10 years in prison is possible.
I’m thinking of one case of a high school student driving so fast on his way to school that he couldn’t stop for a school bus, and instead steered around the side of it, and killed a 12-year-old student waiting for the bus. There definitely were people in social media saying that we shouldn’t ruin the young man’s whole life over a mistake.
On the other hand, I’d agree with the example of drivers hitting people walking in the roadway on a limited-access highway at night as not at all a fault. The whole point of limited access is to reduce the number of things that a driver needs to anticipate. But a kid running out from behind a parked vehicle? That happens in places where kids live, and if one is driving in such places, it’s totally one’s fault for not driving slowly enough to react to a kid doing natural kid things.
Where I’m at, we’ve got a 45mph truck route going through the middle of a residential area, which lead to a kid running out in front of a semi a few years back. I’d say the primary blame for that specific incident is with whoever zoned it like that, and not the trucker who wasn’t familiar with the area.
