Usage of "homicide" and "killer"

[m90]

Preface: I support everything that makes the city of Berlin safer for cyclists and everyone participating in street traffic. We all deserve to be safe.

Yet, I have a hard time coping with the terminology used in here as it does not match existing jurisdiction, thus hurting the case instead of helping it as it hurts the claims' credibility.

When I look at the Strafgesetzbuch it defines "Mord" (Homicide) as

§ 211 Mord (1) Der Mörder wird mit lebenslanger Freiheitsstrafe bestraft. (2) Mörder ist, wer

aus Mordlust, zur Befriedigung des Geschlechtstriebs, aus Habgier oder sonst aus niedrigen Beweggründen, heimtückisch oder grausam oder mit gemeingefährlichen Mitteln oder um eine andere Straftat zu ermöglichen oder zu verdecken, einen Menschen tötet.

When I look at the data you gathered, I cannot find any case that matches this description. The cases would even hardly qualify as "Totschlag", and there is a good reason that german law knows about "Fahrlässige Tötung" (which many of these cases probably are). The negligent part is very important here.

Also, translating "Täter" with "killer", when it should probably be offender, is far from neutral, especially considering that you did not stray that far when translating victim.

Again, I support your case, yet I think a less tabloid language would help the case much more than a skewed view on things that mixes up things that should not be mixed up.

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EDIT: I do know your blog article refers to this case https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/bgh-raser-berlin-101.html which - in my non-lawyer opinion - would also qualify as homicide, yet this does not automatically apply to all other traffic fatalities.

[n-kb]

Dear @m90 ,

Many thanks for engaging constructively. Let me first say that I believe that radical thinking and actions are most useful if they help moderates push their agenda through against conservatives. Regarding cycling in Berlin today, we definitely need radicalism to make ADFC and Changin Cities look very good in the eyes of conservatives.

Regarding the article, I agree that current legal definitions could apply to the cases I listed. My point was rather to say that the concepts you mention were applied very selectively and always at the benefit of car drivers (e.g. comparing the guy throwing stones on the A10 charged as a murderer and the drunk, speeding driver who wasn't).

The legal conception of car accidents is currently used exactly by making the normal situation the situation where cars own the streets fully and that other users were only to be tolerated. That no incident of opening a door on a cyclist went to court is a case in point: Imagine the opposite (suddenly creating an obstacle on the street so that a driver would make an abrupt turn, crash and die) - the person at the origin of the incident would be charged, probably with murder.

My larger point, which will be the focus of my next piece, is that when you put yourself in a position of killing, you are not committing involuntary manslaughter, but a voluntary one. When moving two tons of steel at 50km/h in an area where you're likely to encounter other humans, I'd say you're asking for a kill.

[m90]

While I value your radical approach, I would like to understand one thing: how does it improve my situation as a cyclist in Berlin (which I am almost every day of the year)? What is the consequence? Stretching legal terms until it's very hard to tell if they still hold true increases your own vulnerability and weakens your case.

Someone was killed in traffic, that alone is terrible enough to have everyone on board to find a solution on how to end that. Shouldn't we strive for a balance based on peace and respect for everyone participating in traffic, instead of striving for a balance of fear, blame and accusations?

I also think inversing the presumption of innoncence and saying every truck driver / car driver is asking for a kill is a reactionary and unhelpful thing to do. What do you do when a pedestrian says the same thing about a cyclist? People do get killed by cyclists every year, which is just as terrible. Are cyclists asking for a kill too? No, they don't. They participate in traffic and have a certain responsibility and risk profile, just like car drivers, truck drivers and everyone else. Those risk and responsibility profiles are composed differently, yet there is no good one and no bad one. All we should be doing is finding ways of saving every life that can be saved. Together, us vs. them is a pattern that is currently destroying way too much things in this world.

[n-kb]

Dear @m90,

Talking of balance is precisely the issue. I do not believe that there is anything to balance between using a 15-kg helper at 20km/h to get through the city and using a 2,000kg, noisy and polluting one at 50km/h. It's a debate very similar to the one about second hand smoking: it's not about balancing the liberty of everyone but about recognizing that there are victims and offenders.

In transportation, to go through the city while in a position to kill someone (roughly by being in a position to inflict more than 6,500 joules of damage, which would be 10km/h for a car and 40km/h for a cyclist) is reprehensible. Just as smoking next to someone is.

[m90]

As you mention second hand smoking, I think it's valuable to look at how the "Rauchverbot" in Germany was introduced over the last decade, in turn drastically improving the situation of non-smokers: all the campaigns were solely factual and did not include any kind of us-vs-them narrative.

People just stated the facts without skewing things into the direction they wanted them to be and they also presented solutions for the problem at hand. Which is why this was a successful campaign (why Berliners do not care at all is a different story, but this definitely holds true for all other 15 states). The ones that were trying to create an atmosphere of threat and division - the smokers - were the ones who did not succeed in achieving their goals here.

[n-kb]

Dear @m90,

Let me first say that I appreciate your answering and your argumentation, I find it helpful in sharpening mine.

Regarding the parallel with smoking, you're right that smokers were not opponents of non-smokers. A reason for this is that many non-smokers correctly identified smokers as persons who were addicted and sick, which is not the case of aggressive car drivers. However, the fight against smoking was very confrontational - with cigarette manufacturers. All gains against smoking were obtained through litigation in the United States. European countries simply followed the trend set there.

The fight against smoking using facts was, indeed, fought, and lost. That was the U.S. Surgeon General's report of 1964, which made plain all the evidence against smoking, and which was spun to irrelevance by the cigarette industry (most of this story I read in Robert Proctor's Golden Holocaust).

[m90]

Isn't the perceived outcome of the fight dependent on what your goal is? If your goal is to ban smoking, yes it has been lost. For me as a non-smoker, the fight has been won as my exposure to second-hand-smoke has been cut to almost zero.

Which has me coming back to the original topic: is this about banning cars or about improving security for cyclists? I do know the former target would have the latter as a side effect, yet they are still two different things. I encourage you to fight for any of these, but I think it's helpful to clearly state what the goal is here.

[n-kb]

I just like to understand how things work and I write about it to channel my sentiments. Other people do policy change.

[m90]

In that case I would like to ask for one thing: when writing about the things you find out, ask yourself if the tone and language you are using might be interpreted by its readers in a way that creates unnecessary schisms and leads to aggressive behavior towards others. Especially in traffic, disgust and aggression will make things less safe, even if shown by the potentially "weaker" side. Such sentiments will always echo, grow stronger and come back at your very self at some point in time. The last thing we need on the streets of Berlin is more yelling and middle fingers. They help exactly noone.

Facts instead will empower people to do the right policy changes.