus could actually turn down the residential street instead of just dropping the passengers off on the side of a very busy road.

43. What’s sickening is that Nelson is facing 3 years. The driver–who’s had other hit and runs–served SIX MONTHS.

44. This is beyond outrageous. I’d like to take whoever made the decision to prosecute this woman and set them to running across five lanes of speeding traffic, over and over, until they drop.

45. The reason that there isn’t a crosswalk at the place where the woman crossed is because it’s a very dangerous point in the road (there is no intersection there, BTW – it’s just the middle of a busy road). You could not safely put a crosswalk there because it’s too hard to drivers to see, slow down, and stop for pedestrians, especially at night.

    However, I do not really understand why the bus stop needs to be right there rather than at the intersection down the road.

46. You could absolutely put a crosswalk there safely – you would just also need to put a traffic light.

    I live just off of a busy two lane road where there is a pedestrian traffic light (only turns red when someone presses the button and is walking across) specifically for a bus stop.

    I live in frou frou northern VA, though.

47. Do Americans have crosswalks with lighted signage like we have in Ontario? Basically, they are a regular painted crosswalk with large yellow ‘X’ lights that activate with the push of a button. Very visible, quite cost effective in busy areas that don’t necessitate a full set of traffic lights. It’s impossible to miss them unless you’re totally shitfaced.

48. Once when I was on a training trip in Ohio, I had to be driven to a doctor’s office via taxi cab. The area was so sprawled out as to be semi-rural, and the road we were on wasn’t all that busy.

    On the way there, we encountered a woman and her child as they crossed the road. The fucking cabbie actually sped up and honked his horn and swerved towards them as they ran for their lives. Then the guy had the gall to turn and complain about how the mother was endangering her kid by jaywalking. I was so flabbergasted by what I saw that all I could say was that I didn’t see any place where she could cross safely. After that, the cab driver pegged me as ‘one of those people’ and started ranting that there was a crosswalk a mile or two back and she should’ve marched all the way there instead.

    Later on that trip, me and few other people who were on that training trip had to jaywalk across a busy road that bisected a mall in order to go to a bookstore on the other side. No crosswalks or even sidewalks could be found. We crossed at a stoplight, but even though the cars couldn’t go because of the red light, some honked their horns at us anyways for jaywalking. Being on foot in America is like being in no-man’s-land.

49. igglanova: Do Americans have crosswalks with lighted signage like we have in Ontario?

    I’ve seen one of those, in one part of Austin. Don’t know if anywhere else has them but they do seem pretty genius.

50. I look at this from two views:

    I have a very strong feeling that if she were white, she would be consoled and supported in her time of grief.

    But, as someone who has taken public transit in a metropolitan area I have to say: in *my* area at least this is foreseeable. People have been hit and killed because they jaywalk in the dark plenty of times. Especially when they jaywalk in the middle of the road or if there is a small child.

    I can’t imagine the guilt she’d be dealing with already thinking about all of the what ifs she *could* control: what if she had walked to the crosswalk (possibly tiring out the 4 year old when it came time to cross), what if she waited till she had the right of way, what if what if what if .

    It astonishes me that a person can leave a child in a hot car all day in the summer ( I have yet to hear about a child being left in a not so hot car in the late fall/early winter) and nobody thinks about their irresponsible actions to leave a human being in a hot car all day or how it is forseeable that if you leave a place with a child that the child doesn’t magically disappear. We accept that people forget their kids in a hot car and accidentally kill them. Somehow Atlanta laws can’t recognize that a mother with multiple children, possibly in a rush to get home shouldn’t be prosecuted for the death of her child.

51. Azalea: We accept that people forget their kids in a hot car and accidentally kill them.

    Actually, these folks get prosecuted too. How and under what circumstances is all over the map, but these parents do get charged and they do do prison time.

52. sganske: After that, the cab driver pegged me as ‘one of those people’ and started ranting that there was a crosswalk a mile or two back and she should’ve marched all the way there instead.

    I’m pretty bugged at the idea that she was supposed to march back that far to cross legally, but I’m much more bothered by the idea that it’s the job of the public to enforce this law by terrifying jaywalkers. If she’s hit by an ignorant driver, that blows. If she’s cited by a police officer who sees her jaywalking, that sucks for her. But who said it’s this guy’s responsibility to enforce the law, and to do so by terrifying her? Just imagine if a police officer was caught doing this.

    Whether or not she should be crossing elsewhere, whether or not she is breaking the law, how is it even close to appropriate to try running someone off the road? And the saddest part is, this isn’t that uncommon.

53. I have a 2 year old who is a runner too, and I can absolutely picture her running into traffic, mostly because she’s tried it before. I also have 3 kids, and thank goodness my older two are enough older that they probably wouldn’t head into the street without me.

    I really consider the largest fixable part of this problem to be the bus stop. Either move it down the road to where the stoplight or stop sign is, or put in safer crossing for pedestrians at that location. By the description of many other people crossing there too, clearly there’s demand for such.

    Charging the mother with vehicular manslaughter is ridiculous. Three kids plus groceries is a lot. Losing control of one of the kids isn’t careless; it happens. 4 year olds are wriggly sometimes, and don’t often have much sense about traffic. Someone on Free Range Kids mentioned that there were more charges than the one against the mother, that’s why the 3 years, but compared to what the driver got, that’s ridiculous. The driver is far more responsible for what happened than the mother.

54. Azalea:
    I have a very strong feeling that if she were white, she would be consoled and supported in her time of grief.

