Woman who stopped for ducks faces life in prison

[General Zod]

Also, fuck that prosecutor and fuck those analysts. Yes, you should stop for animals in a road. One guy pretty much came out and said you should run over a puppy rather then stop. Extra super fuck that asshole.

I hope you enjoy getting rear ended and whiplash.

[Simon_Jester]

Also, fuck that prosecutor and fuck those analysts. Yes, you should stop for animals in a road. One guy pretty much came out and said you should run over a puppy rather then stop. Extra super fuck that asshole.

How much risk to human life is acceptable, in order to save the life of a dog?

Would you knowingly create a situation in which a human faced a 10% chance of death, to save the life of a dog?

A 1% chance?

A 0.1% chance?

Would you accept these risks to yourself? Would you be willing to impose these risks on other people against their will, if they don't agree that it's worth risking their life to save a dog?

Likewise for lines of ducklings: how much risk is too much?

For that matter, what about the risk of damage to your property? Would you be willing to accept a five hundred dollar repair bill as the cost of saving the life of a group of birds? How about five thousand?

Are you willing to risk that a stranger's car may end up wrecked, directly or indirectly?

[Dominus Atheos]

Checked my local driver's manual, it seems to say you should slow down or even stop for animals crossing:

Animals on or near roadways can be unpredictable. Slow down and move away from animals as you pass them. Deer can be especially dangerous at night when they may freeze in the beam of your headlights. Watch for signs warning of animal crossings and be prepared to brake.

http://www.odot.state.or.us/forms/dmv/37.pdf

[General Zod]

Checked my local driver's manual, it seems to say you should slow down or even stop for animals crossing:

Animals on or near roadways can be unpredictable. Slow down and move away from animals as you pass them. Deer can be especially dangerous at night when they may freeze in the beam of your headlights. Watch for signs warning of animal crossings and be prepared to brake.

http://www.odot.state.or.us/forms/dmv/37.pdf

What does it say about braking on highways?

[Dominus Atheos]

Also, fuck that prosecutor and fuck those analysts. Yes, you should stop for animals in a road. One guy pretty much came out and said you should run over a puppy rather then stop. Extra super fuck that asshole.

How much risk to human life is acceptable, in order to save the life of a dog?

Would you knowingly create a situation in which a human faced a 10% chance of death, to save the life of a dog?

No

A 1% chance?

Yes

A 0.1% chance?

Absolutely

Would you accept these risks to yourself?

Yes

Would you be willing to impose these risks on other people against their will, if they don't agree that it's worth risking their life to save a dog?

Driving is always dangerous. You accept certain risks when you get into a car.

Likewise for lines of ducklings: how much risk is too much?

For that matter, what about the risk of damage to your property? Would you be willing to accept a five hundred dollar repair bill as the cost of saving the life of a group of birds? How about five thousand?

Maybe, that's a good question. Good thing the law is pretty clear about rear-end accidents, and the other driver will be paying.

Are you willing to risk that a stranger's car may end up wrecked, directly or indirectly?

You know what, while I'm listing people to get fucked, fuck tailgaters and people who aren't paying attention to the road while I'm on it. None of those risks above would exist without those people.

[Dominus Atheos]

Fuck tailgaters and people who aren't paying attention to the road while I'm on it. None of those risks above would exist without those people.

That's so important that it needs to be said twice, and in bigger letters.

[Nova Andromeda]

So in a 'perfect' world what do you think an appropriate punishment should be? It appears that the location is fairly straight with good visibility, there wasn't bad weather, there is no mention of significant traffic, and the motor cycle was speeding. It is also clear that the location is a major 2 lane highway, it is right before a major traffic merger - which requires some level of drive attention, and she stopped in the left hand lane for ducklings - right where other drivers would be paying attention to the merger instead. The decision to stop for cute fuzzy animals that are not part of an endangered species was exceedingly shortsighted and stupid, however I'm unconvinced such stupidity is rare and/or beyond repair. Her decision to stop in the left lane does NOT justify jail time. However, I think it does justify a severe fiscal penalty to be paid to the widow (maybe $1m with limits on how much she has to pay based on her current/future income), severe restrictions and/or monitoring of any activity she does that requires sound judgement for other people's safety (i.e, intensive driver training and long term monitoring - similar for anything else hazardous she does). I'm in favor of training an monitoring, because I'm convinced this level of stupid is fairly common and this accident was more a result of bad luck than her stupid moment. That is, I believe there are many many more people who do just as stupid and dangerous things that don't actually result in such tragedy. Therefore, I believe she should pay for her stupid moment, but not to the extent that her ability to function and contribute to society is crippled.


