When I was a kid, one of my mom's flute students swerved to miss hitting a dog. Her car flipped and landed in a ditch. She died on the scene. She was still in highschool. Sucks about the kitten, but some things can't be avoided, and putting it out of its misery was the humane thing to do.

I think it is clear you haven't started driving yet...

I've been driving ten years and agree with this. I thought I ran over a turtle once. instead of "backing right back over it" I got out, realized it was fine (and that I hadn't hit it), and put it on the side of the road it was headed towards. Its not that hard to care about living things

Do any of you actually think a tiny little kitten would survive for long after being hit by a car? Have you even considered the vet bill if the poor thing DID survive? I had a cat who had her back leg broken in some sort of accident and her bladder had swollen due to her not being able to crouch to pee. It would have cost us a couple thousand for her to make it out alive and even at that she probably would've been in pain the rest of her life. Putting her down still cost almost 200$. I would've much rather whoever hurt her in the first place would have put her out of her misery, since we don't even have any idea how long she had been suffering like that. (She would spend days outside, refusing to come in.) So yeah, as shitty as the whole situation is I firmly believe OP did the right thing. Even if the poor kitty did survive, it would've probably cost the family an arm and a leg to fix it, or have it put down anyways. All you did was put an end to the suffering that would have come in between.

Fair enough if the OP wanted to put the cat out of its misery...but they could have at least ATTEMPTED to make it look like they give a damn about the animal. No kid wants to see their kitten being run over twice by some douche who doesn't even have the decency to get out of their car and MAKE SURE the cat is a goner. Animals are hardier than people give them credit for. Who knows? Maybe the cat would have been ok after that first hit. Maybe the family WOULD have paid for the vet bills if it was a survivable accident. That's not really the OP's right to decide. But the least they could have done is get out of the car to check after the first hit. Even if it was a hard hit, they could have still checked on principle.

Read the FML. It says "I saw it twitching", which really isn't a good indicator that the whatever it was would be saveable. It also means that yeah, they looked at it before they ran it over again. Honestly I think it's ridiculous that most of you seem to think it's even semi-reasonable for OP to actually step out of their car, in the middle of the road, to inspect what he thought was a wild animal no one would have any sentimental attachment to...