    Possibly, but then again whenever I read about a pedestrian or cyclist being murdered by a driver (as I tend to do a lot, being an American non-driver who hates car culture) the first comments always are: “were they doing something illegal?” Usually followed by “well, that sucks, but they shouldn’t have been on the road anyway/should know cars are dangerous/should have been wearing a helmet (cyclist)/shouldn’t have been wearing an iPod (pedestrian).” Race, gender, it doesn’t matter, if you’re not in a car you’re probably doing something wrong and are at least slightly culpable. A white, male cyclist was put into a coma in Baltimore recently when a driver backed out of her driveway into the bike lane without looking and I’d say 80% of the initial comments on the site blamed him. My belief is that she probably wouldn’t have been prosecuted if she was white (or a man), but there would still be people thinking she was at fault. No way to tell, though.

55. Yeah. My hometown just decided to try to make bicylists safer. How? By fining and ticketing them for “violations” at a rate 5X higher than car drivers.

    That said, IMO (and having grown up near Atlanta) the extent of this woman’s persecution is absolutely about race. I didn’t know any white people growing up who took the bus–that was something “the maids” did.

    Her face in that photo just breaks your heart.

    Erica: Possibly, but then again whenever I read about a pedestrian or cyclist being murdered by a driver (as I tend to do a lot, being an American non-driver who hates car culture) the first comments always are: “were they doing something illegal?” Usually followed by “well, that sucks, but they shouldn’t have been on the road anyway/should know cars are dangerous/should have been wearing a helmet (cyclist)/shouldn’t have been wearing an iPod (pedestrian).” Race, gender, it doesn’t matter, if you’re not in a car you’re probably doing something wrong and are at least slightly culpable. A white, male cyclist was put into a coma in Baltimore recently when a driver backed out of her driveway into the bike lane without looking and I’d say 80% of the initial comments on the site blamed him. My belief is that she probably wouldn’t have been prosecuted if she was white (or a man), but there would still be people thinking she was at fault. No way to tell, though.

56. igglanova:
    Do Americans have crosswalks with lighted signage like we have in Ontario?Basically, they are a regular painted crosswalk with large yellow ‘X’ lights that activate with the push of a button.Very visible, quite cost effective in busy areas that don’t necessitate a full set of traffic lights.It’s impossible to miss them unless you’re totally shitfaced.

    Heh. Got a story about those.

    Last winter, I hit the button at a T-intersection near home, waited to allow the closest approaching vehicle to go through – the driver managed to nearly stop anyway, but I’m pretty lenient with people operating 1.5 ton vehicles – and began to cross. As I reached the opposite curb, someone yelled “You’re being unsafe!” from his vehicle. To my shock and annoyance, the driver behind the person I allowed to roll through thought he had right-of-way because he had passed the X’s painted on the road 30 metres or so away from the crosswalk, and thought that meant he had right-of-way over pedestrians even after the crosswalk lights started blinking. We argued for about fifteen seconds, my point that the driver in front of him managed to slow down failing to register. He continued arguing with me even as he pulled away, not watching the road while insisting that I was being unsafe.

    My partner, who drives, later pointed out that the Xs indicate the point at which passing is prohibited, not right-of-way for motorists.

    This wasn’t long after a mayor who thinks there’s a “war on cars” was elected. We are so screwed.

57. This is genuinely heart stopping. As a not so perfect mother who has lived in poverty with multiple small children, I think that even the term’ irresponsible’ is out of place here. When you’re poor and caring for kids, you have waaaay too many responsibilities. She obviously made a mistake. One that will always haunt her. But it doesn’t sounds like she made it due to too little responsibility, but, rather, too few resources.

58. You can sign a petition in support of Ms. Nelson here.

59. That said, IMO (and having grown up near Atlanta) the extent of this woman’s persecution is absolutely about race.I didn’t know any white people growing up who took the bus–that was something “the maids” did.

    Even in Baltimore that’s kind of the case. Coming from a city where the public transportation is very egalitarian (Pittsburgh), it was slightly jarring to be the only white person on the bus. No matter where I’m going, I’m usually the only one. The light rail here is a lot more mixed, so it seems doubly strange that white people in Baltimore don’t take the bus. Sometimes Maryland feels very Southern. Anyway, I definitely think race has a lot to do with this case, especially considering where it happened, but I also think people will jump in to blame anybody who’s doing something “abnormal,” like taking a bus. I guess it makes them feel better about probably being one of those drivers who try to run pedestrians down.

60. Ellie: Many, many drivers just have little to no regard for pedestrians. I don’t want to derail this thread into a conversation about how inconsiderate drivers can be, but trust me, I have so much experience with being scared for my life at a crosswalk

    Yes, this too. I don’t want to derail either, but I will just say that many drivers in my local area believe that if you are going to have the audacity to make them wait while you cross the street, you had better be running, and even then, they still don’t actually stop, they keep going, albeit slower.

    Crosswalks don’t exactly help situations like this either, because a) this driver was drunk, and b) drivers often have feel entitled to ignore or push pedestrians around. So I agree with you completely.

61. Annaleigh: Yes, this too. I don’t want to derail either, but I will just say that many drivers in my local area believe that if you are going to have the audacity to make them wait while you cross the street, you had better be running, and even then, they still don’t actually stop, they keep going, albeit slower.