Let us assume Executor32 is correct in their assessment of the accident location.

[General Zod]

So in a 'perfect' world what do you think an appropriate punishment should be? It appears that the location is fairly straight with good visibility, there wasn't bad weather, there is no mention of significant traffic, and the motor cycle was speeding. It is also clear that the location is a major 2 lane highway, it is right before a major traffic merger - which requires some level of drive attention, and she stopped in the left hand lane for ducklings - right where other drivers would be paying attention to the merger instead. The decision to stop for cute fuzzy animals that are not part of an endangered species was exceedingly shortsighted and stupid, however I'm unconvinced such stupidity is rare and/or beyond repair. Her decision to stop in the left lane does NOT justify jail time. However, I think it does justify a severe fiscal penalty to be paid to the widow (maybe $1m with limits on how much she has to pay based on her current/future income), severe restrictions and/or monitoring of any activity she does that requires sound judgement for other people's safety (i.e, intensive driver training and long term monitoring - similar for anything else hazardous she does). I'm in favor of training an monitoring, because I'm convinced this level of stupid is fairly common and this accident was more a result of bad luck than her stupid moment. That is, I believe there are many many more people who do just as stupid and dangerous things that don't actually result in such tragedy. Therefore, I believe she should pay for her stupid moment, but not to the extent that her ability to function and contribute to society is crippled.


Let us assume Executor32 is correct in their assessment of the accident location.

1 - Paragraphs. For fuck's sake, paragraphs.

2 - Probation and revocation of driving privileges would be enough as far as I'm concerned.

[Simon_Jester]

Checked my local driver's manual, it seems to say you should slow down or even stop for animals crossing:

Animals on or near roadways can be unpredictable. Slow down and move away from animals as you pass them. Deer can be especially dangerous at night when they may freeze in the beam of your headlights. Watch for signs warning of animal crossings and be prepared to brake.

http://www.odot.state.or.us/forms/dmv/37.pdf

My attempt to search the PDF you linked to didn't turn up the passage you quote; I haven't time to read the whole book looking for it.

That said, you're missing very important context here. You should slow down and/or stop for a reason. The reason does not always apply.


If your car hits a deer, the deer's body is big enough to damage your car- obviously it is best to slow or stop to avoid a damaging collision. You will have a considerable repair bill if you hit a deer, usually. You might even momentarily lose control of your vehicle, causing more damage, and maybe resulting in you being injured or even killed.

So your car hitting a deer is a problem that will cost you a lot of money, and might even hurt or kill you. It makes sense to swerve, slow, or stop to avoid that problem, even if there is some risk of an accident resulting. Obviously it's better to have a small chance of an accident than to have a guaranteed accident.


By contrast, if your car hits a squirrel, the squirrel is dead but no damage results to your car, or to any human. But if you slam on the brakes to save the squirrel, you might suffer damage to your vehicle, or be harmed, or maybe even killed if you are very unlucky.

So it does not make sense to swerve or stop to avoid killing the squirrel, unless road conditions are very safe and favorable. Sometimes they are, sometimes they're not. If the road is not a safe place to stop, do not stop to save the life of a squirrel. Your neck (literally, in case of whiplash) is worth more than one squirrel.


In the case of the Canada driver, things are even worse. She wasn't stopping to save the life of a duckling who would otherwise have been run over by her own car. She decided to stop, get out, and 'help' a group of ducklings that were in a place where at that moment they were in no immediate danger.

So in order to prevent a medium-term danger to some ducks, she created an immediate danger to some humans. People died. Even if you might accuse the motorcyclist of having driven irresponsibly, the fact remains that it is NOT a normal situation to see individuals stop their cars in the left-hand lane of a freeway, and that this presents a hazard to life and limb.

