Gross Negligence

Here are the facts of a case (based on this Star Tribune story):

An 18-year-old woman, lacking a driver's license or even a learner's permit, was driving a car on a city street. She had two passengers, friends of hers. They were 15- and 16-year-olds who were brothers.

The two-lane street had a 25 mph speed limit.

She was going northbound at 66 to 73 mph when she "decided to pass a much slower vehicle [on the wrong side of the street]. She crossed into the southbound lane and 'hit a curb and an embankment, flipping the car roof-first into a nearby building.' Her car was traveling 49 mph at the time of impact with the building."

The driver was sober and the car was not stolen.

The 15-year-old boy was killed. The 16-year-old survived. The driver, now 20, is "paralyzed from the chest down since the crash and requires help daily from a personal care assistant."

As the story recounts, the driver was charged by Hennepin County with felony counts of criminal vehicular homicide and criminal vehicular operation, but the judge, Peter Cahill, acquitted her of those charges and convicted her only of misdemeanor negligence, saying her actions were not "grossly negligent."

The word "accident" is used in the article by her attorney. ("Sometimes an accident is just an accident.")

If this is allowed to be called an accident, then we should all never go outside again.

I want to know how the judge found that her actions did not meet the definition of gross negligence:

An act marked by total disregard for the rights and/or safety of others, and with complete indifference to the consequences of the act.

That site continues with more detail on the definition:

...an act taken without exercising even the most basic amount of care owed to others. Such an act involves a deliberate disregard for the safety or well being of another person. Gross negligence does not refer to acts undertaken with intent to harm another, but acts for which the perpetrator knew, or should have known, would result in injury or damages to another person.

And the site also says:

A basic rule of society and law holds that everyone has a duty to take “reasonable care” to avoid causing injury or damages to another. “Reasonable care” means taking steps any reasonable person would take to ensure no harm is caused to another.

It seems to me that the larger issue at play here is the extreme latitude of bad behavior allowed to people driving multi-ton motor vehicles, which is partly obscured by the use of the term "accident" to describe incidents that are not accidental but that could have been foreseen if some amount of care was being taken. 

Because the vast majority of people making laws, interpreting laws, and reporting on the times they are broken all drive motor vehicles, they see the vehicles as natural instead of abnormal, the same way the existence of free parking spots for private vehicles on public streets is too-often thought to be normal.

What is "reasonable care" when you're moving through the world in a two-ton metal box? What are the steps any "reasonable person" would take to ensure no harm is caused? Or is it any "reasonable driver"? What is a reasonable driver? A reasonable 2019 driver? A reasonable 2023 driver? A reasonable 18-year-old driver, or a reasonable 60-year-old driver?

What about a reasonable pedestrian? A reasonable child in a crosswalk?

What is reasonable about any of this, Peter Cahill?