Why Isn’t It a Crime to Kill a Cyclist with a Car? | Hacker News Reader

Why Isn’t It a Crime to Kill a Cyclist with a Car?

nextcity.org

78 pointsjseliger172 comments

In the Netherlands, it goes as following:

- Car drivers' fault? -> Insurance of car driver pays

- Cyclist' fault?

1. Cyclist younger then 14? It's the car drivers' fault. In any case. Drivers should expect younger cyclists to behave unexpected.

2. Bicycle driver older then 14? 50% of damage is drivers' fault. Unless cyclist does reckless things the car driver cannot anticipate on (e.g. cycling through red traffic light over a busy intersection where drivers drive fast).

- Car driver & cyclist made mistakes? -> Cyclist is able to get more then 50% of damages depending on the situation.

As the consequences of an accident are far worse for the cyclists in almost all cases I think the Netherlands' solution is a very reasonable one. So far I only heard a few fanatic car drivers complain about this. I think to understand you actually need to bike on a regular basis.

NL solution isn’t unique 50% of the damage goes to the car driver is pretty standard in insurance claims when 2 wheel vehicles are involved this also applies to motor bikes.

I had a motorbike rear end like 6-7 years ago and he went flying and my insurance had to pay for 50% of the claim or about and I’m not Dutch.

The 14 year old case might be unique to NL but even that I’m no so sure.

> 1. Cyclist younger then 14? It's the car drivers' fault. In any case. Drivers should expect younger cyclists to behave unexpected.

Do cycles have some sort of tag (like an 'L' sign), which helps identify such cyclists?

They usually have a kid on them.

14 years can be really hard to distinguish from 16 or even 18 year olds.

Is the driver supposed to try and figure out if they get to be more aggressive? I don't think that's the point at all.

In other words, "they usually have a person on them".

They don't. In the Netherlands, drivers are supposed to watch out for cyclists.

The question here is:

Does the presence of the sign make you behave differently when you're the car driver? Will you be more aggressive and/or reckless if they cyclist doesn't have the tag ?

If the answers to both are no, which they should be, then one wonders the need of a sign to begin with, no?

The OC says "Drivers should expect younger cyclists to behave unexpected". I don't expect normal cyclists to do 'random' unexpected things. But when I see a 'L' board, I am just more aware. This works exactly like street signs asking how to tread with extra care.

>Does the presence of the sign make you behave differently when you're the car driver?

Yes. When a car passes a cyclist they should leave enough room to pass safely assuming the cyclist continues in a straight line (unless they signal otherwise). A kid may suddenly try to turn left from the right side of the street, meaning they should be given more room and the car should reduce their speed.

Are you the sort of person that looks at a car and goes "Oh, a BABY ON BOARD, I guess I'll not cut you off"?

As pointed out in the article, it can be a crime, depending on jurisdiction and local laws. The problem is prosecuting that crime in the same way you'd process a murder with a knife, because the public doesn't see them the same way.

Honestly, I get that. Driving a bike on a road with cars seems dangerous. I do it, and I don't want to die, but it's not the same as walking on the sidewalk or sitting in my yard. If there were bad choices made by the driver, then sure, let's prosecute. But passing a biker going 15mph on a 45mph road doesn't seem crazy. Going 72 in a 65 doesn't seem crazy. I like to think I'm an aware driver, and I haven't hit any bikers yet, but I've seen myself be two distracted moments away from hitting one. It's not crazy that I would be checking my maps app at the same time a police siren comes into view, leading me to miss the biker who'd just turned into the lane next to me.

The problem seems to me that we've built both physical and social structures around roads being for cars. It needs to feel comfortable to bike while taking up a whole lane, both for bikers and cars. ("Drive at the speed bikers go" isn't reasonable, imho.) Bike lanes help a lot, and having a lot of bikers around helps a lot. But we can't just start with "killing a biker is deliberate murder", because it's simply not. It's old attitudes being applied to a new world, and I'd rather find a way to bring people into the new world than punish a few of them for making a mistake.

> It's not crazy that I would be checking my maps app at the same time a police siren comes into view, leading me to miss the biker who'd just turned into the lane next to me.