    There’s a four-way intersection near my house that’s only a two-way stop with cross-walks (marked with paint and signs) that go against the stop signs. The drivers here going the two-way direction regularly blast through without so much as slowing down to check for pedestrians such that I will not cross that intersection (which I have to do all the time to get to the only grocery store in the area, which is also next to an intersection that has the magical capability of making drivers completely forget how to deal with a four-way and pedestrians for some reason) until I have made eye contact with the oncoming driver and see that they are coming to a stop. It’s bad enough when I’m fully mobile, but a couple of months ago I hurt one of my ankles really, really badly and could only take small, shuffling steps, and I was so terrified to cross the street anywhere, but especially there. Because I didn’t have crutches or a cast or anything that marked me as (temporarily) disabled and thus looked entirely “healthy”, drivers started shooting me the nastiest looks, even worse than the ones where I waited until they slowed down before starting to cross. Several times, drivers peeled out ridiculously fast as soon as I was barely past them and not even to the curb yet.

62. but how is it NOT a foreseeable circumstance that if you cross a busy road in the middle of the night in a place where it’s difficult to see pedestrians, while trying to wrangle three hard-to-control small children, you or one of your children might get hit by a car?

    I gotta agree with this. And I don’t think she took all the available precautions possible, even considering her limited resources. I looked at the photo of the road in the second link, for example, and it looks like there was a much better spot to jaywalk maybe 50 meters over; it would have at least reduced the number of lanes they had to cross, and provided a large median to pause in. I’ve made calculations like that myself (usually sans kids) and it’s not fair that you have to think so carefully about staying safe, but it will help keep you alive. It’s hard to make good decisions when you’re busy and tired and hungry etc. but the decision she made was still (unnecessarily) dangerous and her kid died from it — she’s not free of blame.

63. OK–but it seems that the death of her child is more than enough punishment for whatever blame she may or may not carry.

    Bagelsan:
    but how is it NOT a foreseeable circumstance that if you cross a busy road in the middle of the night in a place where it’s difficult to see pedestrians, while trying to wrangle three hard-to-control small children, you or one of your children might get hit by a car?

    I gotta agree with this. And I don’t think she took all the available precautions possible, even considering her limited resources. I looked at the photo of the road in the second link, for example, and it looks like there was a much better spot to jaywalk maybe 50 meters over; it would have at least reduced the number of lanes they had to cross, and provided a large median to pause in. I’ve made calculations like that myself (usually sans kids) and it’s not fair that you have to think so carefully about staying safe, but it will help keep you alive. It’s hard to make good decisions when you’re busy and tired and hungry etc. but the decision she made was still (unnecessarily) dangerous and her kid died from it — she’s not free of blame.

64. @ Bagelsan

    Yeah, but where’s the line between blame and criminal culpability? I mean, she had responsibility for the children, she made a judgement call, and it went really terribly wrong, but largely due to two things completely out of her control – a child who squirmed free and a drunk driver. Criminal proceedings also risk doing further harm to her and her living children, which seems pretty disproportionate to the control she had.

    Also, photos leave out situational specifics – she was crossing at night, so that part of the road might have been better lit. Also, there were other people crossing at the same time from the same bus, and it might have seemed safer to cross with a group than to go it alone (it would have to me, at least).

65. Also, walking farther would have also created more opportunities for the child to run free and *still* run into traffic, even if the mother was on the sidewalk.

66. OK–but it seems that the death of her child is more than enough punishment for whatever blame she may or may not carry.

    I’m not sure how that would work, though — would parents never be charged for any actions their child suffered from? I don’t think jailing her is right but I don’t think “she’s super sad, drop all charges” is realistic either.

67. Oh god, pretend I didn’t say “also” so many times in a row.

68. and it went really terribly wrong, but largely due to two things completely out of her control – a child who squirmed free and a drunk driver.

    Not to harp on this, but I don’t think the drunkenness of the driver was really a major factor. According to the story he had had “3 or 4 beers” and was properly in his lane when the accident occurred — obviously that still counts as drunk driving but it didn’t sound like he was hugely impaired. Considering the time of night and the speed (and the fact that 4-year-olds can be hard to see at the best of times) I’m not convinced a sober driver would have been any less likely to hit the child.

    And I don’t think adults get a total pass for kids-doing-kid-stuff, because that behavior is supposed to play into their decision making, right? Like people mentioned above there are child leashes, and I know I personally wear reflective clothes when I’m crossing roads at night, which I also often see on small kids at night; either of these might have helped and were likely not outside her means. There were a lot of steps that the mother could’ve taken and didn’t, is my main point — whether that’s “criminal” of her or not I don’t know.

69. It astonishes me that a person can leave a child in a hot car all day in the summer ( I have yet to hear about a child being left in a not so hot car in the late fall/early winter) and nobody thinks about their irresponsible actions to leave a human being in a hot car all day or how it is forseeable that if you leave a place with a child that the child doesn’t magically disappear. We accept that people forget their kids in a hot car and accidentally kill them. Somehow Atlanta laws can’t recognize that a mother with multiple children, possibly in a rush to get home shouldn’t be prosecuted for the death of her child.

    How do you get the idea that anyone accepts this?

    Every time I hear a story of parents who accidentally left their kids in the car and killed them, I hear about them being prosecuted, or convicted, and they are pilloried in the comments threads.

    My heart goes out to this woman, but I don’t at all agree with you that anyone in the US, or the English speaking world, gives a free pass to parents who forget their kids in the car.

70. @ Bagelsan

    Okay, I was not aware that the driver might not have been impaired.

