by Dennis Krivda

Created on: March 11, 2010

Imagine yourself driving along the Interstate, gleefully commuting down the road to collect a generous paycheck when - out of the blue - the car behind you nudges your rear quarter panel. That slight push sends your vehicle crashing into the guardrail! The resulting spin-out nearly kills you in the process and definitely prevents you from earning the money that you need to pay your kid’s tuition this fall.

While your coupe careens violently out of control, you catch a glimpse of the enraged driver that initiated this near-fatal crash and realize that they did this to you simply because you accidentally bumped them a little earlier in this morning’s rush hour.  

As participants in that imaginary scenario, barely any of us would have any trouble feeling as though we were the victim of a crime. Steam would erupt from our wrecked radiator along the side of the highway. And as the hot gas blew, nearly every one of us would dial 911 without hesitation to report between gasps that “Some lunatic just tried to kill me by running me off the road!”  

And once we calmed down a bit, we’d scream for justice in this deadly game of high-speed chicken.

To support our call for justice, our attorney would have access to thousands of witnesses to the accident, along with clear, high-definition video recordings of the mishap - from several different angles. Better than that, the driver of the other car has already publicly confessed that they intentionally nudged our vehicle with the deliberate goal of causing us to lose control of our driving.

Seems like an open-and-shut case, right? After all, somebody nearly killed us by assaulting us with a lethal device and intentionally forcing us into a potentially deadly circumstance with no regard for our safety. Surely, that’s a crime, right?

Not so fast. Astonishingly, there are situations where such a scene is not a crime.

Somewhere - within the wiring of common sense - something short circuits the American notion of justice whenever it comes to sporting events. That is to say that in some American sports, it seems, anyone can assault another person with a deadly weapon and barely suffer any consequences from the crime they‘ve just committed.

Hockey players like Daniel Carcillo of the Philadelphia Flyers, for example, can randomly bash another player over the head with the heavy end of a stick during a game and never face a criminal charge for his unprovoked attack on the unsuspecting opponent.

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