Perhaps it's not crazy, but it is illegal. You're supposed to keep your eyes on the road, and looking at your smartphone is just as bad whether you're texting or using a map app. Phones have voice output for this reason.

If you need to take your eyes off the road, then first stop. If you don't, and as a result hit someone, then yes, it's murder.

Poor example on his part. The same situation could happen while changing the radio, adjusting AC, or even looking in a different mirror. The safety-dogmatism of "If you need to take your eyes off the road, then first stop" is not practical advice.

There's an allowance for these things, where you can spend half a second fixing something, but some people are astonishingly bad drivers and get fixated on things for tens of seconds, still driving.

The problem is with way the laws are written, it's almost impossible to prosecute bad drivers. I was clipped by a driver while cycling, who then flipped me off because I was in his way (I had the right of way). I reported to police and they didn't even pursue a ticket because "he will just deny it and we won't get a conviction".

Pedestrians and cyclists are dying at alarming rates. The vast majority are not "unavoidable accidents" but drivers making dangerous decisions. Most drivers are courteous, but a small number are repeat offenders who consider the road a battle and cyclists an opponent.

Any contact between a car and pedestrian/cyclist should be a serious offence. It won't stop every death, but if the first time you clipped someone, police actually acted on it and you had your licence suspended for 30 days, it would stop a good number of them.

Proof in the issue from the article: less than 1% of collisions injuring a pedestrians were cited for careless driving.

This is completely the opposite of my experience.

Here in Chicago, bicyclists are the cause of nearly all accidents. The overwhelming majority weave through traffic, run red lights and stop signs, and even ride the wrong way down one-way streets.

Bicyclists in Chicago also regularly hit and injure pedestrians, sometimes causing deaths.

When bicyclists start actually following traffic laws, then we can start talking about blaming the car drivers automatically in accidents.

[citation needed]

This is verifiably false. The car is at fault in the majority of crashes. Search if you want sources, there are dozens of studies on the issue.

You're complaining about cyclists killing pedestrians when the ratio is at minimum 5,000:1 when compared to cars? Really?

Your "overwhelming majority" claim is also absurd. You as a non-cyclist, see a few bad actors and come up with a generalization that is verifiably false. Meanwhile, when you see a bad driver, you don't blame all drivers. It's the same us vs them principal that allows racism.

First, notice I specifically called out my assertions as anecdotal, but I imagine many large cities are the same.

I am a cyclist, but I am not dumb enough to ride a bicycle in downtown automobile and pedestrian traffic.

I walk over a mile each way from the train station to my office, and have been hit twice by a bicyclist during that walk. I stand by my observation that the majority of bicyclists in Chicago are extremely dangerous and do not follow traffic laws at all.

They also wear headphones and even look at their smartphones while blowing red lights and riding down sidewalks packed with pedestrians. The delivery messengers are of course the worst in this regard.

The city put in special bike lanes on many streets and still bicyclists don’t use them and ride the sidewalks instead.

> The city put in special bike lanes on many streets and still bicyclists don’t use them and ride the sidewalks instead.

The bike lanes can't be very good then

They bicycle lanes are fine, on some of the most-used streets.

It’s the bicyclists that aren’t very good. Just today I saw an idiot without helmet riding no-handed down the middle of Madison street, wearing headphones and looking at his phone. If he gets tagged by a car, it will not automatically be the car drivers fault.

> It's not crazy that I would be checking my maps app at the same time a police siren comes into view, leading me to miss the biker who'd just turned into the lane next to me.

I think this is much of the problem. It should be crazy to do that. Yet so many people do it, regularly, and can't conceive of their daily life without doing it, so we just accept that it is not crazy. And then when it causes a problem, as it inevitably will, we say "oh well, accidents happen".

It isn't just cyclists, but pedestrians too. The best way to murder someone in America is to run them over with your car and say it was an accident. The other person, being dead, can't testify otherwise.

There's a particularly egregious example of an NYC taxi driver killing a child when the pedestrians had the right of way[1]. No charges other than a minor traffic ticket.

[1]: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-crime/cabbie-mowed-m...

You can also kill someone in another car and not be charged and convicted, unless you did it purposefully or were driving with reckless disregard for human life.

