Sidewalk-driving Ohio woman ordered to wear 'idiot' sign

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TommiR

TommiR

The Associated Press said:
CLEVELAND - A woman caught on camera driving on a sidewalk to avoid a Cleveland school bus that was unloading children will have to stand at an intersection wearing a sign warning about idiots.

Court records show a Cleveland Municipal Court judge on Monday ordered 32-year-old Shena Hardin to stand at an intersection for two days next week. She will have to wear a sign saying: "Only an idiot drives on the sidewalk to avoid a school bus."

The judge ordered her to wear the sign from 7:45 a.m. to 8:45 a.m. both days.

Hardin's license was suspended for 30 days and she was ordered to pay $250 in court costs.
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http://www.ctvnews.ca/world/sidewalk-driving-ohio-woman-ordered-to-wear-idiot-sign-1.1026139#ixzz2Bbxd2GIA

This is actually quite awesome. Below is the video the bus driver recorded:

 
Cajungal

Cajungal

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bhamv3 said:
Amusing, but does this count as cruel and unusual?
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People need to be ok with a healthy amount of shame when they've screwed up. The reason people like this do whatever they want is because they think they can. Maybe now she'll think again... and hopefully be able to laugh at herself a bit down the road.

I'd feel bad if it were maybe... a jaywalker on an empty road or a child.
 
strawman

strawman

I find it hilarious that she does this regularly enough that they were able to set it up so she'll be caught by an officer.
 
sixpackshaker

sixpackshaker

bhamv3 said:
Amusing, but does this count as cruel and unusual?
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Cruel, hammering bamboo slivers under the fingernail. Unusual, nailing someone's scrotum to a chair and flipping that chair over.

Asking an idiot to stand on the street corner for two hours is not cruel or unusual.
 
TommiR

TommiR

bhamv3 said:
Amusing, but does this count as cruel and unusual?
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Is it truly cruel and unusual, or can it be considered for example as community service in awareness raising?
In this form of community service, people convicted of crimes are required to perform community services or to work for agencies in the sentencing jurisdiction either entirely or partly in lieu of other judicial remedies and sanctions, such as incarceration or fines.

For instance, a fine may be reduced in exchange for a prescribed number of hours of community service. The court may allow the convict to choose their community service, which then must be documented by "credible agencies", such as non-profit organizations, or may mandate a specific service.

Sometimes the sentencing is specifically targeted to the convict's crime, for example, a litterer may have to clean a park or roadside, or a drunk driver might appear before school groups to explain why drunk driving is a crime.
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Officer_Charon

Officer_Charon

I think this is fantastic, and should occur in far more cases - I am a big fan of the punishment fitting the crime. Maybe I should run for Justice of the Peace?
 
Hailey Knight

Hailey Knight

Someone doing this almost killed my sister and me when I was 6 and she was 5. I'm sure other kids haven't been lucky in the "almost" part of it due to others like her. She can wear her sign and be an example to others.
 
Bubble181

Bubble181

Firstly, I think 30 days isn't enough. Try 6 months. Driving on a sidewalk is wrong in any and all cases, unless the road is completely blocked by, say, a fallen tree. Doing so in a residential neighbourhood, next to a school bus, in other words, where there are bound to be plenty of (hardly or un-) supervised children who aren't paying attention, and she's lucky she's not facing endangerment-with-risk-of-death-through-fault, as she could be charged with in Belgium.

That said, yes, while I'm against the pole of shame, sometimes, people don't really need heavy jail or monetary charges, they need to be shamed and be forced to see how much of an idiot they are.
 
Zappit

Zappit

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Worse, the door on the building she passes by is an entrance to a daycare center, and there was also the chance that an itty-bitty kid could have stepped out in front of the car if they were bringing those kids out. (Saw that on CNN a while back.) just total endangerment all over.

I'm on board with this kind of punishment. Jail takes offenders out of sight, out of mind. Put her face out there, and make the punishment public. Make her wear a sign, make her give a speech - hell, put on an awards ceremony to present her with a #1 Idiot trophy. Embarrassment sticks.
 
Gared

Gared

Yeah, we had a case around Seattle several years back where some prominent attorney got stopped behind a school bus with its red lights flashing and stop sign out, and she decided she was too important to stop, so she drove around the bus on the door side and killed a kid. I believe in her defense she argued that she had no way of knowing that it wasn't legal to do so...
 
Bowielee

Bowielee

From a sociopsychological perspective, this punishment is actually more likely to elicit actual behavior change than jail time. To constantly be reminded that you're violating societal norms is one of the quickest ways to change someone's behavior.
 
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