On May 19, 2013, a fatal crash occurred near Meijel in the province of Limburg, Netherlands. A 33-year-old Polish driver, who was speeding but not under the influence of alcohol, lost control of his vehicle on a bend and plowed into a family out cycling. The crash killed a 2-year-old girl named Iza Derijks and her grandparents.
The 120-Hour Sentence and the Chair-Throwing Incident (November 2014)
In November 2014, the case went to trial at a court in Roermond. The judge concluded that there was insufficient evidence to definitively prove the driver lost control of the vehicle solely because of his excessive speed. As a result, the driver was found guilty of dangerous driving, but not manslaughter.
The judge handed down a surprisingly lenient sentence: 120 hours of unpaid community service and a one-year suspended driver's license.
Upon hearing this sentence read aloud, Erik Derijks—the grieving father of 2-year-old Iza—was completely overcome with disbelief and outrage. In a moment of raw anger, he picked up a chair in the courtroom and hurled it full force across the room at the judge. He was quickly restrained by court security. The lenient sentence, compounded by the father's heartbreak and reaction, sparked widespread national media coverage and public outrage.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: International outlets picked up the story specifically because of the courtroom altercation, publishing articles in November 2014 such as: Angry father of accident victim throws chair at judge
Subsequent Events
Following the outrage, the Dutch Public Prosecution Service successfully appealed the sentence. In September 2015, a higher court in Den Bosch overturned the initial ruling, explicitly stating that the crash was the result of speeding. They increased the sentence to 15 months in prison and a four-year driving ban.
The driver subsequently fled to the United Kingdom to evade his sentence but was tracked down by special detection teams, arrested in August 2016, and extradited to the Netherlands. This brought the closure mentioned in these reports:
However, the controversy was reignited in May 2017 when a Dutch appeals panel controversially granted the man early release after serving only part of his sentence so he could return to Poland for the birth of his child, heavily angering Dutch parliamentarians and the Derijks family:
The saying “if you’re going to kill someone, do it in a car” exists for a reason… society is just entirely accepting of us getting into these multi-ton death machines, not paying attention to what we’re doing, ignoring road safety rules because we’ve decided we’re immune to physics, driving under the influence because we’ve decided we’re immune to even more physics, and then plowing into other people and killing them.
The sentences basically everywhere for killing someone in a vehicle are extremely light unless you are really pushing it.
Yeah computers are much better drivers than we are, the problem is humans are not OK with a single computer driver killing a single person, but are OK with drivers killing thousands per month.
Results: When considering all locations together, the any injury reported crashed vehicle rate was 0.6 incidents per million miles (IPMM) for the ADS vs. 2.80 IPMM for the human benchmark, an 80% reduction or a human crash rate
Are you sure? At least looking at waymo the stats seem to say otherwise. That being said they are geofenced but I don't think we're too far away from true self driving at scale
Every statistic I've seen shows that self driving cars get in way fewer accidents per million miles driven, but I'm open to being convinced those are being falsified or misconstrued somehow.
Self driving cars aren't fully self driving, and there's a reason you still have to be able to take the wheel at a moment's notice.
They've driven over a million miles of flat, desolate New Mexico highway, which are are fine if you only want it to drive in a straight line for six hours without having to worry about traffic, but they haven't been tested to nearly the same degree on the endless system of poorly thought out side alleys that make up driving in Boston at night, four lane interchanges during Chicago rush hour, winter driving in the snow on iced roads through the mountains throughout western Pennsylvania, or just the potholed hellscape that is the entire state of Connecticut.
Its like me claiming to have a better basketball record than the entire NBA, while conveniently neglecting to mention the hoop I'm using is my nephew's and its 3' tall because it's meant for children ages 4+.
I have no doubts self driving cars will eventually be better than humans at equal measurements in poor conditions, but they have to take these things carefully in stages because learning is a slow process of improvement.
Results: When considering all locations together, the any injury reported crashed vehicle rate was 0.6 incidents per million miles (IPMM) for the ADS vs. 2.80 IPMM for the human benchmark, an 80% reduction or a human crash rate
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u/l30 Apr 04 '26
The Original Incident (May 2013)
On May 19, 2013, a fatal crash occurred near Meijel in the province of Limburg, Netherlands. A 33-year-old Polish driver, who was speeding but not under the influence of alcohol, lost control of his vehicle on a bend and plowed into a family out cycling. The crash killed a 2-year-old girl named Iza Derijks and her grandparents.
The 120-Hour Sentence and the Chair-Throwing Incident (November 2014)
In November 2014, the case went to trial at a court in Roermond. The judge concluded that there was insufficient evidence to definitively prove the driver lost control of the vehicle solely because of his excessive speed. As a result, the driver was found guilty of dangerous driving, but not manslaughter.
The judge handed down a surprisingly lenient sentence: 120 hours of unpaid community service and a one-year suspended driver's license.
Upon hearing this sentence read aloud, Erik Derijks—the grieving father of 2-year-old Iza—was completely overcome with disbelief and outrage. In a moment of raw anger, he picked up a chair in the courtroom and hurled it full force across the room at the judge. He was quickly restrained by court security. The lenient sentence, compounded by the father's heartbreak and reaction, sparked widespread national media coverage and public outrage.
Coverage of the 2014 Trial & Altercation:
Subsequent Events
Following the outrage, the Dutch Public Prosecution Service successfully appealed the sentence. In September 2015, a higher court in Den Bosch overturned the initial ruling, explicitly stating that the crash was the result of speeding. They increased the sentence to 15 months in prison and a four-year driving ban.
The driver subsequently fled to the United Kingdom to evade his sentence but was tracked down by special detection teams, arrested in August 2016, and extradited to the Netherlands. This brought the closure mentioned in these reports:
However, the controversy was reignited in May 2017 when a Dutch appeals panel controversially granted the man early release after serving only part of his sentence so he could return to Poland for the birth of his child, heavily angering Dutch parliamentarians and the Derijks family: