Attributing to Mallace

02 Jun 2019 at 18:56 // under Safety

Apparently there was a hit and run right at the end of our road earlier this evening. I didn’t hear or see anything. The only reason I know anything about it is that there is a discussion about it on the local facebook group¹. The general consensus is that it was intentional, the car had mounted the kerb, hit the pedestrian and then drove off.

The thing is, I am not convinced. I am not saying it definitely wasn’t intentional, just that I think that there is a good chance that it was in fact an accident. It is very tempting to instantly assume that everyone’s actions are fully thought through and intentional. Hanlon’s razor states:

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

In this case, I don’t think you can rule out stupidity or careless driving. Even if the driver did not stop, that doesn’t mean that it was intentional. Once they hit the person, the fight or flight response would kick in and they would have had a surge of adrenalin. At this point they are unlikely to be thinking straight. They need to do something and driving off before they get into trouble may have seemed like a good idea. It may not have occurred to them that they would get in more trouble for failing to stop. They just want to run away from the situation.

As I said earlier, I am not ruling out mallace, I am just not convinced that it definitely was.

1. I have not seen or taken part in the discussion, I have only heard about it from my wife ↩

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