    As for kids being kids, I was the first person on this thread to bring up leashes, and other people also reiterated that while they might be a good idea, there’s plenty of stigma about using them. I agree that there were lots of things that the mother could have done which might have mitigated the risk, but there are a lot of factors that influence how realistic those options are, including available resources for things like making sure your kids have reflective clothes. You say they weren’t outside her means, but you have no basis to know that for sure. Sometimes the kids wear whatever clothing is clean and warm enough to take them out in, or whatever they are willing to put on if they’re the picky type. It’s actually very difficult to control a child especially when you are juggling a lot of other things.

71. Okay, I was not aware that the driver might not have been impaired.

    Actually he was apparently sort of impaired in that he is also reportedly partly blind in his left eye, which is perfectly horrible considering the kid ran out from his left, but I don’t think the alcohol alone had a ton to do with it. I think the driving conditions were just really not forgiving for jaywalkers on that street, driver-competence aside. And I think the mother should have acted much more cautiously in light of that, especially as it sounds like she knew the conditions would be bad.

    I agree that there were lots of things that the mother could have done which might have mitigated the risk, but there are a lot of factors that influence how realistic those options are, including available resources for things like making sure your kids have reflective clothes.

    Absolutely, I don’t know exactly what her resources were. But we have to assume a lot just to make her decision reasonable, in my opinion — we have to assume that she couldn’t afford a leash or length of string, that she couldn’t have walked 140 feet down the sidewalk, that she owned nothing reflective, etc etc. And it sounds like she has done this before, without taking any of these precautions. I just feel that the more I learn about the situation the less I believe there was no better option available to her. Maybe that’s a sympathy fail on my part, I dunno.

    And honestly, it makes me slightly more supportive of the charges against her — if she regularly crosses 5 lanes of traffic at night with an unsecured 4-year-old then maybe she truly isn’t capable of making safe judgements and protecting her kids. I’m not honestly sure how to balance the “really shitty luck/situation” factor with the possible “also fairly shitty judgement” factor in a way that’s fair to her and her children.

72. Bagelsan:
    And honestly, it makes me slightly more supportive of the charges against her — if she regularly crosses 5 lanes of traffic at night with an unsecured 4-year-old then maybe she truly isn’t capable of making safe judgements and protecting her kids. I’m not honestly sure how to balance the “really shitty luck/situation” factor with the possible “also fairly shitty judgement” factor in a way that’s fair to her and her children.

    I hear you, but I think if a parent is having a hard time protecting their kids – because god knows it isn’t easy – the best solution is to give this woman all the support she needs. Not to take her kids away. Obviously, taking someone’s kids away is not the only way to solve a problem; and as a solution I think it’s pretty shitty for everyone involved – especially the kids. The perfect parent is not necessarily the right one, the right parent is not necessarily the perfect one.

    For example: I have a female relative who was so frustrated with her baby’s crying (this baby had been crying for like two weeks straight almost non stop and she was pretty under rested) that she was almost definitely going to shake her. She started gripping the baby really tightly and screaming “I can’t make you stop!” at her. I scooped that baby out of her arms and told her to lie the fuck down for at least three hours while I paced around with the baby.

    If I hadn’t been there, something horrible might have happened. We might jump to the conclusion that jeez, if you need support to keep from shaking your baby, you should not have a baby. But I think the right conclusion is that if you need support to keep from shaking your baby, *you need support*. I gave her the support she needed, and they’re a happy, flawed, loving family today. I think that’s a pretty good result; I don’t think calling children’s services would have led to a comparably happy ending.

    Anyway, on a different note, in this case, I don’t really think it was a failure of judgment. I think that, like many of the risks we take every day, we know there’s a very miniscule chance something could go wrong. But it’s very, very unlikely that it will – plus, you’ve done it a hundred times before and it was fine. And then, sometimes, it does go wrong – and then you’ve run over your own kid in the driveway, or you’ve forgotten your kid in a hot car, or you’ve merely cut yourself a knife. Sometimes the consequences are tiny – like “whoa, that was a close call!” and sometimes the consequences shatter your whole life. I’ve probably run across a busy street about five million times, and if I get hit at some point, I don’t think it means that my (hypothetical) kids should get taken away; it means that shit fucking happens and there’s no need to pile even more shit on top of it.

    I guess for me, the question is: what is the problem, and how can we solve it to get the end result we want (a healthy, safe, happy family). I just don’t see taking one’s kids away or putting someone in jail as being productive towards that end goal in this case – or most cases.

73. Every time I hear a story of parents who accidentally left their kids in the car and killed them, I hear about them being prosecuted, or convicted, and they are pilloried in the comments threads.

    I saw something about a case like this in France, some times ago. Tiredness, professional turmoil, worries about another child who was sick, led a mother to forget to drop her young child at the nanny’s, even though she went there – at a point, her train of thought jumped a step, and since the baby-seat was right behind the driver’s seat, she didn’t notice he daughter’s presence in the car.
    It’s only, hours later, when the nanny called to ask why the girl wasn’t there, that it clicked in her head – but too late.

    After expertises and deliberation, the court condemned her for involuntary homicide, with mitigating circumstances, and exemption of penalty (a possibility French judges have).

74. According to the story he had had “3 or 4 beers” and was properly in his lane when the accident occurred — obviously that still counts as drunk driving but it didn’t sound like he was hugely impaired.

