When Drivers in China Hit Pedestrians, They Make Sure to Kill Them
Unintended consequence of laws making those causing accidents legally liable for lifetimemedical payments.
http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-66/32218-when-drivers-in-china-hit-pedestrians-they-make-sure-to-kill-them
With so many hit-to-kill drivers escaping serious punishment, the Chinese public has sometimes taken matters into its own hands. In 2013 a crowd in Zhengzhou in Henan province beat a wealthy driver who killed a 6-year-old after allegedly running him over twice. (A television report claims the crowd had acted on “false rumors.” However, at least five witnesses assert on camera that the man had run over the child a second time.)
Of course, not every hit-to-kill driver escapes serious punishment. A man named Yao Jiaxin who in 2010 hit a bicyclist in Xian and returned to make sure she was dead—even stabbing the injured woman with a knife—was convicted and executed. In 2014 a driver named Zhang Qingda who had hit an elderly man in Jiayu Pass in Gansu province with his pickup truck and circled around to crush the man again was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
Both China and Taiwan have passed laws attempting to eradicate hit-to-kill cases. Taiwan’s legislature reformed Article 6 of its Civil Code, which had long restricted the ability to bring civil lawsuits on behalf of others (such as a person killed in a traffic accident). Meanwhile, China’s legislature has emphasized that multiple-hit cases should be treated as murders. Yet even when a driver hits a victim multiple times, it can be hard to prove intent and causation—at least to the satisfaction of China’s courts. Judges, police, and media often seem to accept rather unbelievable claims that the drivers hit the victims multiple times accidentally, or that the drivers confused the victims with inanimate objects.
Hit-to-kill cases continue, and hit-to-kill drivers regularly escape serious punishment. In January a woman was caught on video repeatedly driving over an old man who had slipped in the snow. In April a school bus driver in Shuangcheng was accused of driving over a 5-year-old girl again and again. In May a security camera filmed a truck driver running over a young boy four times; the driver claimed that he had never noticed the child.
And last month the unlicensed woman who had killed the 2-year-old in the fruit market with her BMW—and then offered to bribe the family—was brought to court. She claimed the killing was an accident. Prosecutors accepted her assertion, and recommended that the court reduce her sentence to two to four years in prison.
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