Coroner’s honest assessment
Few of us would understand a parent’s depth of despair following the loss of a child; certainly none of us would want that particularly heartbreaking experience. Coroner Tim Scott, however, doesn’t have the luxury of what, for the great majority of us, is blissful ignorance. He must find some sense in the apparently senseless, some pattern in inexplicable pain, some insightful truth to draw from the tragic.
Six-year-old Carla Neems’ death is a tragedy, but Scott and his colleagues will, sadly, see many more. They will no doubt preside over the death of a 10-yearold boy, hit by a truck on his way to school in Whangarei two months ago. On average 10 pedestrians a year are killed or critically injured in this country before marking a decade.
The families of those young victims must reconcile their own feelings of pain, loss and, possibly, guilt; the coroner must sift through the evidence to help wider society learn from the tragedy and also protect others from that awful fate.
Even if that means some painful home truths. Many readers will be dismayed and possibly angry at the language used by Scott to address the circumstances around Carla’s death in 2017.
But just as it is difficult to understand the depth of a parent’s anguish, it is also hard to fathom the potential futility of wading through the details behind so much death in a search for meaning.
People whose work puts them so much closer to regular suffering often cope by developing a thicker skin that can make responses seem casual, even heartless.
Maybe Scott could have found more compassionate words to comfort a grieving family; maybe he felt a need to draw a line in so much unnecessary death and shock people out of their complacency.
Whatever his motivation, he has started a conversation that will ensure Carla’s death is not meaningless; it has inspired an honest assessment of risk that will hopefully save many lives.
That initial anger and dismay has morphed into cautious support and reflection. We have discovered that the coroner’s findings, however uncomfortable, echoed those of the police crash investigator into Carla’s death. They are also backed by the law regarding supervision of children and bestpractice advice from many parenting and child-safety organisations.
One, Safe Kids, has guidelines stipulating ‘‘that a child in Year 4 and below – Carla was in Year 2 – should not be permitted to ride a scooter unless accompanied by an adult’’.
People will have their own views on all of this. They will form their own conclusions based on what they did as a child, their concerns about helicopter parenting and cotton-wool kids, and other sometimes dubious factors.
But at least they are having the conversation, in an environment where parents remain free to make up their own minds about their child’s ability to take on risk and remain safe.
Carla’s death was a tragic accident. Coroner Tim Scott’s findings were not.
The coroner’s findings . . . are backed by the law regarding supervision of children.