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Pretty much every day someone parks their car on the tram tracks and blocks our city's tram network from operating
(feddit.org)
This does unfortunately happen multiple times per day. Sometimes it’s smaller incidents where the tram driver can get out and collapse the car’s mirror. Other times the owner of the car comes out of a nearby house after the tram used its bell extensively (like today) and moves the car. And then there are times when police needs to get involved to tow the car which often takes upwards of 1 hour.
The truly infuriating part is that if the tram damages a poorly parked car, the transportation company will have to pay the damages. Poorly parked vehicles never get fined and the owners will only need to pay if the car ends up getting towed.
Why do we accept that drivers sabotage a city’s public transport infrastructure like this?
THAT is exactly the problem.
The politicians made sure the Law was set-up to benefit car owners and screw the rest, similarly to how drivers will get a mere fine when they kill somebody with their car whilst distracted (say, looking at their mobile phones) in situations which if they didn't do it behind the wheel of a car would be treated as involuntary homicide (what Americans call manslaughter) and carry a jail sentence, because they didn't have due care and attention whilst controlling a dangerous piece of machinery.
I once heard (not really sure if it's true, but damn I would love if it was) about how in Switzerland they had this car tow which was simply a big grab claw - similar to those in junkyards - that just grabbed irregularly park cars from above to put it in the tow truck and, well, any damage to the vehicle was the responsability of the car owner for having parked the car like that
Have something like that and this problem you're describing (in, judging by the picture, Bremen in Germany) would solve itself within a month as news travelled of car owners doing this shit and getting their car trashed. Then again, German mainstream politicians absolutelly are in the pockets of the car industry (all it takes is to look at how the handling of the Emissions Scandal was basically "blame some random Engineer", or check which companies get the most subsidies in Germany), so don't expect pro-people legilstation if it goes against the interests of the car lobby.
Yes and no. We use homicide too, but homicide just means one person was killed by another person. That's used more in medical situations or law enforcement reports. Manslaughter is a legal term and comes in when the state/courts are doing the whole charging part. Then there's the whole manslaughter vs murder that trips people up too since those are both legal terms. I believe the main difference between them is intent.
That's the impression I had.
My impression having lived in a couple of places in Europe (including Britain) is that legally speaking what the American Legal System understands as "Manslaughter" is in European legal systems called "Involuntary Killing", "Involuntary Homicide" or even "Involuntary Murder" (this latter is is confusing when talking to Americans because, if I undestand it correctly, in the American Legal System "Murder" cannot be involuntary as it explicitly means a purposeful killing) or the equivalent in the local language.
Anyways, my point is that people who kill other people not on purpose but as a result of being careless when they are in control of something which can easilly kill if not handled with due care and attention, if they do it whilst driving seldom if ever get charged with a charge of killing somebody due to not being as carefull as they are legally mandated to be, but instead usually just get traffic violating charge which is usually just a fine.
If you kill a person in germany by car, because you neglected your lawful duties (Sorgfaltspflichten) it is usually a case of §222 penal code (StGB fahrlässige Tötung/ negligent homicide), you'll get a penalty ranging from "Geldstrafe" (fine) up to five years, e. g. based on your neglect as with most other cases. In very specific cases (DUI, etc) the penalty for drivers is up to five years for endangerment alone! Implying a german bonus for manslaughter by car seems - ceterus paribus - not true.
But how often does it actually happen in practice?
What I've seen in other countries in Europe where indeed people can theoretically be charged like that, is that even in extreme cases (for example, a guy in Portugal which in the middle of Lisbon run over and killed a pedestrian on a zebra crossing when the traffic sign was red for driver, because he was looking at his mobile phone) they almost never get anything but a fine (this specific guy got away with a €125 fine).
In practice - for example some years ago in England - I've seen harder prosecutions against cyclists than I've seen against car drivers.
This scenario - in germany - would be 200 Euro for the citation ("Bußgeld"), just for using the phone while driving. The combined charges for negligent homicide should be much higher.
Which is about the price you would pay for overspeeding in the rest of Europe. In Germany it's 20e, basically a parking fine. And that's not accounting for local cost of life.
Traffic laws in Germany are a fucking joke