The second article says an awful lot about the driver of the vehicle. It starts with a description of a young boy swearing he'll never drink because his father drank, runs through the usual liturgy of childhood traumas such as divorce and having to go to work at an early age. It ends with the 25 year-old man that the little boy grew up to be getting involved in a hit and run while drunk and high on cocaine, panicking and running over the other driver, and then speeding away only to be caught by police after a chase on a congested highway just outside the city. It turns out this guy has previous DUI charges. He was also once charged with endangering another human being.
The article says little about the man who was killed when his chest and head were crushed except that he was a grandfather and a carpenter. There was more to say. The man was also active in a local reach-out program to assist people on drugs and alcohol. He was also a liver transplant recipient. He'd gotten his transplant several years ago, and was doing well, and leading a productive and useful life.
I never met this man, but I do know friends of his. When things were lowest for me this summer, when it seemed like I was taking forever to heal and when the medications I was on had reduced me to little more than babbling Jell-O, I was told about this man, and how sick he'd been before, and how well he was doing now. His friends obviously thought the world of him, and hearing about him reassured me that my life would get back together as well.
I tend to be a pacifist. I prefer negotiation to fighting, I prefer rehabilitation to the death penalty, I try to see things from the other guy's point of view. And yet my feeling is that the only justice that can be served here is if Mr. Road Rage's heart, liver, kidneys, pancreas, small intestine, skin, marrow, and any other useable part of him are donated to people who will otherwise die waiting for their chance to live. He's had his shot with his organs and has proved unworthy.
I'll probably regret writing this tomorrow, but right now I'm angry.