Darryl Anderson was drunk behind the wheel of his Audi SUV, had his accelerator pressed to the floor and was barreling toward a car ahead of him when he snapped a photo of his speedometer. The picture showed a car in the foreground, a collision warning light on his dashboard and a speed of 141 mph (227 kph).
An instant later, he slammed into the car in the photo. The driver, Shalorna Warner, was not seriously injured but her 8-month-old son and her sister were killed instantly, authorities said. Evidence showed Anderson never braked.
Anderson, 38, was sentenced Tuesday to 17 years in prison for the May 31 crash in northern England that killed little Zackary Blades and Karlene Warner. Anderson pleaded guilty last week in Durham Crown Court to two counts of causing death by dangerous driving.
Anderson lied to police, saying a hitchhiker was driving at the time of the crash.
Prosecutor Emma Dowling said a roadside breath test showed Anderson was nearly three times over the limit driving after drinking. An empty vodka bottle was found in his car.
Witnesses later reported that he had been driving dangerously for 20 miles (32 kilometers) and his phone showed he had been sending text messages.
At a police station, he told officers he had driven into the back of a car.
“Sometimes mistakes happen," he said. "But I’m not a bad person.”
Sometimes mistakes happen!!!??? My dude, you murdered two people out of sheer recklessness and negligence and then lied about it. You don’t get to excuse your behaviour by saying “oh, I’m not a bad person…”
Take some fucking responsibility. Although, I guess if you were capable of taking responsibility for your actions you wouldn’t be on your phone while driving double the highway speed limit and drunk off your ass.
Reading this, he was probably still very drunk when he said it. Doesn’t make him any less of a POS.
Also, alcohol generally makes someone tell the truth, so I’m guessing his only remorse is I got caught.
Thats a myth about telling the truth. People change more and more the more they drink and the more often they drink. Its not a more honest version of them coming out, just a different one.
Not a bad way person? Holy crap at this list of ways he endangered people and recklessly murdered two. He deserves more than 17 years
PSA: your local fire precinct (in the USA, probably England too) can do a car seat installation and fit check for you. Strap your kids in, and strap them TIGHT. It can be very easy to install a seat improperly, I had mine checked when I was a new parent until I was confident I had it right.
Before anyone flames me for victim blaming I am 100% not blaming the mother. It is quite possible that at those speeds the child would have died regardless, and the driver deserves every day in jail that he spends.
You should not strap them TIGHT, but you should make sure they’re not loose. Too tight is a thing and can result in additional pressure/exertion, which leads to bending of parts, fraying, and stripping of components, ultimately making things less safe. The key is to be just right.
I’m sorry but this isn’t “world news” to me. Random drunken tragedies are hardly something useful to keep me informed on what is happening in the world.
If it bleeds, it leads.
It can be useful for people to see how other countries handle crimes like this one.
I’m from the US and if this happened here depending on what state he was in would determine whether he got a slap on the wrist or jail time. Also if the judge was corrupt or a shitty person he’d get a slap on the wrist(see rapist Brock Turners case).
So it not completely useless. At least I don’t think so.
Lemmy is still so starved for content that stories get posted where they shouldn’t, and submissions are still dominated by a handful of accounts.
(you’re right)
Why can someone even drive a car that can go that fast on public streets? Countries should enforce speed limiters on vehicles brought into their country for roadway use. It may not prevent drunks from driving, but it could slow them down and prevent some deaths and injury. People don’t even need to be drunk for these speeds to be dangerous.
Because every time government tries to limit vehicles there is a very loud roar of whataboutism and mah freedom.
At a certain point we need to prioritize people’s safety over “vroom vroom”. 200+ km/h is nearly double highway speeds. Children dying from speeding crashes should be much more important than somebodys ego and desire to speed.
As a driving enthusiast even I agree with this.
However, people will just work around any limiters that get set like we already do.
Many cars and motorcycles already have speed limiters—often 130-150mph.
Big fines, impound, jail time for people caught bypassing their limiters.
As far as I know that’s already the case.