And, again, she did this not to directly prevent an animal's death, but so that she could get out of her car and perform some kind of complicated maneuver to get the ducklings over to the roadside. She didn't have the common sense to pull over to the side of the road, she stopped in a high speed traffic lane.

Also, fuck that prosecutor and fuck those analysts. Yes, you should stop for animals in a road. One guy pretty much came out and said you should run over a puppy rather then stop. Extra super fuck that asshole.

How much risk to human life is acceptable, in order to save the life of a dog?

Would you knowingly create a situation in which a human faced an X% chance of death, to save the life of a dog?

[DA replies No to 10%, yes to 1%]

Would you accept these risks to yourself?

Yes

Would you be willing to impose these risks on other people against their will, if they don't agree that it's worth risking their life to save a dog?

Driving is always dangerous. You accept certain risks when you get into a car.

Wait. That's a weasel-answer. You're dodging an important point: While you may have the right to choose to accept certain risks for yourself, you do not automatically gain the right to impose them on others against their will. That is why we are so harsh on drunk drivers- if the only person whose life were endangered was the drunk, there wouldn't be so much of a problem.

But if a driver chooses to drink, and creates, say, a 1% chance that another driver will be killed as a result... he cannot say "Driving is always dangerous, you accept certain risks when you get into the car." Sure, as a practical matter when I get into the car, I KNOW there are drunk drivers out there and I know I might get hit by one. But that doesn't mean the drunk can evade responsibility for his own actions.

Because while I am going out there knowing drunk drivers are a threat, I do not in any way endorse or support the idea of drunk driving. I'm not allowed to choose between "on road with drunks" and "on road with no drunks." The only choice I get is "on road with drunks" or "no road at all."

So I'm not really accepting this unnecessary risk of my own free will. I'm forced to accept it in order to be a full participant in modern society, because to be one, you have to use roads.
________________________

Now, stopping to save an animal is more worthy than deciding to drive drunk. But that doesn't automatically mean that it's a worthy enough cause that you're entitled to gamble with other people's lives without their permission. If you create an unnecessary risk that just happens to affect people on the road who, in theory, 'don't have to' be on the road... you're still creating an unnecessary risk.

What you've communicated to me is that, in your opinion, you're entitled to create hazards to others' life and limb, because of your own personal opinions. And other people just have to shrug and accept those risks, because you're going to do what you think is best, regardless of whether it threatens their safety.

Now, maybe that's not fair or I'm not understanding you. But if I understand you rightly, that is an excellent example of 'reckless' thinking, in my opinion.

Likewise for lines of ducklings: how much risk is too much?For that matter, what about the risk of damage to your property? Would you be willing to accept a five hundred dollar repair bill as the cost of saving the life of a group of birds? How about five thousand?

Maybe, that's a good question. Good thing the law is pretty clear about rear-end accidents, and the other driver will be paying.

In this case, maybe not so much- because the law found that she willfully stopped in the fast lane of a highway. Her actions were very unsafe and created conditions where a moment's distraction on another person's part would lead to damage, injury, and death.

So I think it would serve her right to have to pay for any repair bills to her vehicle, in addition to other legal penalties. And if you stop in the fast lane of a highway to save a dog, it serves you right to be in the same position... because you're knowingly putting human lives at risk in order to save that dog.

Are you willing to risk that a stranger's car may end up wrecked, directly or indirectly?

You know what, while I'm listing people to get fucked, fuck tailgaters and people who aren't paying attention to the road while I'm on it. None of those risks above would exist without those people.

That's another weasel-answer.

See, what disturbs me about you is that you are so very willing to accept forcing others to pay the price for your dangerous actions. I can accept that you're willing to do dangerous things that affect you. But I can't accept the sheer arrogance it takes for you to decide that you have a right to endanger others over things like this.

What if I am not such a big fan of dogs (or ducks) as you? What if my wife or child is killed in an accident caused in part (or in whole) by your decision to block a highway for the sake of that dog (or duck?) By what right do you force me to live with the consequences of your actions?

[Dominus Atheos]

See, I'd be a lot more amenable to those arguments if it was actually possible to rear-end another car without being negligent. (within reason, no freak perfect storms) It is every driver's duty to pay attention to the road around them and especially in front of them, and to leave adequate distance to stop safely between them and other cars.

