this post was submitted on 12 Oct 2025
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114
‘Little lungs are paying’: 1.6m claimants head to high court as carmakers finally face punishment for Dieselgate (www.theguardian.com)
submitted 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) by HaraldvonBlauzahn@feddit.org to c/europe@feddit.org
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Little lungs are still paying for Dieselgate every day,” says Jemima Hartshorn, the founder of the Mums for Lungs campaign group. Her own young daughter has suffered serious breathing problems, which at their worst involved the harrowing experience of having to pin her to the floor to administer an inhaler.

It is 10 years since the scandal erupted, exposing cars that pumped out far more toxic fumes on the road than when passing regulatory tests in the lab. But Dieselgate is far from over.

The excess pollution emitted has already killed about 16,000 people in the UK and caused 30,000 cases of asthma in children, experts have estimated. A further 6,000 early deaths will occur in coming years without action, they say.

Oh my god. So, they caused an estimated 16,000 deaths, in the UK alone. And 6000 more are about to follow. Only for driver's convenience - and companie's profits. In what a world do we live that this is considered ethically different from murder?

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[–] einkorn@feddit.org 19 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

In what a world do we live that this is considered ethically different from murder?

Because you'd have to proof in every single case beyond any reasonable doubt, that the emmisions are the cause of the premature death, which is virtually impossible.

Statistical murder is easy to get away with.

[–] HaraldvonBlauzahn@feddit.org 4 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Well, as I wrote, I am interested in the ethical side of it, not the legal fine print. It might be as you describe, or not. And certainly, in most countries you can't call somebody a murderer before that was found by a court, so I am not going to do that. I am not a lawyer, so that stuff does not really interest me.

(About the specific statistical argument, I am not so sure - for example in 2008 in China there was a scandal (or could we name that one "crime"), where the substance melamine was mixed into baby food for an infant formula, which lead to the death of childen, and in that case some people were found guilty.)

But that's a bit beneath the point. As a scientist (applied physicist), I look at this as that actions have consequences, which can when we are lucky, be described by science, and lead to conclusions beyound reasonable doubt.

We know that air pollution causes people to die, and it is possible to reasonably estimate how much deaths some amount of pollution causes. In the case of the Diesel cars, specific emissions were by a factor of fifty larger than allowed, and that was concealed because it was not legal to sell such cars. Here, we have actions that, by all what we know, killed lots of people - how should society deal with that?

[–] reddig33@lemmy.world 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

“Finally”? Could’ve sworn VW had a huge settlement payment in multiple countries and stopped making diesel cars altogether.

[–] CucumberFetish@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 3 days ago

Some people were also jailed irc