    Actually, he’d had three or four beers and was prescribed painkillers. He was over the legal limit–and even being a little buzzed cuts down on your response time and reflexes. He also drove away from the scene (and Nelson and one of her daughters were also hurt in the accident, so it’s not like he didn’t notice). He did this before, twice in one day, in the ’90’s–a hit and run, and another hit-and-run as he tried to drive away. He got off very, very lightly. You don’t have to be falling-down, puking on yourself drunk to be impaired enough to be a danger behind the wheel.

    And really–she wasn’t the only person crossing the street there. Everyone who got off that bus crossed the street there. The residents of her apartment complex had been complaining about that stretch of road and pushing for a safe crossing there for ages. Whether or not the jaywalking was careless, I would not call it criminal. If we’re going to criminalize a moment of carelessness (or a bad and/or dangerous habit, especially when the safer/better habit is made harder to choose), we should all be in prison. No one is perfect on that score.

    I am not sure what the prosecutor was trying to prove. Nelson was devastated by the loss of her son, and I’m sure she already blames herself. The only thing this showed is that someone who is impaired can hit a child, kill them, and drive away and serve 6 months in prison with 5 years probation (and not be charged with vehicular homicide, only with a hit and run), while the mother–who doesn’t have a car–is charged with vehicular homicide.

    This was simply callous.

75. According to the story he had had “3 or 4 beers” and was properly in his lane when the accident occurred — obviously that still counts as drunk driving but it didn’t sound like he was hugely impaired.

    Four beers can put your BAC at .12. Obviously, differences in metabolism, body size, gender, etc. all play into it, but there’s nothing that suggests 3-4 beers won’t make you significantly impaired.

    But we have to assume a lot just to make her decision reasonable, in my opinion — we have to assume that she couldn’t afford a leash or length of string, that she couldn’t have walked 140 feet down the sidewalk, that she owned nothing reflective, etc etc. And it sounds like she has done this before, without taking any of these precautions. I just feel that the more I learn about the situation the less I believe there was no better option available to her. Maybe that’s a sympathy fail on my part, I dunno.

    Look, just because there were better options doesn’t mean she’s a felon who deserves to spend years incarcerated. What is that going to accomplish for anybody besides some moral superiority for people who have the luxury of driving everywhere?

    I think this entire line of thinking is a red herring: were there alternatives? Sure. Would they have made any sort of meaningful difference? How could we possibly know? The drunk driver could very well have been there at the crosswalk.

    Atlanta is horribly unsafe for pedestrians and this sort of thing is not uncommon. That, to me, suggests that it calls for systemic change and an overhaul of transportation, not musing about whether a reflective vest would have made all the difference and was within the means of some poor woman WHO LOST HER CHILD.

    Sheesh.

76. “But we have to assume a lot just to make her decision reasonable, in my opinion — we have to assume that she couldn’t afford a leash or length of string, that she couldn’t have walked 140 feet down the sidewalk, that she owned nothing reflective, etc etc.”

    No, actually, I don’t think we do.

    All we have to assume is that she is a mother of three children and has to constantly make split-second risk-benefit decisions regarding what is best for her and her children. The problem is not just that the jury does not have the life experience of riding the bus, but that they don’t have the life experience of being a mother of three who takes the bus with her three children in order to run errands. It’s not speculation to assume that she was tired, and it’s not grasping at straws to think that she had doubts as to how much longer she could wrangle all three kids.

    Also – that she was “crossing with other people” is neither speculation nor a stupid idea, considering that most of her own “party” would have been very hard for drivers to spot.

    And while I am not against leashes as a general rule, I can also see them not working when you have three kids – even if only one of them is on the leash; it’s not like those things never get tangled up. I can also see her prioritising more likely risks and problems over the slim chance that a leash would save her child’s life; she wouldn’t have had the hindsight we now have. And, you know, not having a car and all – likely has less time and money.

    There is a lot of this that is sounding very much like the kind of victim-blaming that happens in rape trials. The idea that jaywalking (non-residential) streets with children is so unheard of that only criminally negligent mothers would do it strikes me as incredibly similar to the advice to women to not walk alone at night. This works if you are a suburban housewife, but not if you are a woman works a night shift – or a mother of three without a car in a city.

    We do not know her life and I have serious doubts that an all white jury that has never ridden the bus before was able to fully understand her life. Such as: what kinds of problems she, as an African American woman with three children, might risk trying to conduct business with one of her children tied to her – not by a yuppie looking leash, but by a piece of string, as you suggested. (because that isn’t going to draw looks, commentary, discrimination, and possible calls to the police.)

    I think the most important question Spilt Milk asks is why is this (only) an individual responsibility thing? Whether the mother in this case was criminally negligent or not, surely our culture is negligent – for placing so little value on pedestrian’s safety and the ability of non-auto-owning citizen’s to conduct their business safely. It *should* have been safer for her to cross at the crosswalk – but I know very few people who walk cities a lot that would agree that crossing at the crosswalk is always safer than crossing with a group. That isn’t a fault that lies with individual pedestrians that get hurt – or their parents. It’s a mindset among drivers that needs to change.

77. Maybe that’s a sympathy fail on my part, I dunno.

    The cross walk was a third of a mile from the stop, meaning this woman and her children would have had to have walked an extra two thirds of MILE, on a busy road and in the dark, to get home. You can’t tell me a reasonable person wouldn’t have made the same decision this woman made.

78. I think this entire line of thinking is a red herring: were there alternatives? Sure. Would they have made any sort of meaningful difference? How could we possibly know?