But nobody is going to know about it except you and (optionally) whoever you hired to do it if not yourself, so you’re only getting fined/arrested for it after you’re caught going 180mph.
yeah, be hard on crime! (sarcasm)
I’m just meming—i don’t have a solution. other than maybe if people like me had a good outlet to enjoy what we love.
The fastest speed limit I’ve seen is 65, so it is over double that
There’s one around the White Mountains in NH that I have driven on that was 75 mph, but that is the absolute fastest I have ever seen. The same highway (I think) stayed 75 mph through the Green Mountains in VT too. Both areas are rural without a ton of drivers outside of peak tourism season, and about a 0% chance of hitting a pedestrian.
Definitely a chance of hitting a moose and totally fucking up it’s legs, ending your own life in the process. Motherfuckers have been known to walk away from many car accidents without much more than a limp. They’re tall enough where they roll over most cars and even many pickup trucks when full grown.
EDIT: Nevermind. It was I-93, which has a speed of 70 mph in the section that I drove on and I couldn’t find a 70 mph speed limit sign on that highway in VT, because it ends quickly after entering VT. Couldn’t be bothered to find where the VT highway was though.
There are some 110 km/h hwys near me. The average speed seems to be 130 km/hr and cops don’t seem to mind until you go faster than that. 20 over seems “acceptable” near me, even in school zones marked 40 km/hr.
Lol could you convert those to freedom units? I’m too smoothbrained for this
20 km/h ≈ 20.000 yards per hour
40 km/h ≈ 40.000 yards per hour
110 km/h ≈ 110.000 yards per hour
130 km/h ≈ 130.000 yards per hour
Live up to your name!
Southern Utah has 80 MPH between Cedar City and Washington City (by St. George).
From this month it is already happening in Europe, with caveats.
https://www.theregister.com/2024/07/11/speed_limiters_arrive_for_all/
That’s not a limiter, just an alert that you’re going over the posted limit
I said, with caveats.
There are four options available to manufacturers according to the regulations. The first two, a cascaded acoustic or vibrating warning, don’t intervene, while the latter two, haptic feedback through the acceleration pedal and a speed limiter, will.
That implementation of a speed limiter is not a hard limit though.
Ok, as long as cops have the same limiters in their vehicles.
So how would a cop catch up to someone who bypass their limiter? Or respond to hostage situation in a timely manner? Or get to another unit who needs assistance?
I think it would just be better to fire cops who abuse their power.
So how would a cop catch up to someone who bypass their limiter?
A lot of (sensible) municipalities have banned high-speed chases by police since they’re so insanely risky to bystanders. Nothing wrong with cops not being able to speed dangerously, even if it means perps sometime escape (to be caught later anyway since their identities are usually known).
So how would a cop catch up to someone who bypass their limiter?
They don’t, there’s no need. They get the person’s plate info and send the fine after the fact. They can also come impound the vehicle, as well. Dangerous chase: avoided.
Or respond to hostage situation in a timely manner?
They can have a special vehicle at the station that doesn’t have the limiter for extremely specific situations like that. Only specially trained officers can use it.
Or get to another unit who needs assistance?
Normal speeds. They shouldn’t be allowed to endanger people not even near an incident to get somewhere because another cop is “”“in danger”“”
I think it would just be better to fire cops who abuse their power.
I think it would just be better to not give cops the chance to abuse their power in the first place since that injures and kills people
Why?
Anglophones do be loving their cars but the real problem is cyclists riding on pavements. Have you got any idea how dangerous that is? Only the other day I took a picture of my pumpkin spiced latte and caused a multiple pedestrian pile up.
Had me in the first half, ngl.
Bad drivers need harsher punishments if you ask me.
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I get it, but also when I think about if that happened to my sister, let alone my child, no amount of time would be enough. 2 years for ripping two people out of your life feels like a pittance. How do you separate the emotion from the practicality?
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Not vengeance but justice. 2 years in prison then off you go is not justice. Now two years and 15 years paying support to the family you have wronged can be justice.
But just two years till you’re good is not how it’s supposed to work. There needs to be consequences otherwise there is no difference between somone going into rehab voluntarily for two years and somone killing two people and then being forced to go to rehab.
