We've had this happen decades ago when I was just a kid. We were taking a boat ride along a river and a chunk of concrete was tossed off a bridge, narrowly missing my brother and myself. We could see the kids who did it up on the bridge, but by the time we got there, they were long gone.
GameboyRMH said:I think that some small fraction of the population would enjoy sneakily murdering people for the lulz but merely lack the tools to do it. A rock dropped from an overpass is one such tool. A high-powered laser pointer that can be pointed at aircraft cockpits is another.
Not to sidetrack this thread but I've heard this about laser pointers before, mainly when I tried to buy one (not to shine it at aircraft) when i was 16 or 17, turned out you had to be 18 to buy one, they said it was due to kids shining them in pilots eyes. What is the real possibility that someone would be able to hold a laser pointer steady enough to keep it consistently in a pilots eyes (or really any sensor that might be affected by it) long enough to cause a real problem when the plan is 30,000+ feet away?
In reply to edizzle89 :
You don't even need to do it for a long period of time with a decent laser and most of the time the worry is at less than 1000 feet. Refraction does it's thing when you start going beyond that with class 1 and class 2 lasers. The laws were mainly structured to prevent a low flying helicopter or on approach aircraft from being temporarily blinded as that's the most dangerous time.
The class 3 and 4 lasers we had on the targeting systems on the aircraft had the potential to blind you from a couple thousand feet. So whenever we used the range there were always signs out and lots of warnings over the radio.
As for this, hopefully they catch whomever did it. Even the slightest risk assessment should tell you this is a dangerous thing to do. I did a lot of stupid crap when I was younger but even in the 90's it was pretty well known that dropping things off an overpass or tossing rocks at cars is a dumb thing to do.
We did have a rash for a while with kids shooting BB guns at passing cars when I was growing up in a rural area. That lasted until they're confronted with someone holding an actual weapon (happened more than once) or the state police show up.
If they catch whoever did this, if it was intentional, they should get stoned to death. Make the punishment fit the crime.
Several years ago when I was working as a medic for an ambulance company the amount of freak accidents that we encountered was staggering. While it's easier to blame stupidity or negligence, the reality is that bizarre occurrences happen all the time and sometimes it results in death. My sympathies are with his family.
Ian F said:dean1484 said:Is there even the remote possibility it came from a vehicle/truck crossing the bridge?
Ya I know not likely.
Per the news report, the DOT said the chunk of concrete was once part of a curb not part of the highway near the bridge. It's possible the chunk bounced out of a truck carrying debris.
The time of day it occurred had me thinking this.
In reply to dean1484 :
I was thinking that too. If that's the case the trucker and the employing company need to have the book thrown at them so everyone starts taking the rules about tarping/screening the loads seriously. That includes replacing worn tarps and screens.
my Mother had a car she had gotten for free. The Catch was she needed to repair the damage from a brick that had hit where the top of the windshield and roof meet. yes, it was kids tossing stuff off of a bridge onto the highway. Everybody was lucky their timing was off, a second earlier it would have gone through the windshield and killed the driver instead of bouncing off of the edge of the roof
Seems every few years we have a rash of incidents like this in Cincinnati. There are enough heavily wooded areas near the highways that it is easy to slip away after doing it. Thankfully, most of the time, they aren’t fatal. Most of the time, if they’re caught, it’s a bunch of teens or preteens.
This happens every few years in the highways around here, usually without a fatality. But then there are also idiot kids who chuck eggs at cars on back roads in the middle of the night. Cops don't like you chasing them.
If the prosecutor has admissible evidence of texting between the accused about hitting the victims car then case closed. The news didn't get the prosecutor to reveal what they had in the texts.
Seems an open shut case. Murder 2 seems appropriate. It wasn't a clear case of targeting the victim. But it was a purposeful effort to due harm to anyone they could.
What sickened me most was a defense attorney in Michigan released his first public statement after one of these criminal acts occurred. They were caught on video. The attorney actually stated in their defense that they were from wealthy families and honor students! As if just stating that should release them from blame. Ugly
GameboyRMH said:MotorsportsGordon said:It’s pathetic that these excuse for humans like this exist. A number of years ago in Edmonton we had a school bus driver die in similar circumstances when a large boulder was dropped on the bus he was driving.
I think that some small fraction of the population would enjoy sneakily murdering people for the lulz but merely lack the tools to do it. A rock dropped from an overpass is one such tool. A high-powered laser pointer that can be pointed at aircraft cockpits is another.
I feel like the rock and the laser pointer is different. My buddy had a strong laser and it was a lot of fun to put a dot on the water tower at night across town. We wouldn’t, as we knew better, but I could see the thrill behind putting a dot on an airplane, not maliciously, but it would still be neat. We never ever would, or did, but I could understand it. Throwing a rock off an overpass though, you can only do that out of an urge to hurt someone.
In reply to penultimeta :
A few years ago we had a car battery come through the right side windshield of a bus. We couldn’t figure how/where it got thrown from. It turned out there was an accident on an overpass and the battery was being transported in the bed of the pickup that crashed. Thankfully no one was hurt but it was one hell of a shot to travel as much as it did and hit the only vehicle passing below.
There is a real problem with both criminal acts of things being thrown off of overpasses and the negligence of other drivers having unsecured loads or detached parts. 2 years ago I was on my way back from the track in my Volvo 960 and someone's receiver bitch got kicked up off of the road in front of me and went right through the front of my car. It was 11:30 pm so I never even saw it, I just heard the noise and saw steam from the front of my car. It took out my drivers E-code headlight, my grill, radiator, condenser, good, and damaged my wiring and coresupport. If it would have been 3 inches higher there is no doubt in my mind it would have killed me.
This is disgusting and it's been a very bad trend in South Africa as well. Where the assailants will actually block one side of the highway to force drivers into a certain lane under an overpass so they can intentionally cause the damage or kill a person.
I've always had a rule that if I see anyone standing at an overpass I get as far over as possible from that lane.
A variation on this locally was objects attached to a wire or rope and dropped off the bridge. This kept the object at windshield height, lessening the need to time the drop as precisely.
All of our overpasses in the area ended up with fences shortly after that.
Advan046 said:What sickened me most was a defense attorney in Michigan released his first public statement after one of these criminal acts occurred. They were caught on video. The attorney actually stated in their defense that they were from wealthy families and honor students! As if just stating that should release them from blame. Ugly
The "Affluenza" defense... nice...
nutherjrfan said:Happened to my friend Cormac in Belfast back in the early 90s. Religiously motivated. Took a year to relearn everything. Driver of the cab had to have his eyeball taken out of its socket to clean up the glass. Then his brother was killed by a joyrider in the early 2000s.
The Troubles. I’ve always felt like the Irish of a certain age are all more or less combat veterans.
Toyman01 said:In some instances public execution should be a thing.
As long as it’s not a public hanging.
It happens more often than you would think. We had a group of kids that dropped a toilet off a bridge that killed someone. Several dropped concrete chunks. Not sure if it was around here, but somebody somewhere dropped a barbell bar that impaled somebody. Of course none of these precious kids ever means the kill anybody.
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