    Well, isn’t that kind of the whole point of putting someone on trial, to figure out if they reasonably took steps to keep their kids safe? I’m just saying that I’m not sure she did. I don’t think jailing her will do any good (and will likely do a lot of harm) but I certainly don’t think the death of her child means we shouldn’t consider what precautions she did/didn’t take and whether they were reasonable.

79. The cross walk was a third of a mile from the stop, meaning this woman and her children would have had to have walked an extra two thirds of MILE, on a busy road and in the dark, to get home.

    Well, I personally might have opted for walking the 140 feet down the road to the much wider median where it was only 4 lanes of traffic, if I decided to jaywalk 3 small children across a busy road at night. I think that, with her knowing the situation she would have to deal with ahead of time, there were lots of things she could have done to improve it and didn’t (whether or not one of those things was to use the crosswalk.)

80. Well, isn’t that kind of the whole point of putting someone on trial, to figure out if they reasonably took steps to keep their kids safe? I’m just saying that I’m not sure she did. I don’t think jailing her will do any good (and will likely do a lot of harm) but I certainly don’t think the death of her child means we shouldn’t consider what precautions she did/didn’t take and whether they were reasonable.

    No, I actually think that’s the job of a good pre-trial investigation. You do not put people on trial for guesses at whether or not their choices were reasonable. You put them on trial when you, as a prosecutor, are convinced that they were not reasonable, were criminally negligent, and should be held to account. I am completely and totally unpersuaded by what I’ve read that she was negligent and worthy of prosecution. The legal standard isn’t whether she was maximally safe. It’s whether what she did was reasonable under the circumstances.

81. I live in this area and I think I understand the case more because of that.

    This is a four lane, median divided roadway where cars are traveling 50 mph or so. There are several low income apartment complexes in the area and the people who live there regularly dart out in front of oncoming traffic. It happens all the time. I personally have had to brake for them and honk at them. They seemingly don’t care that there are cars coming. It is also quite common for mothers with many children to be walking and crossing here. They too run across the street in front of cars.

    What I see quite often is a Mom with say four kids all under the age of five. The mother is usually carrying one, and holding the hand of one and then the older ones tag along behind out of her vision. I often am stunned at the sight of a mother walking ahead of, and thus not watching, her children. When traffic breaks, they make a run for it.

    Although the driver clearly wasn’t perfect, I feel sorry for him. Although I wasn’t there, knowing the area, I can imagine that he was driving along and these folks likely darted out in front of him and there was nothing he could do. He too has to live with what happened.

82. @Bagelsan Since when is three tenths of a mile only 140 feet? By my reckoning it’s closer to 1500 feet.

    You are also assuming that walking this distance twice (there and back) ALONG a busy road is objectively safer than crossing that road with the added safety of being with a bunch of people. Personally, if I was out after dark I’d opt for the crowd much of the time, for non-traffic related personal safety reasons. Additionally, I might decide that the fast route across the road is safer than a far longer route along the road, since a child is perfectly capable of skipping a couple of extra feet onto the road that is beside him as well as one he is crossing.

    And I’m really curious to know how many mothers you’ve seen getting around with children tethered with string because that particular option is not one I would expect to readily occur to a reasonable person in my culture, at least. And it’s a stretch to claim this was a regular thing – they were out after dark because of a missed bus connection and it seems that this was not, in fact, typical.

    You know, I’m betting Raquel Nelson is wishing she’d stapled her kid’s shirt to her damn leg, now. Just like the parents of children who die in car crashes wish they’d never put them in the car that day. We all take calculated risks every day. If you start wanting to lay blame in a punitive sense each time someone gets that calculation wrong, you’re going to be very busy indeed.

    1. @Bagelsan My apologies, I obviously misread your comment about it being 140 feet to a wider median strip, not the pedestrian crossing. I still don’t think that a) it would necessarily be safer to do this or b) that it would have prevented prosecution, since it would still have been jaywalking.

83. This the problem I have with objective reasonableness standards, particularly in criminal trials. They reflect kyriarchal norms on to every person. Its a fucked up system altogether.

84. And I’m really curious to know how many mothers you’ve seen getting around with children tethered with string because that particular option is not one I would expect to readily occur to a reasonable person in my culture, at least.

    Well, this was in response to the idea that maybe she couldn’t afford a child leash or something. As someone who’s shucked off her belt when she forgot her dog’s leash I have no problem with a little jury-rigging as needed. :p I wasn’t so much thinking that she would waltz around town all day with children tied to her via string, just that she has had to cross this large dangerous street before (albeit not at night) and apparently didn’t make any additional effort to secure her 4-year-old before doing so — and if a child leash would be outrageously out of her price range, something else could’ve been worked out.

    I’m not trying to nitpick every detail here, really, it’s just that reading those links more thoroughly actually made me think her decision was less understandable than I’d initially thought. The version we get here is that she had no options and that just doesn’t seem to be true. I don’t think her decision was egregious or abusive but it seemed like a very poor one to me, and not as beyond reproach as some commenters have been treating it.

85. DammitJanet:
    Maybe that’s a sympathy fail on my part, I dunno.

    The cross walk was a third of a mile from the stop, meaning this woman and her children would have had to have walked an extra two thirds of MILE, on a busy road and in the dark, to get home.You can’t tell me a reasonable person wouldn’t have made the same decision this woman made.

