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Comment by noah_buddy | Hacker News Reader

I don’t think that’s a reasonable takeaway considering the follow through to the end of the article where he states that the environment is the culprit. If anything, I think his supposition is that any one of innumerable actors are just as a guilty as the parents but that our system must reduce scope to find a specific culprit and charge them with something. I don’t think the author would agree with charging the parents with manslaughter, but I think the implication is that they were in some sense negligent considering the environment in which they live.

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> they were in some sense negligent considering the environment in which they live

Criminal negligence involves a "gross deviation from the standard of care that a reasonable person would exercise in the same situation".

Given the 7-year-old was escorted by a 10-year-old, I think that alone demonstrates a reasonable level of care was taken to protect the younger child.

If the streets are too dangerous for a 10-year-old to cross safely, then you need to look a lot deeper for the true source of the risk.

Yes, this is what caught my eye:

> West Hudson Boulevard is a high-speed arterial road with narrow sidewalks, a tiny median, and no truly safe crossings. Even a healthy, alert adult is taking their life in their hands by walking to that store. For a child, it’s playing the worst kind of roulette.

The fact that it did have a sidewalk, even a narrow one means that it's meant for walking. If it's unsafe then the existence of the sidewalk is only asking for trouble. It either has a sidewalk and is safe, or it isn't safe and shouldn't have a sidewalk. Having a sidewalk and being unsafe is the fault of the city/construction not the user.

Claiming a child was playing with roulette amounts to it also implying that lethal roulette games for kids is something that should be legal.

Agreed. The sidewalk is not fit for purpose - too narrow, adjacent to high-ish speed traffic, frequent turns into shopping plazas, few/no pedestrian crossings, and no sidewalk on the opposite side of the road, nor on many intersecting roads.

The street is, in fact, too dangerous for a 10-year-old, or even an adult.

There's a skinny sidewalk on one side. No sidewalk on the other. No signaled crossings for blocks. High-ish speed traffic.

Given an option, nobody would walk that particular stretch of highway.

Should the parents have been charged? Probably not (unless there are details missing from the artcile). Should we reconsider how we build our suburbs? Absolutely.

There's a signaled crossing right at the intersection?

https://www.google.com/maps/@35.2348779,-81.2052672,3a,75y,2...

Yes, but not to the SW corner of Hudson/Lyon. If you happen to live off Taylor, on the south side of Hudson, there's no way to get there.

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