If the driver was smart, he would have have gotten out of his van and checked.
I guess we should check every time we hit a speed bump as well; just to make sure.
Before you say "but we can see speed bumps in the road", it was a little dog and vans have blind spots, it couldn't have felt that much different.
It's hard to see small animals in vehicles in general. The problem was caused more due to the fact that the dog ran into the road, and not because somebody wasn't paying attention.
I'm assuming the driver of the van was probably going between 25-45 MPH. Even if he did the the dog, he probably wouldn't have been able to stop fast enough to not hit the dog. That and if he tried to swerve out of the way of the dog, he could have either hit your family or another car.
It really sucks that your dog got hit by a car, but it's not necessarily the driver's fault.
This.
________
The driver might have fault in this, but unless you know that he was saying in his mind, "oh look, a dog, I'll just hit it.", you cannot say he doesn't deserve a licence. That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. The dog is the owner's responsibility to restrain/look after. If your dog ran outside the house and got hit by a car (Keep in mind, the dog went into the street unexpectedly), would it be the drivers fault? Same situation, except the owner and his family were RIGHT there.
As Ike said, the situation could've been much worse if the driver swerved out of the way.
