In the developed world this is absolutely unthinkable.
Really? What developed world would that be? The fact that youth services protects government against children, rather than the other way around, is something that happens in Europe just like in the US.
A trivial example: pretty much the whole developed world has a law that schools are accountable for anything that happens to children in relation to school, including on the way to school and the way back. This goes as far as ensuring that the way to school actually happens, providing oversight on the way, preventing thefts, bullying, ... in class, in school, on the way to school and back, in after-school activities. No school on the planet actually does this, of course.
Anyone who had children can tell you how well schools, anywhere on the planet, actually do this and how much responsibility they accept when things go wrong, even or perhaps especially when a teacher is actively making things go wrong (e.g. the school is financially responsible when a teacher is involved in selling drugs, but teacher get caught all the time in things ranging from falsifying grades to paedophilic rape)
And for cases where children or parents insist on their legal rights, that's what you have youth services for. Note: another law that the whole world has is that youth services are exempt from legal protections. A youth judge can lock up a child, usually even beyond 18 years old, for no reason at all. A child can be convicted while having provided evidence of their innocence. A minor doesn't even have the right to a trial at all! Investigations can be performed without any of the rules of investigation apply (meaning even that it is perfectly legal for youth services to lie about the situation of a minor AND for a judge to convict based on a lie). So there is no defense against youth services (other than exploiting the fact that a child cannot be held responsible. In other words: the only "defense" is having the child commit sufficient violence against youth services personnel)
And, of course, when this was investigated ... there's a UN report pointing out that over 90% of all child abuse happens at school [1]. And no, despite the picture on the front page, it is not in fact about Africa.
Legend’s parents, Jessica and Sameule Jenkins, did.
Two days after the crash, the district attorney charged both with involuntary manslaughter, set bail at $1.5 million each, and took their remaining children into protective custody. Facing the prospect of months in jail and the loss of their children, the Jenkinses took felony plea deals.""
This part.
Do bad things not happen in developed countries related to children? No. But this part would not happen.
What kind of legal culture gives the Govt the power or the right to sue parents for "involuntary manslaughter" because their child got killed trying to cross the road?
What I see here is basically or low income probably poorly educated couple who didn't have the intellectual knowledge/capabability to seek proper legal support and advice to fight the case.
This is nothing more than the abuse of the justice system, otherwise known as lawfare.
This is what youth services does. It holds children themselves responsible for anything that others might do to them. Especially if the people doing it to them are government employees who might expose the government to liability.
All while putting forth the story that they protect children against their parents where necessary. And while that happens, that's single digit percentage of the children in state facilities. That happens so rarely that there's entire facilities where NONE of the children present have any problem with their parents. But every last child has problems with school (going from schools refusing to protect against bullying, refusing to abide by laws like access, or guarding children going to school, or transport, or ...)
Is there any more to this story? Even for the dystopian US, this seems odd.
It's odd how the NYT article names neither the DA nor the judge that prosecuted them, and let the driver walk.
Edit: I missed it: they do name the DA later in the article. The judge remains anonymous.
It names the DA at least. In bold.
Did we read the same NYT article?
"Gaston County’s district attorney, Travis Page"
[flagged]
Interestingly, the people accused of being pod-living and bug-eating (you know, highfallutin' libtards) tend to be the ones most vigorously advocating against this type of urban development.
Bug/Pod and 15 minute cities is the same people. The 'libtard' is just downstream.
Right... and 15 minute cities don't have children crossing 4 lane freeways.
@gork anecdata aside, are LRTs or automobiles responsible for more pedestrian deaths?
> The “walk” to the store includes crossing a 45-mph, four-lane stroad with no midblock crosswalk, no traffic calming, and a median that hides oncoming traffic.
Yes, this is bad design. But I do think it’s negligent to let a child cross this road unsupervised. If it was a suburban street this would be crazy, but it’s not and I think them being charged is reasonable
I disagree. My parents let me walk around the city when I was 7, and I think that I would have been worse off if they hadn't. As I see it, if a kid is old enough for compulsory education, then they're old enough to walk outside without parental supervision.
At 7? Really? I was allowed to roam dilapidated industrial sites and ride my bike on the streets around at age 7-10 but I wasn't allowed anywhere near a 4-lane boulevard with high speed traffic like that. Heck, the highway I wasn't allowed to cross didn't even have four lanes.
There's a pretty big difference between random streets and a 4-lane arterial road like this one. I would take great care crossing it as an adult and I would only consider letting a kid cross it with explicit instructions to use a marked crossing or wait for traffic to stop for them and practice doing it accompanied.