How do you know when a person is reformed versus playing the part to get out earlier? Is there a risk of the system being abused by those who commit a crime knowing that they can get out in a couple years’ time?
If you can’t even think of forgiving this hypothetical transgression you’ve come up with, how can you ever hope to have a positive influence on this world that might actually protect others from the kind of tragedy you’ve described?
I’m sorry but I’m not sure I see the connection here. How does forgiveness prevent such tragedies?
Which is why we don’t come up with our own punishments.
17 years is harsh but fair. Anything beyond that is just punitive.
Americans are in a very weird bubble when it comes to punishment/correction compared to most of the developed world and they don’t seem to notice it.
Insane punishments, death penalty, imprisoning drug users, imprisoning sex workers, private prisons, normalized prison violence/sex violence. It’s bonkers.
Ironic considering in the USA this person would likely have a much more linent sentence for this specific crime
Wouldn’t be a Lemmy post if it weren’t for someone shitting on America or Americans even when the story has nothing to do with America.
It was a response to a comment asking for harsher punishment. And that sort of comment tends to pop up in most discussions involving somewhat reasonable punishments being mentioned.
Punishments in the US tend to be excessive though and people in the US somehow normalized it.
As an American I completely agree. People lose sight of just how much time the amount of years actually can be, and just want to feel better about punishing bad people.
Most people who do something like this will live with the guilt for their entire lives. It will always come up in job interviews, it will hurt their social situations. Nightmares forever. But we just have to pile even more shit on so that the rest of us can ride the high horse.
And before anyone shows up, no, getting a longer or shorter prison sentence does nothing for the victim. They’re already in as bad of a spot as they could be.
Which has precisely zero to do with the submission.
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17 years isn’t nearly long enough
He killed two people. A 17-year sentence seems fair.
Double it. He’ll, triple it. He killed a child. Killing innocent people is always bad, but when those innocents are children, that’s a particularly atrocious. He at least plead guilty, though it looks like they had a dead to rights.
He probably also got a plea deal to not be charged for manslaughter. Or maybe he can only be charged for one or the other of manslaughter or reckless driving resulting in death in that jurisdiction I don’t know. If you could only be charged for one of the other the prosecutor certainly would have gone for the one with the harsher sentence, but if he’s showing remorse which seems highly likely then they might have at least trimmed it down to only 17 years.
Personally? I say lock him in a 3 meter steel cube for the rest of his life.
What good does that do for society?
Some people sadly don’t care about that and just want punishment because it makes them fell good.
It’s a completely different sentiment when a child dies, especially that the child who died in this case was an 8-month old who has not even started to enjoy what life has to offer. There’s a reason that even those incarcerated are not kind to child killers.
I’m not justifting the person’s rageful sentiment btw, I’m just explaining why some people feel this way.
Please let everyone who lost a person to this, spit in his face or punch it.
So he was playing like a game of chicken while driving? At that speed? 🤦
So sorry for the victims, that’s horrible
I am baffled at how bloomy rind dick cheeses like this guy can find one night stands, girlfriends and spouses, while I have struggled for years to date.
Because if you drunkenly boast to airport staff that your wife left you whilst on vacation, and you’re driving 200 miles away to get another one, then you come across as one of those womanizing pieces of shit who somehow pulls when they don’t deserve to. Actually no, you’re worse than that, because your average douche wouldn’t drink drive at 141 mph whilst taking dashboard pics on his phone for clout.
Ask yourself, though, if the women who are attracted to this kind of behavior would make a suitable partner for you.
I’m guessing because you have standards and want to be with someone who actually cares about you and who you care about and who you share interests with beyond a cheap fuck.
Unfortunately, loneliness is a huge problem in our society and you are one of the many people who suffer from it, but this asshole is just as lonely. He’s just filling the loneliness gap with something he might as well pay for considering how much it really means to him in terms of being with another person.
What standards?
I’ve lowered mine substantially over the years and women still treat me like I’m scum of the earth, but will get with douchebags like this guy.
