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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsDrivers in China intentionally kill the pedestrians they hit...
In April a BMW racing through a fruit market in Foshan in Chinas Guangdong province knocked down a 2-year-old girl and rolled over her head. As the girls grandmother shouted, Stop! Youve hit a child! the BMWs driver paused, then switched into reverse and backed up over the girl. The woman at the wheel drove forward once more, crushing the girl for a third time. When she finally got out from the BMW, the unlicensed driver immediately offered the horrified family a deal: Dont say that I was driving the car, she said. Say it was my husband. We can give you money.
It seems like a crazy urban legend: In China, drivers who have injured pedestrians will sometimes then try to kill them. And yet not only is it true, its fairly common; security cameras have regularly captured drivers driving back and forth on top of victims to make sure that they are dead. The Chinese language even has an adage for the phenomenon: It is better to hit to kill than to hit and injure.
Double-hit cases have been around for decades. I first heard of the hit-to-kill phenomenon in Taiwan in the mid-1990s when I was working there as an English teacher. A fellow teacher would drive us to classes. After one near-miss of a motorcyclist, he said, If I hit someone, Ill hit him again and make sure hes dead. Enjoying my shock, he explained that in Taiwan, if you cripple a man, you pay for the injured persons care for a lifetime. But if you kill the person, you only have to pay once, like a burial fee.
Most people agree that the hit-to-kill phenomenon stems at least in part from perverse laws on victim compensation. In China the compensation for killing a victim in a traffic accident is relatively smallamounts typically range from $30,000 to $50,000and once payment is made, the matter is over. By contrast, paying for lifetime care for a disabled survivor can run into the millions. The Chinese press recently described how one disabled man received about $400,000 for the first 23 years of his care. Drivers who decide to hit-and-kill do so because killing is far more economical. Indeed, Zhao Xiao Chengthe man caught on a security camera video driving over a grandmother five timesended up paying only about $70,000 in compensation.
These drivers are willing to kill not only because it is cheaper, but also because they expect to escape murder charges. In the days before video cameras became widespread, it was rare to have evidence that a driver hit the victim twice. Even in todays age of cellphone cameras, drivers seem confident that they can either bribe local officials or hire a lawyer to evade murder charges.
FULL STORY: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2015/09/why_drivers_in_china_intentionally_kill_the_pedestrians_they_hit_china_s.single.html
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Drivers in China intentionally kill the pedestrians they hit... (Original Post)
HipChick
Sep 2015
OP
PatrickforO
(14,593 posts)1. Depressing.
This is such a drag because of what it says about human nature.
smirkymonkey
(63,221 posts)2. This makes me physically ill.
How can people be so heartless?
flamingdem
(39,331 posts)3. Machiavelli got nothing on
the Double-HItters!
JI7
(89,276 posts)4. remember the video of the child that was run over a few years back and many people just walked by
the girl who was clearly bloody and injured and dying without doing anything ?