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Why drivers in China intentionally kill the pedestrians they hit
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| Vector A |
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_...it_china_s.html
| quote: | In April a BMW racing through a fruit market in Foshan in China’s Guangdong province knocked down a 2-year-old girl and rolled over her head. As the girl’s grandmother shouted, “Stop! You’ve hit a child!” the BMW’s driver paused, then switched into reverse and backed up over the girl. The woman at the wheel drove forward once more, crushing the girl for a third time. When she finally got out from the BMW, the unlicensed driver immediately offered the horrified family a deal: “Don’t say that I was driving the car,” she said. “Say it was my husband. We can give you money.”
It seems like a crazy urban legend: In China, drivers who have injured pedestrians will sometimes then try to kill them. And yet not only is it true, it’s fairly common; security cameras have regularly captured drivers driving back and forth on top of victims to make sure that they are dead. The Chinese language even has an adage for the phenomenon: “It is better to hit to kill than to hit and injure.”
This 2008 television report features security camera footage of a dusty white Passat reversing at high speed and smashing into a 64-year-old grandmother. The Passat’s back wheels bounce up over her head and body. The driver, Zhao Xiao Cheng, stops the car for a moment then hits the gas, causing his front wheels to roll over the woman. Then Zhao shifts into drive, wheels grinding the woman into the pavement. Zhao is not done. Twice more he shifts back and forth between drive and reverse, each time thudding over the grandmother’s body. He then speeds away from her corpse.
Incredibly, Zhao was found not guilty of intentional homicide. Accepting Zhao’s claim that he thought he was driving over a trash bag, the court of Taizhou in Zhejiang province sentenced him to just three years in prison for “negligence.” Zhao’s case was unusual only in that it was caught on video. As the television anchor noted, “You can see online an endless stream of stories talking about cases similar to this one.”
“Double-hit cases” have been around for decades. I first heard of the “hit-to-kill” phenomenon in Taiwan in the mid-1990s when I was working there as an English teacher. A fellow teacher would drive us to classes. After one near-miss of a motorcyclist, he said, “If I hit someone, I’ll hit him again and make sure he’s dead.” Enjoying my shock, he explained that in Taiwan, if you cripple a man, you pay for the injured person’s care for a lifetime. But if you kill the person, you “only have to pay once, like a burial fee.” He insisted he was serious—and that this was common.
Most people agree that the hit-to-kill phenomenon stems at least in part from perverse laws on victim compensation. In China the compensation for killing a victim in a traffic accident is relatively small—amounts typically range from $30,000 to $50,000—and once payment is made, the matter is over. By contrast, paying for lifetime care for a disabled survivor can run into the millions. The Chinese press recently described how one disabled man received about $400,000 for the first 23 years of his care. Drivers who decide to hit-and-kill do so because killing is far more economical. Indeed, Zhao Xiao Cheng—the man caught on a security camera video driving over a grandmother five times—ended up paying only about $70,000 in compensation.
In 2010 in Xinyi, video captured a wealthy young man reversing his BMW X6 out of a parking spot. He hits a 3-year-old boy, knocking the child to the ground and rolling over his skull. The driver then shifts his BMW into drive and crushes the child again. Remarkably, the driver then gets out of the BMW, puts the vehicle in reverse, and guides it with his hand as he walks the vehicle backward over the boy’s crumpled body. The man’s foot is so close to the toddler’s head that, if alive, the boy could have reached out and touched him. The driver then puts the BMW in drive again, running over the boy one last time as he drives away.
Here too, the driver was charged only with accidentally causing a person’s death. (He claimed to have confused the boy with a cardboard box or trash bag.) Police rejected charges of murder and even of fleeing the scene of the crime, ignoring the fact that the driver ran over the boy’s head as he sped away. |
More fun at the link. |
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| Sushipunk |
I saw this on FB this morning.
So much :wtf::wtf::wtf: |
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| david.sound |
| That's f*cked up . |
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| Chimney |
| No news that in China human life has no value. |
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| sensorium |
This happens in other countries as well. Not as in your face, obviously, but it happens. In Mexico, it is known that if a person is left injured and is traveling alone, the other driver will sometimes finish the "job" with a hit to the head or a bullet.
In the US of A, you have so many hit and runs as well. Bicycle riders are not given a second look by the hit-and-runners.
My point is, don't act as surprised. The judicial system certainly has problems, but there's messed up people in every single part of the world. |
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| Alex |
People hit cyclists all the time here in Montreal. I've seen it happen a couple times. I've also seen a cyclist run a red light right in front of a cop and the cop didn't do .
Our city is full of cyclists pretty much year round. Which is a bit whack since our weather is retarded. The city is constantly trying to make it safer for cyclists, but a lot of these idiots refuse to play by the rules of the road and end up injured or dead because they think everyone is paying attention to THEM therefore they don't have to.
Never seen someone hit a cyclist and then run him over again though. :wtf: |
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| DJ RANN |
Here in the USA, it's one of the reasons cops empty their cartridge when they start shooting. it's also why they are trained for body and head shots, even when someone has a small knife.
If they get em in the leg or arm, the police have to pay disability for the rest of the perps life. If they take them out and get away with it, there's no payment. |
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| Alex |
| quote: | Originally posted by DJ RANN
Here in the USA, it's one of the reasons cops empty their cartridge when they start shooting. it's also why they are trained for body and head shots, even when someone has a small knife.
If they get em in the leg or arm, the police have to pay disability for the rest of the perps life. If they take them out and get away with it, there's no payment. |
I'm not being sarcastic or anything, generally curious, but do other police forces worldwide that carry handguns train to shoot someone elsewhere on the body? (By elsewhere I mean apart from the head and chest) |
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| Vector A |
Doubt it, since aiming for the leg or arm would be ing foolish, especially if there are any bystanders. You going to try to just "wing" the guy and risk Jane Doe over there catching one in the gut? When he's a moving target or his buddy to your left is about to come after you, too? Right. Besides, hit the right artery in a leg and he's about as hosed as if you got him in the stomach. No guarantees there.
You don't take a gun out to "disable" someone, that's what tasers and capsaicin spray are for. Of course there are plenty of cowboys out there who will draw their gun if someone so much as looks at them funny, but that's not (ideally) how they're trained to handle things. |
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| Alex |
I mean it does seem a little harsh to blow a guy away if all he has is a 3 inch knife in his hand, but if he's running right at you there's no telling how much damage he could do to you.
I know cops in London (UK) wear stab vests but that doesn't necessarily protect their eyes, neck, face etc.
And yeah Vector A you're right. What if the cop aims for the shoulder, misses and hits some old lady crossing the road?
I guess everything is based on the situation at hand, and although most police are well trained they aren't trained for every imaginable scenario and the choice to shoot some dude probably happens so fast that it's just easier and safer to shoot him in the chest or head. |
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| pkcRAISTLIN |
| quote: | Originally posted by DJ RANN
Here in the USA, it's one of the reasons cops empty their cartridge when they start shooting. it's also why they are trained for body and head shots, even when someone has a small knife.
If they get em in the leg or arm, the police have to pay disability for the rest of the perps life. If they take them out and get away with it, there's no payment. |
police are trained to shoot at the center of mass because it's the easiest to hit and has the best chance of dropping a suspect. of course, there might be un-written rules about doing what you describe, but police forces the world over are trained to hit the center mass (and keep shooting until the threat is removed). |
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