It's not that pedestrians and cyclists are treated as a special case.

Right, it's that being in a car is treated as a special case where you can kill someone and the legal system mostly doesn't care unless it's blindingly obvious that it was intentional.

That's also known as "innocent until proven guilty". Should it rather be the driver's fault to prove that it was an accident instead of intentional? How might one go about proving such a thing?

I think the suggestion is rather that it should be a felony to kill someone in an accident, unless that person was acting recklessly (e.g. running a red light).

If it's an accident the person is not a danger to society and we gain nothing by locking them away.

What else would be a suitable punishment for this freshly minted felon?

I think the argument goes something like this. We fine people who text while driving because it’s a distraction, potentially leading to dangerous situations that might otherwise be avoided. Thus, if you kill someone while texting and driving, you at least share the responsibility because you were distracted by your phone. It’s also about the responsibility to watch where you’re going with your superfast two ton hunk of metal, and to ensure that you’re not endangering others with it.

It bothers me that dead cyclists are seen as an inevitability, that “accidents happen”, rather than as the result of irresponsible behaviour.

> It bothers me that dead cyclists are seen as an inevitability, that “accidents happen”, rather than as the result of irresponsible behaviour.

Not all dead cyclists are the result of irresponsible behavior on the part of a driver.

Sometimes people die even when everyone does everything right, or at least nothing wrong. And sometimes people die when the cyclist does something irresponsible.

A few days ago I was driving down the road through a crosswalk. There were no pedestrians in sight and no visible cross traffic, so I continued through. A cyclist shot out at a high rate of speed (for a cyclist) from behind a building and shot into the crosswalk while I was checking the other side of the road and very, very nearly got hit. (And then had the temerity to scream and cuss at me, but that's adrenaline I guess.)

All it would have taken would be more me to have been driving maybe 1mph faster and he would have been toasted, but I did nothing wrong. Even if I had been watching his side of the road (I caught him in my peripheral vision) I couldn't have reacted any faster. In this case the cyclist did do something wrong (in this area he should have been behaving like a car and therefore driving in the road and coming to a complete stop as required there, not assuming the crosswalk granted him invincible right-of-way powers), but there are plenty of cases where nobody did anything irresponsible and an accident happened anyway.

Criminalizing accidents sounds to me like a way to just indulge the people who want to get rid of cars altogether.

Yes, someone linked a news article here about a tragic accident in Munich. The truck driver was cleared of all charges. Sometimes genuine accidents happen. But that's not what the article or this discussion are about, is it?

I don't know about the laws where you live, but in Germany cyclists are not permitted to use crosswalks (or, for that matter, sidewalks). It'd be stupid to assume that a motorist could see them coming, even at normal bike speeds. That's just reckless behaviour.

But these are not the cases I'm talking about. The law in places like Germany recognises that they exist and has appropriate provisions for them (see the above-mentioned article). This isn't magic, and it's not criminalising accidents. It's criminalising irresponsible behaviour while operating dangerous machinery when that behaviour has tragic consequences.

How about this: we treat owning and driving a car as the privilege it is? Whenever you start the engine, you assume full responsibility of the vehicle's behavior. If that behavior results in death or injury, your vehicle is responsible for it, and by extension, you.

This would at the very least make many very cautious behind the wheel.

So if someone deliberately commits suicide by car, that's legally on the driver?

> is treated as a special case where you can kill someone and the legal system mostly doesn't care

No, it just happens to be far more common than job-site accidents because nearly the entire population frequently uses road transportation.

If you drive a forklift into something and it falls over killing someone it would be treated in about the same way. The legal system would care even less because it didn't happen on a public road.

Granted some lawsuits would probably fly after the fact but as far as civil/criminal penalties goes a job-site accident is basically the same as a vehicle accident.

It's not a special case - you can't convict somebody of a felony murder if there was no intent to kill and it happened by accident. I.e. if you were standing on a ladder, and it suddenly collapsed and you fell on top of somebody and that person died, it's not a murder. Even if a car is not involved.

It's easier to kill a cyclist or pedestrian though, without much risk to yourself - maybe a few scratches on your car.

"But officer, he swerved into my lane" and you get a slap on the wrist, because the only other witness is dead.

