I saw a story in the newsfeeds today which raises a lot of questions, but provides no real 
answers. It concerns the death of a young boy, knocked down by a delivery driver who was speeding.
I’m not going to link to the story, because what I’m going to say is in no way intended to apply to just this case – and it will be taken the wrong way by anyone involved with the specific story involved.
The driver was driving at least 20mph over the speed limit and, according to experts, he would have stopped many feet short of the child if he had not been doing so. Irrespective of how much of a nice guy he is, he deserves everything the Law can throw at him. It was HIS choice to speed – a behaviour which is apparently normal for his age group.
As usual in such cases, all the mothers who even vaguely knew the dead child are swarming in the manner normal to them. There are demands for speed bumps and 20mph speed limits. No doubt calls for the Death Penalty and various forms of castration or dismemberment were left on the cutting room floor.
The death is tragic, naturally. Any such death is – no matter who the victim might be. But what I’m interested in is why these women don’t actually do something which is a little more in their power and far more effective. Namely, to teach their bloody kids to keep off roads, and to put the fear of God into them for poor road safety behaviour. It seems like parental responsibility is officially non-existent from some time between conception and birth these days.
On a lesson today, I witnessed a kid – who must have only been a couple of years older than the victim in the story – riding his bike the wrong way around a busy roundabout, and then in the middle of the wrong side of the road up a hill. Unless he had escaped from a secure unit, he was doing it consciously and deliberately.
And the frightening thing is that, in maybe 5 years time, he will be in a bloody Corsa or Audi with precisely the same attitude. Less than ¼ mile from where he was doing it, I’ve had pratmobiles overtake me on the wrong side of another roundabout more than once. It is NOT isolated behaviour.
Other times, I’ve had kids of similar ages lying down in front of the car. One time – and this was on Firs Road in West Bridgford – a group of Sloaney teenage girls decided it was funny to walk in front of the car when they saw it coming. Firs Road residents live in houses valued at anything up to £1m, and they hate learners with a vengeance – something which obviously rubs off on to their little darlings.
The irony is that if these little prats don’t get killed first, there’s an increased likelihood of them killing someone when they grow up and get cars of their own because of the upbringing they’ve had. It’s getting worse by the generation, and that’s why idiots like the driver involved in the original story end up doing what they do.
So, in cases like the one mentioned, the child’s death is quite probably as much the responsibility of the parents as it is anyone else’s. And the driver’s behaviour is as much his parents’ responsibility as it is his.