A summary…
She was driving drunk 25+ mph over the limit on the wrong side of the road. She killed a guy and she went to the hospital. While she was there - she tried to get an IV to dilute her blood alcohol concentration with an IV.
She got 15 years for pleading guilty to vehicular homicide, but will not serve any of the time after her sentence was suspended.
Yeah, vehicular homicide is basically legal in the US, so long as you don’t flee the scene.
And even if you do, if you’re a relatively high-ranking politician in a white supremacist flyover hellscape state, you can get off with a $1,000 fine and an impeachment conviction that amounts to a slap on the wrist and maybe means you just have to go work the consulting circuit:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-61890557
Every time I see a scene in a US made film that involves characters in a moving vehicle, I’m immediately expecting the violent car crash trope to happen. That’s how normalized the violence of cars is in the USA.
Every time I see a character standing in a street, I expect them to get hit by a car, and I’m usually right. It’s like unspoken language in US media.
What gets me is how many precautions you have to take to make sure you don’t die. Wear a seatbelt, ensure your car is properly maintained, look out for obstacles, account for weather and visibility conditions, pay attention to drivers next to you, ahead of you, and at every intersection. And that’s all assuming you’re in proper condition to drive, yourself.
And even accounting for all of that, anything can happen.
I read an analysis once that found that if you want to kill someone in America and get away with it, the best way is to hit someone with a car in NYC.
If there was a Law & Order: Car Victims Unit - there would be a huge amount of bipartisan hatred for it.
Reminds me of Fahrenheit 451, where people drove around speeding and nobody cares as long as you pay the protection money insurance premiums
Brave New World in the mix too. Emphasis on the feelies to placate the masses