> There's a particularly egregious example of an NYC taxi driver killing a child when the pedestrians had the right of way[1]. No charges other than a minor traffic ticket.

What charges do you think he should have been brought up on? Manslaughter?

If the father and son were in a car that had the right of way, would that also justify a manslaughter charge or is it only egregious because they were on foot?

> What charges do you think he should have been brought up on? Manslaughter?

And why not?

I think vehicular manslaughter is a reasonable charge. If you can't not plow into pedestrians who have the right of way, you are negligent.

Manslaughter if not negligent homicide. License suspended for a minimum of ten years.

Or in China when tradition says the driver pays the victims hospital expenses or (generally lesser) funeral expenses, some drivers insure it is the latter. I have even seen movies depicting this quandry.

That sounds like one of the more striking cases of something well-intentioned going horribly awry due to perverse incentives, at least on an individual scale.

Do you know which films?

I saw a PSA the other day reminding pedestrians that you do not have armor and that cars act like they own the road because they do. The best thing you can do as a pedestrian or cyclist is to assume your are invisible and to not escalate road rage situations. Telling yourself "but I had the right of way" won't speed your convalescence.

They were already in the crosswalk when the car hit them. What should they have done, precisely? This victim blaming that happens to cyclists and pedestrians after they're hit is shameful.

Sorry, I was making a general comment and I didn't read the article because others warned it was too disturbing.

I find blaming oneself is always the best strategy in life especially in a close-call life-and-death situation. Agreed, it is self-deluding at times. And I would never apply such judgement on others especially the dead -- what would be the point.

The new Right Of Way law has theoretically helped this in New York, but it's rarely invoked and the consequences are usually a few thousand dollars and cancellation of your driver's license. I don't think anyone has ever seen jail time for it, and the only cases that are prosecuted under this law are cut-and-dry, video evidence available, driver clearly behaved recklessly and killed someone.

"To the three of them, it appeared as if Norton was trying to move her car to the side of the road. But in the process, she drove over Morgan’s head, with her right front tire placed squarely on top. (Norton’s attorney says that she was in a state of shock.) They screamed at Norton to back the car up, which she did, but after getting out of the car a second time, she reentered the vehicle. “I was horrified that she was trying to drive it again,” Richardson says. “I was screaming at her through the passenger-side window, which was down. She was trying to put her keys in the ignition… I was trying to reach into the sedan to grab her keys.”"

I got sick reading this.

Sicker when you realise she was on the phone the entire time.

> Sicker when you realise she was on the phone the entire time.

THAT may be one of the things that starts to make a difference - in the time since that event many states and municipalities have put in much tougher 'distracted driving' laws that may be enforceable in a lot of accidents and which may improve results in civil cases.

Yeah, as an EMS provider, entirely possible she was in shock (of the mental sense, not physiological).

Also entirely possible she was being told to leave, or something. You wouldn't (or maybe you would) believe the number of times we've shown up to DUI injury accidents where a spouse has shown up "coincidentally" and is trying to ferry their drunk partner into their car before police or fire get there.

In one case, while we were checking out such a drunk driver, the cop looked over and his wife was about 5 feet away, gesticulating at her chest and then a choking sound, repeatedly. He had a confused look and then started complaining of chest pain.

A waste of time, but counterproductive for them both - she/they were thinking they'd lessen his blood alcohol by feigning a medical condition, but instead an ECG was run, all clear, but due to his continuing complaint he was transported by ambulance to hospital where the first thing done... was a blood draw.

It is in many countries. For example, in Germany, in any situation where a driver and a pedestrian or cyclist crash, the driver always has partial fault. In cases where the cyclist or pedestrian dies, it almost always is a crime for the driver.

In some situations, when the driver is driving recklessly, it becomes murder. On February 27, a driver was sentenced to lifelong imprisonment for murder by car: http://www.zeit.de/gesellschaft/zeitgeschehen/2017-02/berlin... (that was two drivers doing an illegal car race, and hitting a car that wasn’t participating).

Laws like these are very dangerous.

Not as dangerous as cars.

No, they recognise the danger cars pose to others and the responsibility this places on drivers. What makes cars so special that it's seen as okay when a person is killed with one?