If someone else dies while not following these duties, you are not responsible for their death. The reason I'm having trouble accepting that stopping for animals is bad, is because the worst result should be a minor inconvenience for the cars behind me. I am willing to minorly inconvenience some people for the lives of animals. Anything else that happens back there is not my responsibility.

While you may think it's heartless to say I don't care about the lives of negligent drivers, realize that they bear an equal danger to me as I do to them. They could kill me, and through no fault of my own. Like if maybe they don't check their blind spot before changing into my lane, and run me off the road.

[aerius]

See, I'd be a lot more amenable to those arguments if it was actually possible to rear-end another car without being negligent. (within reason, no freak perfect storms) It is every driver's duty to pay attention to the road around them and especially in front of them, and to leave adequate distance to stop safely between them and other cars.

Why don't you just wish for world peace and a fucking unicorn while you're at it? It's more likely to happen than everyone becoming a safe, courteous, and attentive driver.

And there's also the pogo stick effect where each vehicle has to brake harder than the one in front of it to avoid a collision since reaction times aren't instant. Even if everyone leaves a nice 3 second gap, by the time you get 5-10 cars back from the one making the initial stop, you are pretty much out of time and even a full panic stop will result in a collision.

As for ducks, I have nothing against ducks, in fact I love them. They're damn tasty birds and you haven't lived until you've had Peking Duck.

[Lagmonster]

There's no sense to an extreme, should it be brought up, of "always stop for animals" vs. "never stop for animals", when "stop for hazards of any kind if it is safe to do so" is preferable. Judgement. Situational fucking judgement. Know when to swerve, when to brake, when to accelerate.

In fact, it's situational judgement issue such as this that make me really want to ask a lot of questions of the people building driverless cars - how exactly does the car determine the best emergency response? Does it have a database of squishable vs. non-squishable animals? Does it always brake? Does it always evade?

[Terralthra]

Thank you, Geminon, for your analysis of the details of the precedent cases Terralthra was looking at. I thought there was something else going on 'under the hood' in those cases, but was a bit too distracted by other things at the time to go digging.

The things under the hood were that the accused didn't remember actively veering, so he "must have fallen asleep" (his own words) and that while that drunk who ran the red light had a BAC of .20%, the investigating officer noted that he "didn't seem overly impaired".

When the successful defense to criminal negligence/driving dangerously is "I must have fallen asleep" or "he didn't seem that drunk after running a red light", I really don't see how "she wanted to not kill ducks" doesn't qualify for acquittal.

[Lord Revan]

IIRC the reason you're said to not brake to avoid hitting a dog, a cat or a duck is not that the law makers hate those animals, but that those animals are so hard to see due to being fairly small and general colored to blend in to their surroundings, that by the time you notice them at highway speeds it's already too late to stop in time and at best you create a block on the road and at worst the panic breaking will cause you to loose control.

In the end you create to risk situation to save something you're probably not gonna be able to save anyway.

[Napoleon the Clown]

Dominus, what if the person behind you is driving intelligently, but the person behind THEM is a fuckhead in a big, jacked-up truck with dirt tires? Those tend to have massive stopping distances, and they also tend to go over the top of the car they hit. "Just accept that some ratfucker is bound to run your ass over"? By your "driving is dangerous herp-a-derp" "logic" we shouldn't have laws against running stop signs or red lights, since you should be expecting that to happen anyway. And fuck it, might as well get rid of speed limits, too. Get rid of the painted lines, for that matter. We could save so much money by not painting all those lines. There are people who will just drift all over the place anyway, so why bother? You follow back safely, and I'm sure that that's gonna make all the difference when a semi is behind you and you slam on the brakes to avoid splattering a squirrel all over the asphalt. Who cares that a lot of semi drivers follow too goddamn close for if you do that? He'll be found at-fault! Granted, that won't bring you back to life or anything, but at least the squirrel won't have gone under your tires!


Looking at that picture, it's quite possible the motorcycle had no good lane open by the time he was aware that some dumb fuck animal lover had decided to come to a full and complete stop in the passing lane. And with a merging lane right close by, things get even hairier. Do you actually drive on freeways? Have you ever noticed how closely people hug the ass of the car in front of them? Good luck squeezing into a space like that under emergency braking while people are merging at the same time. The merging lane can often be going well under the speed of the passing lane, too. So yeah, the woman is a moron of impressive proportions. No reasonable person would stop in the passing lane on a 100 km/h freeway to move a few ducklings to safety.

