I fuckin’ hate these huge SUVs and I get genuinely angry when I see them on our streets. The people who drive these cars kill people at much higher rates than drivers of normal sedan-type cars. When a driver in a sedan rams their car into a pedestrian, usually the car hits the pedestrian’s legs, and the pedestrian goes up and over the car’s bonnet. When the driver of an SUV rams into a pedestrian, the pedestrian is hit in the chest and much more likely dragged under the car, killing them. On top of this, visibility out of SUVs is terrible, especially down low enough to see children. People who wantonly choose to buy and drive such disgusting killing machines should have that taken as an aggravating factor in any case against them where they’ve killed somebody. But of course, that would require society to take it seriously when people kill other people using cars in the first place: As the truism goes, “If you want to murder someone and get away with it, just hit them with a car.”
I have to temper my rage here with the knowledge that the prison-industrial complex doesn’t help anybody. Revenge doesn’t bring victims of vehicular violence, like this woman’s 5-year-old daughter, back to life. Really, people should be prevented from being able to kill people with their cars in the first place. It should not be possible for ordinary consumers to buy these kinds of murder machines. Street design must force motorists to drive at low speeds, very carefully, through any environment where people walk (like residential or commercial streets). For the US specifically, “right turn on red” is a gross insult to public safety that should be immediately abolished. Public transport and cycling and walking infrastructure must be good enough that a normal, rational person would find it a better option than driving. Perhaps that would be enough to stop motorists killing children 🤷🏻♀️