Should Distracted Truck Driver who killed 3 get the Death Penalty?

Some of you may think: “what the fuck, how does that deserve the death penalty?”. Well, that was my reaction when I was reading the comment section of the article about this incident in one of our Belgian newspapers.

What happened is this : (I found an english article about this even! So I will copy paste the infor from http://www.arabtoday.net/gnhgq-fg-geygef/3-killed-in-belgium-pile-up-truck-driver-detained.html )

Three people were killed Friday in Belgium after a truck slammed into several cars, with its driver later testing positive for drugs, dpa reported.
The victims were a mother and her two children, the Belganews agency reported. Another eight people were injured, including the 33-year-old truck driver.
He was detained by police after a test for drugs in his system came back positive,Belga quoted prosecutors as saying.
The truck drove into the cars around noon (1100 GMT) at an intersection in the town of Denderleeuw, some 20 kilometres outside the Belgian capital Brussels One car was propelled onto another.
A total of eight vehicles were involved in the accident.

So this incident is horrible, and many people respond from their emotions and empathy with the victims. But only a couple of people have shown empathy with the truck driver. That’s right… the one who caused the accident.

The first thing that stood out was “under influence of drugs”. So people here were really quick to judge. The media jumped on it and so did the people. Various critiques were thrown at the drivers head “he should not be allowed to drive ever in his life again”, “I hope he suffers for this for the rest of his life”, and even “he should get the death penalty for this murder”.

Ok, first of all, this man did not “murder” these people intentionally. Second of all, the so called ‘drugs’ in his system were marihuana (which has been known to be way safer and less harmful than alcohol) and he used it a day before the accident (but some remains were still in his system). But as far as I know, this cannot impact driving behavior when it is used the day or days before. Third: he was distracted by his GPS (http://www.nieuwsblad.be/cnt/dmf20150103_01456112).

So it was proven he was busy with his GPS at the time of the accident, and the man had been driving since 4 am so could have been tired (which we all known, leads to a way higher % of possibly having an accident or being distracted).

Some people go ahead and blame the drugs, but let me tell you: alcohol is FAR worse and causes far more deaths. + it doesnt mean because he smoked some the day before that this was a cause of the accident. It could just as well been the tiredness and distraction. Such accidents have happened with completely sober drivers.

Ok but that is not really the point. My point is that people shouldn’t just be so quick to judge and call hate on someone. It is extremely horrible what happened, that people got injured and that a mom and her two teenage children died. But this does not justify wishing death upon the driver. Everyone makes mistakes, so did this man and it had grave consequences.

And I also wonder how many of those people yelling hateful things have been behind the wheel tired or under the influence of for example alcohol? Or under the influence of heavy emotions which are shown to cause accident as well. If it was, what would you want and how would you want to be treated?

I am glad we have a justice system and legal system in cases like this, reading the responses of some people… imagine what some would to without this system.

Anyway, my support goes out to ALL the families involved.