Stuff comes up on you fast at those speeds. You don't expect a car to be fucking parked without hazards in the passing lane. And it really doesn't matter if the guy would have been able to avoid hitting her car if he'd been going closer to the speed limit. Any emergency braking will increase the chances of a wreck happening. Motorcycle makes an emergency maneuver to avoid hitting someone that could be outsmarted by a cantaloupe and someone else will have to make emergency maneuvers, too.

[mr friendly guy]

If there was a 20 second gap between stopping her car and the crash, how the hell did the second person not have sufficient reaction time to get out the way? This is 20 seconds at the rate he was travelling, which initially was fast. So how did he failed to avoid crashing?

Edit - if he wasn't speeding then he would have even more reaction time.

[Highlord Laan]

If there was a 20 second gap between stopping her car and the crash, how the hell did the second person not have sufficient reaction time to get out the way? This is 20 seconds at the rate he was travelling, which initially was fast. So how did he failed to avoid crashing?

Edit - if he wasn't speeding then he would have even more reaction time.

If the other driver hand't stopped in the middle of a highway there wouldn't have been an incident at all.

[mr friendly guy]

Most people would have been able to avoid a stopped object with a 20 second lead time in decent visibility. She shouldn't have stopped, but one would not consider it unreasonable to expect people to be able to avoid the stopped vehicle.

Edit- for grammar

[Zeropoint]

I agree that stopping IN the fast lane to help some ducks (which would apparently involve carrying them across at least one lane of freeway traffic?) was really dumb. I don't see anyone arguing that this was a reasonable thing to do. Some remedial driving courses are probably in order.

However, if her car was stopped for TWENTY WHOLE SECONDS before the collision, it clearly indicates that the guy who hit her was NOT following closely, or even at a "reasonable following distance". 100 km/hr times 20 s gives you 555 meters of following distance. If she'd braked her car to an instantaneous, infinite-acceleration stop with that kind of distance, and the motorcyclist wasn't looking at the time, and then spent ten more seconds not looking at the road ahead of him, and only after wasting fully half of his opportunity did he finally notice the problem, he'd still have ten full seconds and 275 meters to stop.

Now, as someone observed above, one does not expect vehicles to be stopped on the freeway, and I know from personal experience that it can take a few moments to make the mental shift. Even considering that, though, I still feel like the motorcyclist carries a large share of the responsibility for the collision.

[General Zod]

I agree that stopping IN the fast lane to help some ducks (which would apparently involve carrying them across at least one lane of freeway traffic?) was really dumb. I don't see anyone arguing that this was a reasonable thing to do. Some remedial driving courses are probably in order.

However, if her car was stopped for TWENTY WHOLE SECONDS before the collision, it clearly indicates that the guy who hit her was NOT following closely, or even at a "reasonable following distance". 100 km/hr times 20 s gives you 555 meters of following distance. If she'd braked her car to an instantaneous, infinite-acceleration stop with that kind of distance, and the motorcyclist wasn't looking at the time, and then spent ten more seconds not looking at the road ahead of him, and only after wasting fully half of his opportunity did he finally notice the problem, he'd still have ten full seconds and 275 meters to stop.

Now, as someone observed above, one does not expect vehicles to be stopped on the freeway, and I know from personal experience that it can take a few moments to make the mental shift. Even considering that, though, I still feel like the motorcyclist carries a large share of the responsibility for the collision.

Or it indicates the motorcyclist was coming around a bend in the highway, per the article.

[Darth Nostril]

And there were vehicles in front of him obstructing the view.
The driver of one of these vehicles testified in court that she was distracted by the sight of fucking stupid duck lady standing by the median trying to herd the ducks (see the pictures posted earlier in this thread - fucking stupid duck lady was literally inches away from high speed death), when the driver looked ahead again there was a Civic parked in the fast lane with no hazards on, she instinctively swerved right and by pure blind luck missed hitting anyone in the right lane. The wife of the dead motorcyclist testified that he gesticulated at fucking stupid duck lady as he passed her because she, fucking stupid duck lady, represented a hazard to traffic. Also a lethal distraction to someone who was not expecting a soft in the head fuckwit to just park in the fast lane.
Lady in the truck towing a trailer missed the Civic, but bikes are not as forgiving at high speed maneuvers especially when you have a pillion passenger.

