CSpice posted an article claiming that he shouldn’t be punished for accidentally damaging somebodies property. I heard a story when I was learning how to drive about a kid who accidentally hit a professional dancer when he first got his license. The dancer could never dance again, and was awarded several million dollars in court. Of course the kid couldn’t pay it himself, and since he was underage, his parents ended up being responsible, and ended up losing their house. I agree with some of the ideas of CSPice’s post, and the clarifications in the comments below it. Events like this shouldn’t happen. But I still think that there are some flaws with CSpice’s idea. The dancer should receive some retribution.
A small punishment for accidental damages would be a good idea. True, you may be punished when you didn’t do something purposefully, but punishment acts as a great incentive for you to be careful. People should be responsible for protecting their own property as well. It is likely more their fault if you accidentally damage something of theirs.
Obviously you care less about damaging somebody else’s property than they care about it being damaged. If you damage somebody’s property, he suffered by the amount of damage you caused, and you suffer by 0 according the the original post. You caused the damage, even if it was accidental, but you are not suffering at all from it. Why should this other person suffer damages from a random event that you were the final actor in causing? Ideally, you and he woud suffer a closer to equal amount (in psychological terms, not necessarly the same dollar amount).
The amount you should have to pay could be represented as a mathematical formula. Suppose the monetary cost of damage you caused is D, you make I1 in a year as income, the person who had damage done to them makes income I2 in a year, you claim to be f1% at fault, and the person who had damage to them claims to be f2% at fault. We could then say that you owe them Min(D*I1/I2*(f1+100-f2)/(200),D).
This formula simply means that you should pay some portion of the damages. This portion should be based on the relative incomes of the two parties involved. The portion you pay should also be based on how much each party thinks they are at fault. If both think they are 0% at fault, and make equal amounts, you would pay half the damages. If both think you were completely at fault, and both make equal amounts of income, you would pay the full damages. If both think you were not at all at fault, but the owner of the object was completely at fault, you would pay 0%. If they make less money than you, you shouldn’t have to pay more than the damage caused, thus the Min function in the formula.
This seems to be the fairest way of handling the situation. There is incentive to not cause damage, and a gradual increase in damage payed when you are acting more risky. It still has the possibility of abuse, as people will probably claim to be 0% at fault to minimize the amount they should have to pay. The formula could be adapted somewhat – perhaps rather than using income, you could use disposable income or some other measure of each person’s value of money. Situations where the cost of the object is very high still could cause problems – such as dealing with death.
