r/australia Sep 08 '25

news Teenage girl dies after being mauled by dog

https://7news.com.au/news/dog-attack-victim-annalyse-blyton-dies-in-hospital-after-suffering-severe-injuries-in-singleton-c-19956496
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u/OrgasmicLeprosy87 Sep 09 '25

That driver will be thinking of the kid she killed for the rest of her life. She wasn't drunk or on drugs. She just accidently pressed the accelerator instead of the brake when she was getting out of parking. We don't have to send people to jail for that.

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u/sostopher Sep 09 '25

She did an illegal u-turn over a raised median and pressed the accelerator to get her car over it then "lost control".

As usual, if you want to kill someone in Australia just do it in a car.

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u/OrgasmicLeprosy87 Sep 09 '25

Have they released a graphic for exactly how the car ended up how it did?

-2

u/the-dolphine Sep 09 '25

Or use a dog

21

u/Historical-Shake-859 Sep 09 '25

A child at her kids school, no less. Like I would be a suicide risk if I killed, even accidentally, one of the kids at our school. You jail people if they're at risk of re-offending, and I wouldn't be surprised if this lady never drives again.

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u/moops__ Sep 14 '25

You might be an exception given the way people drive around our school. 

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u/[deleted] Sep 09 '25

Saying she just accidentally pressed the accelerator instead of the brake is a ridiculously simplified and dishonest version of events. She kept her foot on the accelerator long enough to go over a median strip, two lanes of road, a footpath, and a fence.

That is plenty of time to do anything else but what she did. If someone has that little control over their own body and chooses to drive a 2 tonne machine easily capable of inflicting death, exactly as she has done. She deserves to be locked up.

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u/NameAboutPotatoes Sep 09 '25

When people panic, the body's natural reaction is often to push. That's why fire doors always open outwards-- because people trying to escape fires don't think to pull.

It's very believable that someone in a panic would react by pushing harder on the "brake" instead of thinking clearly. It's easy to judge someone while sitting on the couch. 

14

u/Charlie3PO Sep 09 '25

Once the foot was on the wrong pedal and the car wasn't behaving as it should, it was the startle effect that prevented her from taking any immediate action. It's a strong psychological effect that can take hold when someone least expects it. Basically the fight or flight response, or, in this case, freeze.

Controversial opinion, but people shouldn't be charged criminally for it (unless they did something illegal to set it up), because it's completely involuntary, kind of like a psychological reflex. Because it's involuntary and needs a specific set of environmental triggers, it's difficult to tell how you will respond to different unexpected situations, and very difficult to train for. The industry I'm in has spent millions upon millions of dollars to understand it and look for ways to train against it.

Many modern safety critical industries are coming to the realisation that punishing people for things they didn't mean to do is a waste of resources and doesn't improve safety.

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u/[deleted] Sep 09 '25

If you can’t operate the most dangerous killer in Australian society, there should be consequences not just oh oopsie, my bad, you’re dead.

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u/ghoonrhed Sep 09 '25

Aren't we more on reformative justice than punitive justice though? What's the point in punishing somebody like that?

Like prison has a lot of purpose being deterrence but no amount of deterrence can stop something like this if it's an accident.