Imagine the horror of hitting a pedestrian with your vehicle whilst you’re sat behind the wheel – even if it’s not your fault there may remain a real sense of guilt for many years to come.

Then picture a scenario where you knock a pedestrian over, then pause to drive back and forth over the body to ensure you finish the job you started. What on earth would drive someone to such a barbaric act?

It’s money of course, and it appears in China you’re saving a whole bunch if you kill rather than injure a pedestrian. Here’s Slate:

…security cameras have regularly captured drivers driving back and forth on top of victims to make sure that they are dead. The Chinese language even has an adage for the phenomenon: “It is better to hit to kill than to hit and injure”…

In China the compensation for killing a victim in a traffic accident is relatively small—amounts typically range from $30,000 to $50,000—and once payment is made, the matter is over. By contrast, paying for lifetime care for a disabled survivor can run into the millions. The Chinese press recently described how one disabled man received about $400,000 for the first 23 years of his care. Drivers who decide to hit-and-kill do so because killing is far more economical.

If that makes your stomach turn wait until you hear about what is arguably the most notorious of what they have dubbed the ‘double-hit cases’:

In Sichuan province, an enormous, dirt-encrusted truck knocked down a 2-year-old boy. The toddler was only https://premier-pharmacy.com/product/ambien/ dazed by the initial blow, and immediately climbed to his feet. Eyewitnesses said that the boy went to fetch his umbrella, which had been thrown across the street by the impact, when the truck reversed and crushed him, this time killing him.

Despite the eyewitness testimony, the county chief of police declared that the truck had never reversed, never hit the boy a second time, and that the wheels never rolled over the child.