I lived ON a four lane 55mph road that was a heavily trafficked arterial road and crossed it all the time at 7.
Roads 100% are community killers, it's insane that people put up with such extreme infantilization and isolation, no wonder deaths of despair and chronic loneliness is on the rise. We've cultivated our own sad fragility.
In the 70s there were massive protests in the Netherlands called "Stop the Child Murder". People were used to safe streets where children could cycle independently to school, go to sports clubs and hang out with their friends around the city. Then cars came and started killing their children.
At the height of the killings, 420 Children were killed per year: that is more than 1 per day. 3200 people were killed per year if you include adults. You can imagine that even more were wounded and maimed.
So yeah. You don't have to accept that roads are community killers.
>I lived ON a four lane 55mph road that was a heavily trafficked arterial road and crossed it all the time at 7.
And you just waltzed across it when it looked clear or you used marked crossings, timed it with the lights after practice with your parents, etc.?
I'm not saying there aren't ways to cross this road and that a 7yo can't be taught a couple of them, but to just turn a 7-10yo pair loose-ish on it seems foolish.
>Roads 100% are community killers,
There were a bunch of contributory factors leading to this kid's death. You're just as ignorant and wrong as the prosecutor who thinks this is all the parents fault.
>It's insane that people put up with such extreme infantilization and isolation,
Surely you see the irony here (by which I mean you are unwise for having a self-contradictory opinion)? You're basically saying that "people can't handle these roads". They clearly can. 4-lane boulevards with medians are all over even the most walkable cities in Europe. And some of America's worst cities for walking are grids that lack bigger roads (i.e tons of 2-lane grid). The devil is in the details.
I literally ran across it when it was clear, we were over a mile from the nearest crossing.
We should have safer roads, we should stop hating ourselves and our fellow citizens, parents should not have to hover around their kids constantly, the burden of parenting has gone up an insane amount since I was a kid and there isn't a well justified reason for it.
> driver of an SUV on West Hudson Boulevard
Tall, heavy vehicles that make pedestrians and cyclists invisible:
https://www.consumerreports.org/cars/car-safety/new-suvs-hav...
https://www.theautopian.com/full-size-suvs-are-twice-as-like...
In the developed world this is absolutely unthinkable.
Really? What developed world would that be? The fact that youth services protects government against children, rather than the other way around, is something that happens in Europe just like in the US.
A trivial example: pretty much the whole developed world has a law that schools are accountable for anything that happens to children in relation to school, including on the way to school and the way back. This goes as far as ensuring that the way to school actually happens, providing oversight on the way, preventing thefts, bullying, ... in class, in school, on the way to school and back, in after-school activities. No school on the planet actually does this, of course.
Anyone who had children can tell you how well schools, anywhere on the planet, actually do this and how much responsibility they accept when things go wrong, even or perhaps especially when a teacher is actively making things go wrong (e.g. the school is financially responsible when a teacher is involved in selling drugs, but teacher get caught all the time in things ranging from falsifying grades to paedophilic rape)
And for cases where children or parents insist on their legal rights, that's what you have youth services for. Note: another law that the whole world has is that youth services are exempt from legal protections. A youth judge can lock up a child, usually even beyond 18 years old, for no reason at all. A child can be convicted while having provided evidence of their innocence. A minor doesn't even have the right to a trial at all! Investigations can be performed without any of the rules of investigation apply (meaning even that it is perfectly legal for youth services to lie about the situation of a minor AND for a judge to convict based on a lie). So there is no defense against youth services (other than exploiting the fact that a child cannot be held responsible. In other words: the only "defense" is having the child commit sufficient violence against youth services personnel)
And, of course, when this was investigated ... there's a UN report pointing out that over 90% of all child abuse happens at school [1]. And no, despite the picture on the front page, it is not in fact about Africa.
[1] https://www.un.org/en/peace-and-security/violence-against-ch...
""The driver faced no charges.
Legend’s parents, Jessica and Sameule Jenkins, did.
Two days after the crash, the district attorney charged both with involuntary manslaughter, set bail at $1.5 million each, and took their remaining children into protective custody. Facing the prospect of months in jail and the loss of their children, the Jenkinses took felony plea deals.""
This part.
Do bad things not happen in developed countries related to children? No. But this part would not happen.
What kind of legal culture gives the Govt the power or the right to sue parents for "involuntary manslaughter" because their child got killed trying to cross the road?
What I see here is basically or low income probably poorly educated couple who didn't have the intellectual knowledge/capabability to seek proper legal support and advice to fight the case.