[mr friendly guy]

That makes more sense than coming around a bend. I read the first 3 articles in this thread and no mention was made of a bend, which would be problematic for him if he is travelling at 115 kph and trying to turn with a passenger on him, or he somehow accelerates rapidly to 115 kph after slowing down for the bend without seeing a car in front.

[Simon_Jester]

I think a lot of people who pictured this affair were failing to factor in the traffic. If the duck woman and the motorcyclist were the only drivers on the road, in broad daylight under good conditions, sure you'd expect the motorcyclist to note the only thing on the road, the stopped car. If the highway is being used by anything more than the very lightest traffic, it's another matter entirely.

See, I'd be a lot more amenable to those arguments if it was actually possible to rear-end another car without being negligent. (within reason, no freak perfect storms) It is every driver's duty to pay attention to the road around them and especially in front of them, and to leave adequate distance to stop safely between them and other cars.

If someone else dies while not following these duties, you are not responsible for their death. The reason I'm having trouble accepting that stopping for animals is bad, is because the worst result should be a minor inconvenience for the cars behind me. I am willing to minorly inconvenience some people for the lives of animals. Anything else that happens back there is not my responsibility.

While you may think it's heartless to say I don't care about the lives of negligent drivers, realize that they bear an equal danger to me as I do to them. They could kill me, and through no fault of my own. Like if maybe they don't check their blind spot before changing into my lane, and run me off the road.

It's not heartlessness, it's recklessness: failure to reckon. Failure to care or to take into account. Your argument boils down to:

1a) I do not count, I do not care, what happens to people who aren't driving competently enough to dodge the hazard I put in their path.
1b) [implicitly] Or to people who end up indirectly harmed because such a person makes an incompetent maneuver, like if Vehicle B suddenly swerves at the last second to dodge me and crashes into Vehicle C.
2) Because if any of that happens, well, they didn't do their job, so it's not my fault a disaster happened!
3) So I don't have to count that disaster as a possible consequence of my actions!

To me, this is... honestly it reminds me of the adolescents I deal with. Instead of weighing the predictable consequences of your actions, you're looking for excuses not to consider them, as if it somehow doesn't matter that a man and his daughter die if that man was speeding.

At which point I must ask you: do you actually, realistically think that people on highways don't speed? Do you not consider that a reasonably foreseeable thing that might happen on a highway?

Because the standard for lawbreaking negligence is not "are you the only person at fault here." The standard is "did you willfully ignore a predictable, reasonably foreseeable result of your actions?" And since speeding motorists are very common, and most people speed all the time, and everyone knows that including you... yeah.

You're being reckless. And weaseling. Again.

The things under the hood were that the accused didn't remember actively veering, so he "must have fallen asleep" (his own words)...

I don't think that's the entirety of the defense.

and that while that drunk who ran the red light had a BAC of .20%, the investigating officer noted that he "didn't seem overly impaired".

And also that apparently he didn't register as drunk on the breathalyzer test immediately after the incident, if Geminon is correct?

When the successful defense to criminal negligence/driving dangerously is "I must have fallen asleep" or "he didn't seem that drunk after running a red light", I really don't see how "she wanted to not kill ducks" doesn't qualify for acquittal.

My personal argument is that these cases may well have been tried improperly, and that it's worthwhile to look at the actual text of the laws in question.

The key here is that to be criminally negligent, you (seem to) have to have willfully created a hazard, and completely failed to reckon the consequences.

Key word is 'willful.'

1) obstinately and often perversely self-willed <a stubborn and willful child
2): done deliberately : intentional <willful disobedience>

If you fell asleep in traffic and hit someone, that may or may not be 'willful,' because the odds are pretty good that you didn't mean to fall asleep in traffic. You may have intentionally driven while sleepy, but even then there are usually mitigating factors like "I had to get to work."

So it becomes possible to create reasonable doubt over whether you willfully endangered others by driving while sleepy, and you obviously didn't fall asleep at the wheel on purpose.


