On Sun, 27 Sep 2020 19:37:01 -0400, Joy Beeson
wrote:

On Sun, 27 Sep 2020 09:55:03 +0700, John B.
wrote:

But I suspect that the biggest difference is that there is a policy
here that in a collision the biggest guy is in the wrong, unless of
course he can prove different. So if a car hits a bicycle the car is
normally liable for any and all costs, hospital, damage to the bike
and even funeral costs in the event of death. I believe that it does
make things a bit different.

American society is adamantly opposed to the idea that miscreants
should pay for the damage they have done.

I don't know when that happened.

In the forties, when I was a little kid, two of the big boys broke the
little kids' teeter-totter. The janitor of the school told the boys
where they could buy a plank and supervised them while they took the
broken toy apart and rebuilt it better than it had been before. Both
grew up to be pillars of the community.

Not too long before we moved out of New York, two boys painted
graffiti on the school next door. Instead of handing the kids a wire
brush and a bottle of paint remover, they called in the police and
made criminals out of them, and the clean-up was done at taxpayer
expense.

I suppose that it is "progress" or maybe we are more "civilized" these
days. But, I suspect that in your example, above, that having to clean
off the graffiti - really clean! - might have proved to be a more
effective punishment than being arrested and having their parents pay
the fine.

My own experience, raising kids, that they can think and they can
figure out the difference between this action and another and that
when one action results in something unpleasant that will avoid that
action in the future.
--
Cheers,

John B.