So, can someone explain why the tired parent whose mistake kills their kid shouldn't go to jail, but the tired truck driver who falls asleep for a second and kills another driver should? Because that's what happens now. If you make the mistake of falling asleep and killing someone, you're going to be charged with some form of manslaughter.
The nature of the error is different. Error, according to Donald A. Norman and James Reason, comes in two different forms, slips and mistakes. A slip is when the goal is correct, but not all the necessary actions are done so the process fails; the execution is imperfect. A mistake is when the goal or plan itself is wrong, leading to failure. Slips and mistakes are further divided into subcategories based on their causes.
A parent forgetting their child in their car commits a slip. Their routine is the same every day, but they miss one vital step, taking the child out of the car, and winds up killing their child. It is the same as opening a fridge, taking out a jug of milk, getting a cup, and putting the jug back into the fridge. Your plan was right, but you forgot to pour the milk. This is called a memory-lapse slip.
A driver falling asleep at the wheel, however, is a mistake. The driver's responsibility is to know whether or not they're in a good enough condition to drive. Faulty evaluation of their ability to stay awake while driving is either a knowledge-based mistake or a rules-based mistake. It's a knowledge-based mistake if the driver did not correctly gauge their own ability to stay awake. It is a rules-based mistake if the driver realizes that they are in no condition to drive, but decides to drive anyway when the correct course of action (the rule) would be to sleep.
Generally speaking, mistakes are preventable, but slips are a fact of human consciousness. They are a consequence of our inborn ability to complete an oft-repeated sequence of actions without conscious thought. They happen because our subconscious messed up somewhere.
Or, what if it had been a neighbor's kidin the back seat? Still no prison? It's the exact same mistake, but I suspect if it were someone else's kid, this might be a very different thread?
This would've been a different thread, I imagine, with significantly more indignation, but I don't believe the neighbor should go to prison if the circumstances were identical. That is, no malicious intent, no history of neglect, good record of responsibility up until the point of the error, and, most of all, that this was common routine, which is the crux of the issue.
Or, what if the parent forgets to put their gun away and a kid shoots themselves? Still a mistake, still already punished by losing a child.
This is more neglect, and should be treated differently, and further complicated by arms control debates and laws and cultures. Moreover, not only is it preventable in a legal, systematic way, but something like that happening is by its very nature isolated to those who own firearms. That discrimination does not exist here, at least, not in the same way, because cars are an important infrastructural component, whereas guns are luxury.
Frankly, it seems to me that we're more forgiving in this case because we can imagine ourselves in the place of the father. That seems like an unusual way decide justice -- what's easy for us to empathize with.
Quite the opposite, this is a difficult situation to empathize with and for this very reason, the article everyone refers to is extremely important. It shows that this kind of error is not the same kind made by the sleeping truck driver or the negligent parent who doesn't lock away their guns, that it doesn't discriminate between what kind of person you are, your upbringing, your views, your quality as a parent. It's an inevitability of our modernized life, because humans simply weren't made to multitask so many things at once, and that we are all equally likely to commit such an error, unless we voluntary remove ourselves from modern life.
The point of the article is to
not judge him based on gut reaction. The situation is far more nuanced than that.