At the other extreme, if you build a brick wall across the highway, obviously you did that on purpose; you can't possibly have done that by accident and can't realistically have been forced to do it. Obviously you were willfully creating a risk to people's safety, and no amount of "the dead driver should have been able to see the wall, stop, and maneuver around it" is going to change that. Because you did undeniably create a hazard, and you did not reckon the consequences. Or, having reckoned, decided to go ahead anyway.


Now, I think what's going on in two of the cases you cite (assuming the rulings you cite as precedent are in fact done properly) is that doubt was created in the mind of the court as to whether the negligence was willful. The man whose harvester stopped on the highway acted stupidly, negligently, intolerably so... but none of that means he did it willfully. Likewise the man who drove in oncoming traffic... maybe.

The drunk, I suspect, got off because doubt was raised over whether he was actually drunk at the time of the accident, if Geminon is correct.

[Terralthra]

Define "drunk". He blew 0.20 an hour after the accident, without having left the scene. By law, he was drunk. The opinion of the officer there was that despite his intake, he wasn't too impaired.

This information is in plain English in the link I sent, which is not that many pages to begin with. The argument the defense laid was that just because he drove drunk doesn't mean he was impaired (running a red light notwithstanding) and that he ran a red light because "he was thinking about something else", not because he was drunk, and the Crown couldn't prove otherwise, apparently, thus there was reasonable doubt.

At approximately 5:06 p.m. on May 21, 1983, the appellant was driving his parents' automobile westerly along Logan Avenue in the City of Winnipeg. At the intersection of Logan Avenue and Arlington Street he went through a red traffic light and struck a northerly bound vehicle broadside. The collision took place in the northeast quadrant of the intersection. A passenger in the north bound vehicle died as a result of injuries received in the collision. Apart from driving through the red traffic light, there was no evidence of any erratic driving. He was driving within the speed limit.

The appellant had been drinking. A blood alcohol reading taken approximately one hour after the accident revealed that he had a blood alcohol level of 200 milligrams of alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood. A police officer with 34 years' experience who observed the appellant and administered the breathalyser test found no sign of gross impairment. He conceded on cross-examination that the appellant "showed very little impairment at all". The trial judge accepted the evidence of this witness. A statement taken from the appellant the day after the occurrence and tendered by the Crown disclosed that the appellant admitted that he was thinking about something else and he went through the red light.

Trial Judgment

The trial judge reviewed the above facts and considered them in the light of the Crown's argument that there was wanton and reckless disregard of the lives and safety of others in the appellant's getting into his automobile in his impaired condition and then driving through a red light. Ferg J. remarked that these factors were insufficient to establish the degree of negligence required. After reviewing the authorities he concluded that the Crown had failed to prove the charge beyond a reasonable doubt. He stated:

"Looking at the circumstances in this case, looking at the facts, I cannot find that the Crown has proved beyond reasonable doubt that this accused in his manner of driving and in the circumstances and the facts as we have them, I cannot find that he was guilty of blatant disregard for the lives and safety of others. Certainly, however, his driving was dangerous."

[aerius]

If I were a dictator that drunk would become an involuntary organ donor, fortunately I don't get to write the laws. There's no question that he was drunk using blood alcohol level as the measure, the problem is proving that he was suitably impaired. Some alcoholics are fully functional with BAC readings that would have me passed out in a puddle of my own puke. The officer testified that the drunk was minimally impaired despite blowing nearly 3 times the legal limit, it doesn't say whether or not he administered a sobriety test, and that's why the drunk wasn't convicted of criminal negligence causing death.

So, hypothetically speaking, let's say there wasn't a sobriety test, only the breathalyser test. Drunk blows over the limit, officer says he doesn't look impaired. At this point there's not enough to prove that he was sufficiently impaired or criminally negligent at the time of the crash, you can prove he was over the legal BAC limit and get him on the charges relating to that and that's about it. Same thing would apply if they did the sobriety test and the drunk passed it. If he fails the sobriety test you then have reasonable grounds to show that he was impaired, and that opens up the impaired driving and criminal negligence charges. Convicting him on those charges still isn't a slam dunk without more supporting evidence from other sources.