This is nothing more than the abuse of the justice system, otherwise known as lawfare.
This is what youth services does. It holds children themselves responsible for anything that others might do to them. Especially if the people doing it to them are government employees who might expose the government to liability.
All while putting forth the story that they protect children against their parents where necessary. And while that happens, that's single digit percentage of the children in state facilities. That happens so rarely that there's entire facilities where NONE of the children present have any problem with their parents. But every last child has problems with school (going from schools refusing to protect against bullying, refusing to abide by laws like access, or guarding children going to school, or transport, or ...)
Is there any more to this story? Even for the dystopian US, this seems odd.
Wow https://archive.is/jcxbu
On a related note https://www.lshtm.ac.uk/newsevents/news/2025/being-hit-suv-i...
It's odd how the NYT article names neither the DA nor the judge that prosecuted them, and let the driver walk.
Edit: I missed it: they do name the DA later in the article. The judge remains anonymous.
It names the DA at least. In bold.
Did we read the same NYT article?
"Gaston County’s district attorney, Travis Page"
[flagged]
Interestingly, the people accused of being pod-living and bug-eating (you know, highfallutin' libtards) tend to be the ones most vigorously advocating against this type of urban development.
Bug/Pod and 15 minute cities is the same people. The 'libtard' is just downstream.
Right... and 15 minute cities don't have children crossing 4 lane freeways.
Correct we do it differently
https://www.ctvnews.ca/kitchener/article/teen-remains-in-hos...
@gork anecdata aside, are LRTs or automobiles responsible for more pedestrian deaths?
> The “walk” to the store includes crossing a 45-mph, four-lane stroad with no midblock crosswalk, no traffic calming, and a median that hides oncoming traffic.
Yes, this is bad design. But I do think it’s negligent to let a child cross this road unsupervised. If it was a suburban street this would be crazy, but it’s not and I think them being charged is reasonable
I disagree. My parents let me walk around the city when I was 7, and I think that I would have been worse off if they hadn't. As I see it, if a kid is old enough for compulsory education, then they're old enough to walk outside without parental supervision.
At 7? Really? I was allowed to roam dilapidated industrial sites and ride my bike on the streets around at age 7-10 but I wasn't allowed anywhere near a 4-lane boulevard with high speed traffic like that. Heck, the highway I wasn't allowed to cross didn't even have four lanes.
There's a pretty big difference between random streets and a 4-lane arterial road like this one. I would take great care crossing it as an adult and I would only consider letting a kid cross it with explicit instructions to use a marked crossing or wait for traffic to stop for them and practice doing it accompanied.
I lived ON a four lane 55mph road that was a heavily trafficked arterial road and crossed it all the time at 7.
Roads 100% are community killers, it's insane that people put up with such extreme infantilization and isolation, no wonder deaths of despair and chronic loneliness is on the rise. We've cultivated our own sad fragility.
In the 70s there were massive protests in the Netherlands called "Stop the Child Murder". People were used to safe streets where children could cycle independently to school, go to sports clubs and hang out with their friends around the city. Then cars came and started killing their children.
At the height of the killings, 420 Children were killed per year: that is more than 1 per day. 3200 people were killed per year if you include adults. You can imagine that even more were wounded and maimed.
So yeah. You don't have to accept that roads are community killers.
>I lived ON a four lane 55mph road that was a heavily trafficked arterial road and crossed it all the time at 7.
And you just waltzed across it when it looked clear or you used marked crossings, timed it with the lights after practice with your parents, etc.?
I'm not saying there aren't ways to cross this road and that a 7yo can't be taught a couple of them, but to just turn a 7-10yo pair loose-ish on it seems foolish.
>Roads 100% are community killers,
There were a bunch of contributory factors leading to this kid's death. You're just as ignorant and wrong as the prosecutor who thinks this is all the parents fault.
>It's insane that people put up with such extreme infantilization and isolation,
Surely you see the irony here (by which I mean you are unwise for having a self-contradictory opinion)? You're basically saying that "people can't handle these roads". They clearly can. 4-lane boulevards with medians are all over even the most walkable cities in Europe. And some of America's worst cities for walking are grids that lack bigger roads (i.e tons of 2-lane grid). The devil is in the details.
I literally ran across it when it was clear, we were over a mile from the nearest crossing.
We should have safer roads, we should stop hating ourselves and our fellow citizens, parents should not have to hover around their kids constantly, the burden of parenting has gone up an insane amount since I was a kid and there isn't a well justified reason for it.