Teen hit by car playing pokemon go. Parent Blames the game

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

Should've gotten an AllState Agent. Clearly wasn't in good hands.

 

 

[kaylexmorgana]

2 minutes ago, BlueChinchillaEatingDorito said:

Should've gotten an AllState Agent. Clearly wasn't in good hands.

 

 

Nah, then he might get stuck watching http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5481404/

[Snadzies]

12 minutes ago, Tech_Dreamer said:

Well, the game is distracting, there wasn't any explicit warning by game disclaimer i believe (correct me if i'm wrong here) about users being made aware of

 

i mean there should be a temporary warning pop-up atleast approaching roads on screen while in the game so user can look away & see if there's any trouble

How many retard warnings do we need on all our appliances and devices?

 

"There was no warning on the microwave that I shouldn't dry off my child with it!"

"My car never warned me that I shouldn't have driven it while I was drunk!"

"My stove never advised me that the boiling pot of water was hot!"

[Tech_Dreamer]

12 minutes ago, Snadzies said:

-snippity snip-

Not pushing that shit to that many extreme, but that's like a BMW argument,

 

you know i'll just take this turn without putting on the side indicator , the guy behind me should've known, plus he saw the road turn that was ahead of me, it's his fault for not realizing that & rear ending me (#Buttjoke)

[Megahurt]

Turns out looking where you're going can greatly increase safety, who would've thought.

[Sauron]

"I blame school, she wouldn't have been out of the house otherwise"

"I blame her friends, she wouldn't have been out of the house without them"

"I blame cars, she wouldn't have been hit by one if they didn't exist"

 

I blame the parent, she would have known she should look around and not at her phone while crossing the street if she would have been properly raised. It's no different than crossing the street while texting - or worse, DRIVING while texting.

1 hour ago, JoeyDM said:

Guys... Her being dumb and not paying attention doesn't mean you should bash her. She probably knows better than any of us how fucking stupid it was. 

 

Seriously, I'm getting sick of all the "hurr durr Darwin" stuff. People need to pay more attention, we get it already. That doesn't make them literally fucking retarded or mean that they deserve to get hurt. 

What bothers me is the parents refusing to blame the daughter or themselves.

[Deli]

I just saw a kid hit by a bicycle when playing Pokemon Go today.

[wrath]

I love it, how predictable people are, every time something bad happens they blame something but not the thing that is actually to blame.

Shit happens if you don't pay attention, that's just it IMHO

[Tech_Dreamer]

Who else is the parents gonna blame? Kid was distracted by game. period. they see it as the cause,  who's fault is it at the end?

 

kid was wrong for not paying attention, almost as same as texting & driving , but this is just one case & there would be a lot more if there isn't any form of alert (audio/visual popup),  kids especially around this age are hyped & see the game as a primary priority to reserve attention are vulnerable & too focused & will not pay attention even if you give them the right instruction , worse than grown ups in a way

[Shakaza]

Well, let's try to critically examine what happened and who or what is at fault here. 

 

The most obvious is the game itself. It's a piece of software with some level of interactivity with humans, but said interactions can only be initiated by a human. It is incapable of independent thought or making decisions for the human operating it. The human solely decides how, why, and where any and all interactions take place. The young woman used the software on an open highway, where it is expected for humans to observe and yield for oncoming traffic. The software did not control her mind to make her cross that street, it didn't cause the car to be there, and it didn't even tell her that it was necessary for her to be at that location.

 

Now let's examine the driver. There doesn't seem to be a lot of information regarding this, so I can't look into incredible detail, but since there doesn't appear to be anything that suggests the driver didn't try everything in his/her power to mitigate the accident, and even held the girl's hand after it took place, so we can logically assume the driver didn't do anything out of the ordinary.

 

Then there's the parents. I can't really assign them blame or not since I am completely unaware of the child's upbringing and what they taught her, but since they aren't blaming themselves at all for the incident, I will give them the benefit of the doubt and say that they did everything in their power to teach their child how to be an intelligent pedestrian.

 

And, finally, we have the girl. Who else could it be, am I right? Well, it's a bit more complex than that. While she did make the decision to play Pokemon Go on a highway without watching or waiting for traffic, how much of that was a conscious, informed decision based on her situation, and how much was caused by her teen-aged and thus not fully developed brain? From what I understand of developmental psychology, the frontal lobe, where "the ability to project future consequences resulting from current actions, the choice between good and bad actions (or better and best) (also known as conscience), the override and suppression of socially unacceptable responses, and the determination of similarities and differences between things or events" -Wikipedia, take place, is not fully developed, which results in poor impulse control, and may be the result of what we would call a stupid and ill-informed action. This defense wouldn't stand in court, however, because it hasn't yet been proven that every undeveloped brain would make the same ill-informed decision in the same situation.

