Today’s Carnage Brought to You By…

suluki.jpg

Yesterday, a 9-year-old Brooklyn boy was run down in the street while on his way home from school. The 16-year-old driver, Shyquan Burns, was behind the wheel of a souped-up Dodge Charger. Witnesses say Burns, who fled the scene but later turned himself into police, was speeding. The victim, Akeem Suluki, was in critical condition as of this morning and had not regained consciousness since being hit.

Above is the unfortunate product placement accompanying the New York Times write-up of the collision. After the jump is the Post’s, whose software might be smart enough to link a Chrysler ad with an article that mentions a Dodge, but isn’t so advanced as to recognize words like "hit" or "thrown," or phrases like "collapsed lung" and "bleeding on the brain." 

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  • jmc

    Isn’t it still illegal to drive at 16 in the city? It was when I was 16.

  • One of the articles mentioned that he was charged with driving without a license.

  • KillMoto

    All new drivers should only be allowed to drive scooters.  When they have 1000 hours experience, they drive motorcycles.  When they reach 10000 hours, they can drive small cars, etc.  Up to 50,000 hours, the vehicles are speed governed. 

    How to implement this you ask?  Equip all new cars with smart card readers.  Car ignition only works with license (embedded with smart card chip) plus pin code plus ignition keys. No more will a hit and run perp get away with “sure that was my car, but I wan’t driving… Musta been somebody else!”

  • Anonymous

    @c44dc01f8107c1b33104b538f33b734d:disqus , it could easily take more than 20 years to accumulate 10,000 hours of motorcycle riding experience. Are you seriously advocating that?

    For comparison, according to Wikipedia, you can get an airline transport pilot license with “only” 1500 hours of flight experience. And for a private pilot? A grand total of 35-40 hours does the trick.

  • KillMoto

    @qrt145:disqus Well I appreciate you took my comment seriously and responded with a valid concern.  Clearly I’m off by at least a factor of 10x, possibly 100x. 
    My overall point/philosophy here is, there are a fair number of young people who kill themselves, their passengers, innocent bystanders, or all of the above because they get too comfortable driving, too quickly.  I think if we required a progression of driving – from very modest machines that cannot carry passengers, to something more robust, then a full-size vehicle, roadway users of all ages would be safer (imagine how much better the typical soccer mom will treat the typical scooter driver, knowing the person under the helmet might be her own child…)

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