    There’s no way in hell I’m jaywalking in the middle of a busy and not so well lit highway in the dark with my small wiggly children and some bags. But that doesn’t make me want to throw her in jail or automatically blame her for her chid’s death.

86. Alara Rogers: How do you get the idea that anyone accepts this?

    Every time I hear a story of parents who accidentally left their kids in the car and killed them, I hear about them being prosecuted, or convicted, and they are pilloried in the comments threads.

    My heart goes out to this woman, but I don’t at all agree with you that anyone in the US, or the English speaking world, gives a free pass to parents who forget their kids in the car.

    Oh it has happened almost 4 times already in the DC metropolitan area and every.single.time there were no charges against the parents, at all. If you want I will try to find and post links. Its accepted as an “accident” here, routinely, every year around this time.

87. Um, I live in the DC metro area and know of at least 2 prosecutions in the last couple years for kids left in cars. It varies a lot by jurisdiction I think.

    The degree to which people second guess all kinds of parental decisions is very much like the victim blaming that happens with sexual assault cases. There are parents who intentionally hurt their children, and they should be charged criminally. But getting into what risks are “acceptable” and “unacceptable” for a loving parent to take is a very different can of worms and lends itself to unfair application to oppressed groups. Driving a child anywhere can kill the child, but no one thinks it’s an unacceptable risk. It would seem to me that biking with a child attached to the bike could be considered pretty dangerous, but where I live it’s definitely acceptable. We don’t charge parents whose children are injured playing football with a crime. Do we actually know that any of these things are officially safer? They’re just risks that are more acceptable to well off people.

    These cases end up punishing the unlucky for the types of risks that many or most parents take. Sometimes accidents are just accidents. Some parents get support dealing with their grief when terrible accidents happen to their children and other parents get prosecuted.

88. There is a petition …
    http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/669/545/347/

    We’re sending the signatures directly to the Georgia governor. Please sign and share the petition to get the Governor to step in and overturn the sentence.

    charose:
    One of the things that kills me about this case was that the drunk driver was a two-time hit-and-run offender, yet STILL got less time!Why the bloodly hell did this guy still have a license?!

    Of course, when I first read about this case, I just KNEW before I googled her that the mother was black.Please tell me that there is some petition or fund to help this woman!

89. This story is heart breaking. I have no doubt that her race played a major role.

    Also? The driver was drunk, on pain pills, and partially blind?? And this isn’t his first offense?? How the hell does he still have his license?

90. It *should* have been safer for her to cross at the crosswalk – but I know very few people who walk cities a lot that would agree that crossing at the crosswalk is always safer than crossing with a group. That isn’t a fault that lies with individual pedestrians that get hurt – or their parents. It’s a mindset among drivers that needs to change.

    It’s the mindset among road engineers that needs to change. road engineers (and the public in general) think roads are for people in cars. We need complete streets — roads where people on foot and wheelchairs, people on bicycles, and people on transit are equally important as people in cars. The mother should have had a safe, convenient, legal way to cross the street after she got off the bus — but she didn’t. It’s death by road design.

91. To everyone who thinks it’s reasonable that this woman had the “means” to get a leash or reflective clothing (or that it’s unreasonable that she didn’t have these things this night) : I wonder if you’ve ever lived in poverty with small children? And without a car, too! I have VERY limited experience living in hard times with my small kids. I’ve never been completely without access to a car (although, my partner and I shared a P.O.S. car while he worked 12hrs a day an hour away from our home, so, essentially, not easy.) I have a partner who is wonderful and I have support from friends. I have the privileges of being white, thin, educated and able to be read as middle class. And, you know what? It has STILL been hard to get everything done in a day without losing it, let alone to think of and prepare for all of the “better options”! Are there better options “available” to poor mothers? Are there alternatives to the way we do things that would be better/safer/healthier/etc? Sure! And in our spare time, I’m sure each and every one of us should be able to make a list of them all and to implement them. Every time. By ourselves. And if not? Bad, Bad, BAD Mommy!

    What this is is a very very VERY sad thing that has happened to this woman and her family. But, seriously? Are we really, on this comment thread, pondering whether she should be held criminally responsible (or, just socially responsible/very very ashamed) for not being 100% prepared for HAVING A DRUNK DRIVER RUN OVER HER CHILD?! (yes, 3/4 beers + painkillers = impaired)

    And as for people darting out, I understand the frustration. I live in a similar area and am always so aggravated by this! And if I hit someone with my car here, it would be very very very sad. If that person was a child it would be devastating. But if I’ve had 3/4 beers and some painkillers, and not able to see out of one eye…. um.. yeah, that’d make it harder for me to react it time to not kill someone. That’s why we have DUI laws.

    Although the driver clearly wasn’t perfect, I feel sorry for him. Although I wasn’t there, knowing the area, I can imagine that he was driving along and these folks likely darted out in front of him and there was nothing he could do. He too has to live with what happened.

    Right. Nothing this not-perfect-but-still-reasonable, sober, cautious man could do. Let us shed a special tear for him.

    Absolutely, I don’t know exactly what her resources were. But…

    Sympathy Fail? Um, no. Understanding the realities of people less privileged than you and then talking as if you DO understand Fail? Yep.

    Ok. I’m ranting. A lot. I apologize if my tone is harsh or angry. This makes me angry. Mother-shaming, especially poor-mother-shaming makes me angry.

    SpiltMilk – Thank you so much for this and other posts. I’ve needed to see a voice like yours in the blogsphere for a long while!

