• Salvo@aussie.zone
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    1 year ago

    I can’t find anything in the article about his state of consciousness.

    Only;

    Detectives had not been able to interview the 66-year-old driver from Mount Macedon as he was being treated in hospital for shock and minor injuries

    And

    He said the driver had been breath-tested and had no alcohol in his system.

    We don’t know whether he was disabled due to a medical incident, whether he maliciously targeted the family, whether he was distracted driving, whether the vehicle malfunction or exactly why he crashed.

    The thing is, if the X5 was in a roadworthy condition, the driver assistance systems should have been able to either prevent the accident outright or at least mitigate the damage caused by a runaway vehicle.

      • Salvo@aussie.zone
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        1 year ago

        That is a reason, but not an excuse.

        My dad was diabetic and didn’t look after himself. When he started having regular hypoglycaemic episodes, we would discourage him from driving anywhere and made him upgrade to a smaller vehicle with better safety systems.

        He was an entitled baby boomer who didn’t respond well to his Silent Generation Wife and Gen X and Gen Y kids telling him what to do, but he was able to do much less damage to himself and others in a TS Astra than in a big HiLux CrewCab, especially if we hid the keys on him.

        • dbilitated@aussie.zone
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          1 year ago

          as replied elsewhere, yeah I agree that’s insanely irresponsible, but we didn’t know that until now.

          • Salvo@aussie.zone
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            1 year ago

            Irresponsible? Yes. Avoidable? Maybe not.

            Dad never wanted to have a hypo. It was just because he was out there doing something and got distracted from monitoring his bloody sugar. It sneaks up on you so you don’t notice until it hits you all at once.

            This is why (in his later years) my mum was forced to be a part-time, on-call carer. Dad would have it under control, until he didn’t.

            Having a blood sugar reaction is analogous to the guy that goes to the pub to drink one beer and drive home an hour later, but his mate buys him a beer, his other mate buys him a beer and the next thing he knows, he should be getting a taxi. The problem is that the diabetic can’t keep track of how many empty beer glasses there are.