 

So, my conclusion is that the blame is not hefty enough on the game to warrant monetary compensation from the company that runs it, but it is not enough on the girl's conscious decision to demonize her and call for a Darwin Award. I do believe a compromise might mitigate some of the concerns people have, by having the company change its terms of service or add disclaimers that discourage this sort of thing, because while we may not be able to change the way a teen's brain works, we can change how people perceive the game.

 

Oh, on a final note, let me turn the family's argument on its head. By their logic, the parents are equally guilty because they bought her and gave her access to a phone capable of playing Pokemon Go. If they hadn't given it to her, she wouldn't have gotten the game, and wouldn't have been out of the house. That is, of course, assuming that the parents did buy the phone, which is a fair conclusion, since most teenagers are given phones as gifts rather than bought with the teen's own money. Feel free to call me out if I'm wrong, of course.

 

Source for quote: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frontal_lobe

Edited July 15, 2016 by Shakaza
Appended Source for quote

[straight_stewie]

There's a very clear warning on a loading screen that you have to stare at for like 30 seconds every time you load the game up that says "Remember to be alert at all times. Pay attention to your surroundings."

I hate to be that guy, because this is truly a sad incident. That said: if their child has a cell phone but isn't mature enough to understand the need to look both ways before crossing the road, then those parents screwed up royally. This is no ones fault other than the parents and the teenagers.

[SansVarnic]

Let Mom play and see if she fairs better . . . just sayin.

[LabRat]

11 minutes ago, SansVarnic said:

Let Mom play and see if she fairs better . . . just sayin.

the apple might not fall far from the tree............LOL

[apm]

3 hours ago, Tech_Dreamer said:

Well, the game is distracting, there wasn't any explicit warning by game disclaimer i believe (correct me if i'm wrong here) about users being made aware of

 

i mean there should be a temporary warning pop-up atleast approaching roads on screen while in the game so user can look away & see if there's any trouble

i thought there is a warning when you start the game for the first time and during loading.

even that shouldnt matter, if you need a warning you probably deserve it..

 

btw: i fucking love darwin.

[JoaoPRSousa]

Not this bullshit again. The last time something like this happened, the person hit by a vehicle tried to sue fokin Snapchat. Why are people so retarded...

[Tech_Dreamer]

2 minutes ago, apm said:

i thought there is a warning when you start the game for the first time and during loading.

even that shouldnt matter, if you need a warning you probably deserve it..

 

btw: i fucking love darwin.

not enough i guess, that's what i mean. or we can have a few more broken bodies & couple of deaths blame stupidity each time/case & feel good about it , there will always be exaggerated players who'd be too lost in the game, but it shouldn't be too intrusive , user must be able to disable it by choice if possible then we can blame stupidity 100%..

[Doobeedoo]

App that get's rid of dumb people? Cool.

[FakezZ]

Maybe we should blame noone? No way this could be just a moment of carelessness? I swear people these days will go out of their way to connect things that could be unrelated together.

[Matu20]

4 hours ago, JoeyDM said:

Guys... Her being dumb and not paying attention doesn't mean you should bash her. She probably knows better than any of us how fucking stupid it was. 

 

Seriously, I'm getting sick of all the "hurr durr Darwin" stuff. People need to pay more attention, we get it already. That doesn't make them literally fucking retarded or mean that they deserve to get hurt. 

I didn't imply that she deserved to get hurt, just happened that she did. Stupid people don't deserve to die, they just do more often, nothing we can do to change that.

[suicidalfranco]

back when in my days, my parents taught to look both sides of the road before crossing, it's been more than 20 years ever since have passed, I've never been hit by car. Thank you mom and dad.

[THawkSonYo]

Now who didn't see this coming?

Thank goodness no one was killed.

Typical parents always blaming everything else except their children.

I Literally saw a lady sue the ice-cream man for making her son fat, Smh.

 

When the children end up drug addicts or bums or criminals they pull out the pointing fingers again, despite the fact that they never ever told the child what he/she was doing was wrong. Harry stole a pencil, mum says it was the devil not Harry who stole it, and Poor little harry goes to himself " cool i can do whatever i want"

 

Poor Children.

 

[PerfectTemplar]

'How dare the game get my daughter to leave the house for the first time'

 

What? Are you fucking kidding? Do these "parents" have no concern for their children's well being?

[GooDBoY920]

Where is face palm comment disappeared 

[Tech_Dreamer]

10 minutes ago, GooDBoY920 said:

Where is face palm comment disappeared 

it got hit by a car & it flew away..

[Qub3d]

They aren't going to get anything out of this. Niantic and Nintendo were smart enough to cover their asses here:

 

Exhibit A - what you see every time you start the App