Legal Question: What Would the State Have Done Had I Not Settled with My Killer?

[mythociate]

Okay, what happened (a big reason behind all my God-questioning ) is this: at a school-sponsored, -sanctioned, -(supposedly) protected event, I made the mistake of assuming that student-pedestrians had the right-of-way, meaning (to my 14 year old mind) that I could run across the street with full faith that all the licensed drivers had the mental wherewithal to NOT slam me into a fatality!

(They call it a near-death, since I'm obviously not dead now; but I was-"without life-signs" for seven minutes, -comatose for a few weeks, -paralyzed for a few months and -severely disabled for a few years, and I STILL CAN'T run, 'carry open drinks without spilling' or -'see out of a fifth of my left eye!')

Did I not mention that when talking about the loading/unloading-zone outside my apartments that's usually BLOCKED by some lazy driver 'legally' parking there ('legal' because there's no "sign" saying otherwise ... which is like saying it's legal to run red-lights if there's no 'sign' saying you have to stop at them  )

Maybe that's what I was thinking when I--pushing a cart down the path to the curb where another vehicle was parked IN MY WAY--decided I ought to SLAM a dent or two into the car. (The thinking: when I got in a car's way, it & it's operator don't THINK TWICE before destroying me!)

Maybe I should've brought that up when the vehicle's owner called the cops & (using a death-warning) 'convinced' ME to apologize, but the idea that 'he could`a killed me' overshadowed the fact that I was 'right' (i.e. my 'rightness' wasn't worth dying for, in this case).

That brings me to my question: if my parents had not settled the case with the violating driver, would the State have seen to it that 'justice were served' (myself getting a fair payment, the driver paying it)? Or do they just not care?

Oh, the settlement I got is 'enough' (barely); but some of the damage doesn't go away, and the settlement is rarely enough to give me 'stupefaction'---the misbelief that everything's alright so long as I'm not 'upsetting the house-of-cards.'