but isf a car skids on black ice, it was being driven irresponsibly for those conditions. If a tree limb falls on a car, the tree was planted too close to the road or the road was built too close to the tree.
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As a Ghost Bikes volunteer, I thank you for covering this.
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Welllllll, thatâs a touchy subject. In America it is certainly true that hanging around with criminals with a huge risk factor for getting shot to death. http://nnscommunities.org/our-work/innovation/social-network-analysis
I honestly donât get the idea that using the word âaccidentâ implies âno blame.â
Someone is almost always to blame in a traffic accident â sometimes several someones â and I donât know anyone who thinks otherwise.
We have tons of litigation around traffic accidents deciding who deserves what share of blame.
There are several levels of culpability that arenât âintentâ â there are several flavors of negligence and recklessness that fall short of intent.
âAccidentâ as used in connection with vehicular collisions simply means that no one intended the result.
It doesnât mean that no one has any culpability â as evidenced by its constant and consistent use in contexts where âno blameâ would be obviously nonsensical.
The opposite of âaccidentalâ is âunintentionalâ; not âunforeseeableâ or âunavoidable.â
Most accidents are both foreseeable and avoidable. Sometimes rocks fall out of the sky, but mostly, people f*ck up.
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I live in Vancouver. Lots of 4-way stops. Here, everyone slows, but no-one, and I mean no-one, actually fully stops, unless to avoid a collision. I actually look out for it because it is so remarkable. I cycle through about 20 four-way stops each day (10 each way) and I would see fewer than 1 motorist or cyclist voluntarily come to a complete stop each year. Theyâll stop if they have to in order to give way, but otherwise they roll through. Everyone. People treat the stops signs as yields. It actually works just fine.
But my point is that it is very common to break the law if we think it is safe to do so. Same with speed limits. The vast majority of motorists think it is safe break speed limits, and will do so pretty much continuously, unless impeded by other motorists or corners/intersections.
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Didnât say it never happens, but it is very rare for cyclist to kill or seriously injure a pedestrian. Motorists on the other hand are doing it pretty consistently. Which is what this article is about.
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Years and years of observation.
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It certainly doesnât make good sense. I would be unable to cycle at all if I had zero right of way. Iâd then be back in a car, still getting in your way, getting fat, becoming a burden on the health-care system, burning fossil fuels, polluting the air, being grumpy, whilst looking forward to a short, but incapacitated old age.
Would you suggest the same pedestrians? Fuck-em, eliminate crosswalks and just let them wait for the cars to be clear (might be a while) and then sprint across?
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Like I always say, if you kill a child with a hammer, people feel sorry for the child; kill a child with a car, and people feel sorry for you.
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Well, your proposition works out great for the middle class, who can more afford living near good public transit or in densely populated areas where bikes are a viable way to commute.
But by making it harder to get and keep a drivers license, it would disproportionately effect the poor. The same goes for self driving cars, which will for a long time be only accessible to those with significant amounts of disposable income.
Until our society remakes itself around public transit instead of car ownership, this will still be a problem for the poor. But, we may live to see that dayâwe were once structured around public transit. It was, what, the 40âs and 50âs that saw the transition to massive highways and the death of intraurban railways? Where I live, the bikes paths are built on all the old bridges that made up the north-corridor of the intraurban rail.
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The first statement uttered after any type of collisionâŠâI didnât even see himâ
Bicyclists should assume they are invisible, because they are often very difficult to see. And they should yield to cars no matter what, just for their own self preservation.
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This is a good argument, one among many, for developing better public transit. It is not a good argument for letting people who have demonstrated that they canât drive safely continue to endanger other people.
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usually i like to greet new members by saying that you should read some of the other articles and to be sure and put likes on comments you think are deserving so the members responsible for the comments have some encouragement.
but really? you joined just to bitch about cyclists? in a thread about car accidents? really? are you the same marty i argue with over at obsidian wings?
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Of course itâs coincidence. What else did you think it was, divine intervention via clickbait?
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Iâll agree with the alcohol thing, but the phone thing is just going to turn into a zero-tolerance hellhole that people will question ten years from now.
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@Marty, Iâve got to agree with all the other replies here: Right of way is a legal term. It should always be given to the less-well-protected entity in the encounter. Cars yield to bikes, yield to pedestrians, yield to parents with strollers, yield to folks in wheelchairs.
We design laws to enforce protections which equalize where there is inequality.
For this reason, cars should always yield the right of way. Period. Sorry. Thatâs what you get in recognition of the fact that:
- You are getting back more time than either cyclists or pedestrials. Higher speed means getting more done faster.
- You are financially privileged enough to own and drive a car. Some folks HAVE to bike or walk.
- You are actively contributing to climate change. We donât give much weight to this now, but Iâll bet you dollars to doughnuts that our childrenâs children will be lamenting the fact that we built our current prosperity on the backs of carbon slaves.
- Youâve also chosen to socially isolate yourself from the road via a closed cabin. You can honk, and threaten pedestrians and cyclists with relative impunity (you might not even hear profanity, depending on how nice your car is). But they have no such protection â as a pedestrian, I can curse at or spit on a pedestrian, which automatically causes a sort of feedback where pedestrians and cyclists engage at a more human level (even if theyâre both a-holes).
So yeah. If youâre lucky enough to drive a car, remember what the first page of the DMV manual says: Driving is a priviledge, not a right.
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In America, going to a movie theater or a community college are also huge risk factors for getting shot to death.
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Thatâs the thing: many motorists, despite having had to pass tests etc. donât actually know the rules of the road and assume they have right of Ć”ay over cyclists in certai situations in which they donât. I donât know if those situations are that serious for accidents though.
Itâs got to the stage where I avoid cycling outside of times where there are a lot of commuter cyclists on the road, which makes the driver look at the inside la e rather than just turn and trust to the weight of metal.
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Iâm not really a message board type of person. I donât post comments on websites, until today. I couldnât resist. Iâm not writing to bitch about cyclists. Iâm writing to wake cyclists up to the danger they put themselves in when they ride on roads dominated by cars. I have had a few close calls with bikes, because cyclists ride with no lights, no reflectors and seemingly no regard for their own safety. I had a very close scrape with a cyclist a week ago who blew through a red light while I was turning left on a green arrow. Cyclists just donât seem to be aware of how much danger they are in.
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