MAKING sure their victim is dead as a door nail is the response of some motorists when they hit and critically injure someone.

A luxury SUV driver in Xinyi City, Jiangsu Province, has been condemned as a "cold-blooded murderer" after he ran over a 3-year-old boy four times and killed him.

The incident took place on September 7, when the victim, identified as Lele, was frolicking behind a stationary BMW X6 vehicle in his residential complex. Unaware that someone was standing directly behind the car, the driver, surnamed Wu, backed up the SUV, knocked the boy down and caught him under its left rear wheel, the Yangzi Evening News reported on September 13.

While Lele's limbs were flailing, the car paused for a second before it jerked forward and crushed the boy a second time.

Aware that he might have hit a "bump," Wu got out of the SUV to examine the situation.

For unknown reasons, the supposedly parked vehicle slid backward on a sloped driveway. Despite Wu's apparent attempt to halt the car, it ran over Lele twice with its left wheels.

Video footage showed Wu fleeing the scene. He called neither the police nor the ambulance. The police proposed on Wednesday to arrest Wu for suspected manslaughter by negligence.

Wu was born in 1977 and got his driver's license in 1996. By the time of the accident, he was the chauffeur of the BMW's owner surnamed Zhang.

The death has become a lightning rod for popular anger as the public perceives Wu, and other "morally degraded" motorists like him, to have an intent to kill to avoid paying for life-time medical care of potentially paralyzed victims.

With the victims dead, they can buy themselves out of trouble with a one-off compensation package, goes the view widely expressed on the Internet, in newspapers and broadcast.

Negligence

It's appalling that Wu fled the scene without showing any remorse for his criminal negligence.

Whether driven by fear or folly, his escape was a sheer act of cowardice reflecting his disregard for human life.

Had he exercised due diligence in ensuring that nobody was around before the car could move, the tragedy would have been averted.

Equally outrageous is the claim by a local police officer, who cleared Wu of homicide on the grounds that "he didn't hold a grudge against the victim's family," the Yangzi Evening News reported on September 13.

Does it have to be a grudge or feud to prompt someone to commit homicide? Are spontaneous killings all sparked by a grudge?

The police officer's words are at best piffle and at worst blatant vindication of Wu's egregious wrongdoing.

What's also notable about the case is that again it highlights the combustible mix when the two words, namely, BMW - or Mercedes, for that matter - and rogue nouveaux riches come together.

Had the incident involved a car of a lesser brand, there would almost certainly have been fewer sensational headlines.

Even as some cool heads are now appealing for calm and reason, many Netizens suspect that the video clip was edited in favor of the driver. And they can be forgiven for assuming the worst. Paranoia is the legacy of past scandals.

Earlier causes celebres in which BMW and Mercedes drivers went on killing rampages over fracas attest to the arrogance of China's emerging Robber Barons. The fine credo that all men are created equal lies crushed under the ruthless wheels of their fancy cars.

China may be proudly driving into an automobile society, but it has also embraced its worst dimension.

It seldom dawns on some motorists that driving is a right that comes with responsibility. As a privileged group, they barely acknowledge their commitment to making roads safer for pedestrians and cyclists. Instead of showing noblesse oblige and civility on the road, they appear to derive a morbid sense of superiority from terrorizing people without a car.

Reader "Mountainforest Karl" wrote in Wednesday's Shanghai Daily that "The cars are a one-ton machine."

That machine, be it a BMW X6 SUV worth at least 1 million yuan (US$148,500) or a beat-up car that costs hundreds of times less, hogs road and poses considerable danger to human life if its owner is unruly and reckless.

Therefore, those operating the machine should err on the side of caution to put non-mechanized traffic out of harm's way.

Contempt for means of transport other than cars threatens to undermine respect for the lives of lesser beings.

The latest known victim of this contempt was a 49-year-old literature and philosophy professor surnamed Shao, who was struck and killed by a BMW sedan while cycling across a zebra crossing in Songjiang College Town in Shanghai on September 7.

The fact that he was in a pedestrian crossing didn't afford the least protection, as might have been expected.

An initial police probe found that the professor had run a red light and was moving against traffic. The BMW driver, a student at a nearby university, didn't violate any traffic rules, police said.

I know this place well enough to say traffic there is usually light. How could a car fail to spot a cyclist and slow down before it was too late?

The failure lies perhaps in the fact that a young man like him, once seated and secured in a glittering machine like BMW, would feel no need for humility before "lowly" pedestrians and cyclists.

In a bizarre twist, no blame was heaped on this road killer.

Months ago, a whistle-blowing old man wearing a red armband and directing traffic every morning on Weihai Road (near my office building) was conspicuous.

Despite occasional abuses and impatient horn-honking that greeted him, he stopped a torrent of cars so that schoolchildren could safely cross the street.

License to kill

It was not long before he was removed probably after the neighborhood committee that had sent him there received complaints from drivers about this old nuisance.

Do we need civilian vigilantes near every school and kindergarten to remind motorists to slow down? Cannot even the thought of their own children's safety prevent them from careening dangerously past pedestrians?

While I do not share the belief that all nouveaux riches have "original sins" - that they made their fortunes through murky dealings - what happened in Xinyi (Jiangsu) strengthens the perception that behind the steering wheel could sit a monster who thinks he has a license not only to drive, but also to kill.

Under mounting public outcry, Xinyi authorities have promised to get to the bottom of the boy's death. While justice is (we hope) being done, laws and regulations on potentially murderous drivers ought to be amended to give them more teeth, so that they won't be easily defanged by bullies on wheels.