92. Hello, I live in France. I was terrified by the story of the policemen rapists of New York, yes ca often arrive this stories even to us. How the jury was able to leave the benefit of the doubt to men who make of the sex with a woman can’t to rise to her without help ? The American feminists have to make a campaign of belittlement of the police, the kind, the videos, showing a woman imploring a policeman to leave her quiet in the street.

    What is this world where this situation is admitted ? This woman paid taxes to be violated!

93. Thank you josephine and spilt milk. I’m a bit shocked by some of the comments here. My heart truly goes out to this woman.

94. I’m surprised people are forgetting that the 4 yr old who died was not the only person hit by the driver. The mother herself and one of her other children where also struck by the driver. Only her oldest child escaped injury.

    I’m not sure if Nelson and her other child were struck trying to grab the 4 yr old who wriggled away, or if it they would have all been struck anyway.
    My head explodes at the idea that we even needed to have this conversation. But then I am woman with three children who doesn’t have a drivers license ( I’ve never had one). I use public transport. (Or I wait for my husband to get home, when he isn’t working away or deployed. A privilege I have as a married woman)
    I am exceptionally lucky none of my kids have ever been runners. But I question whether or not that would keep them safe when dealing with an unknown like the stability and safety of the drivers on the road. But I cannot allow that to keep my children and myself housebound. Life requires errands and appointments be made and kept and public transport is often my only option. I cannot control the people behind the wheel of the cars on the road. Nor can I allow my fear of an unknown stop me from having an active life.
    Perhaps it was a lack of good judgement for Nelson to cross where she did, but it was an even grosser and heartless lack of judgement shown by Jerry L Guy to get behind the wheel of a car after combining alcohol with painkillers. (And not his first time being involved in a crime like this.) Had he been sober, the accident might have been avoidable and a jaywalking fine dished out to Nelson would seem fair and just.
    But HIS action, HIS decisions are the one that resulted in the death of a child and the minor injury to the child’s mother and sibling. It does not seem fair or just that the mother is the one facing a conviction for vehicular manslaughter here.

95. It’s the mindset among road engineers that needs to change.

    Oh, yes. Most definitely this as well.

    I Know the Area

    People do this in the neighborhood where I work all the time. I used to shake my head and fist at them too. And still do, sometimes.

    And then I tried walking some of those streets. Which are also a mix of businesses, residences, and busy streets. And while I still think some of the jaywalkers are taking unnecessary risks, I have much more sympathy for the pedestrians. Especially as many of them, like this mother and her children, are walking to and from train and bus stops and their destinations.

96. After I heard the Raquel Nelson newscast and “Cobb County” was mentioned, I immediately thought Ga…my 2nd thought was African American Mom.. Both gut reactions were correct…I’ve lived nearly 60 yrs under racism in this country, when will it stop??

97. i am not understanding this at all, why was the mother charged with vehicular manslaughter and she wasn’t even da driver? Omg! I just can’t believe someone would even allow this 2 happen 2 dis poor mother, wat about the well being of her other children. The justice system can sometimes be so unfair.

98. OMG. I just read this, and I am appalled. As a former prosecutor myself, I would NEVER have prosecuted this case. Even if you could argue that the woman was grossly negligent or reckless (which seems highly debateable), what does a prosecution accomplish? It is unlikely to make Ms. Nelson or other parents more careful in the future. After all, the death of a child is surely motivation enough to be more careful. The death of a child is also punishment enough (even assuming punishment is warranted). What purpose can possibly be served by tormenting this woman more than she has already been tormented by this terrible event?

    Generally, I don’t think prosecuting parents for the accidental deaths of their children is a good thing at all. I am trying to imagine exceptions to my general sense that parents should not be prosecuted. I can see prosecuting prosecuting a parent whose child died because, say, sent a four-year-old by himself to run an errand that involved crossing an 8-lane highway. Or punishing a child by deliberately leaving him alone all day in a hot car. But it seems that there should be some sort of malice or conduct that is so outside the norm of anything considered responsible to warrant prosecuting a grieving parent. Having a child who runs out into the path of an oncoming car doesn’t rise to the level. Don’t these prosecutors ever think, “There but for the grace of God go I?”

99. This is horrible. I’m so used to zebra crossings* and pelican crossings**, to laws that protect pedestrians, to special tactile paving slabs*** that tell visually-impaired people where it’s safe to cross, to talking crossings that say “It’s safe to cross now”, or beep when it’s safe to walk. These don’t exist in America?

    Surely pedestrian-activated crossings would not be such a huge burden to the drivers? We have crossings that are pedestrian-activated, with lights, and that scan the road for activity. If there are no pedestrians left on the rod, the light turns green again, minimising delays for drivers. Aren’t there any road-bridges or tunnels (called subways here, literally a lit tunnel under busy roads for pedestrians to safely get to the other side of the road)

    That woman has suffered enough. A visually impaired, drunk, drugged person injured her and her kids, and killed one of them. She is not the criminal.

    Absolute poverty means you do what you can. Reflective vests aren’t in the budget when your belly is empty, and you’re cold.

    String/belt as emergency dog lead? Fine. Belting/stringing kids, as a poor WOC? Uhuh… I’m sure people would have just loved to see those kids tied together by loops of string. I’m sure people would have nodded approvingly and smiled at that, not even thinking to call child services. For fuck’s sake.

    *http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zebra_crossing
    **http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pelican_crossing
    ***http://www.tobermore.co.uk/tactile_flags.aspx

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