Not always, there are cases where the driver did everything right and still an accident happened:

http://www.sueddeutsche.de/muenchen/prozess-gegen-lkw-fahrer...

As the article you linked shows, there’s a different burden of proof in that case, though.

I injured a cyclist with my car when I was 18. I wasn't punished, and I don't think I should have been.

The cyclist ran a red light on a busy 4-lane road with turn lanes, a 45 mph speed limit and frontage roads. A box van in the left turn lane made it impossible for me to see him until he entered my lane. His leg was broken in three places and he spent six months in the hospital; something taller than the sports car I was driving probably would have killed him. He was fined for running a red light.

I don't think anybody should be criminally punished purely due to a bad outcome when they were acting with due care. Driving negligently is another matter entirely, and at a minimum, those who do it should be prevented from driving for a time.

I think your example shows perfectly well why you shouldn't be charged, and why she (probably) should - you were driving with due care, other party was negligent, whereas she (it's heavily implied) was on her phone at the time of the accident (and after).

It can be very difficult for someone to notice a bicycle on 40~55mph roads. Cyclists are definitely taking a risk. I wear Neon cycling shirt and avoid peak time when cycling.

Laws aside, I don't think Cyclists should block lanes esp' during peak traffic time. I actually would like a ban on main roads during rush hours, number of folks change lanes and create very dangerous situations for all.

As a cyclist I hate travelling on the main road. Not only do I feel guilty for slowing traffic but all it takes is one inattentive knucklehead to end my life.

Yet, what choice do I have? Sidewalks are obstacle courses of pedestrians, trashbins, bus stops, sign posts, etc. Bicycle lanes are blocked by taxis/uber/lyft, delivery vans, double parked cars.

Riding on the sidewalk probably isn't even legal; you might hit a pedestrian.

I know. I do it too, though I keep my speed down to a brisk walking pace unless I'm in an area where I know it's safe to speed up. Laws are laws, though... At least here in Dublin the cars are mostly good about keeping away, even if there aren't many bike trails.

Not to be snarky, but have you considered driving or taking a taxi/Uber/Lyft? If you're going to spend a bunch of time on the main road, why not do it in a car?

Because as a citizen I'm entitled to use the road as well. The city decided that cars and bikes can share the lane so that is what I will do.

Also, in my case, it takes the same amount of time to travel by bike as a car and costs a whole lot less.

If you have weighted the costs of driving vs the increased injury and fatality rate of cycling and have concluded that cycling is be better option for you, then that totally makes sense.

A cheap used car costs a couple thousand dollars up front, plus license, insurance, maintenance, gas. Plus even cheap parking rental in a city can run to hundreds of dollars a month.

Taxi/Uber/Lyft is, what, $5-15 per one-way trip? That's between $10 and $50 per day to commute. And that's before errands, weekend activities, and unexpected emergencies.

My spouse and I have a six-figure household income and I'd have a hard time finding an extra ~$10k/yr for transportation costs. It would be a complete nonstarter on minimum wage. Snarky or no, "be rich enough you don't have to worry about it" is a really shitty piece of "advice".

In many urban areas at peak times, cyclists are likely traveling faster than other traffic.

> It can be very difficult for someone to notice a bicycle on 40~55mph roads...

While people do get hit and killed on back country roads, the vast majority of collisions and fatalities are within cities where cycling on roads with that speed is ill-advised.

Most cyclists are on roads with 25-35mph speed limits. If you can't see potential hazards and react in time, you're driving too fast and should slow down. This is why there's a push for lower speed limits in urban areas: It has an almost immediate effect on collisions.

Reacting to something at 20mph and 40mph are worlds apart. You'll have no trouble stopping at 20, but at 40 you run someone over and crash into something.

For some perspective, consider kinetic energy. You possess 4x as much energy travelling 40mph as 20mph.

Put another way, it takes 3x as much energy to go from 40 to 20 as it does from 20 to 0.

This seems like you're viewing cycling as a hobby, where many people (including myself) use it as a sole means of transportation.

There are many cases where the safest way to ride is for a cyclist to take an entire lane. Note that in many states (including mine), this is absolutely legal and recommended. But of course, there are many motorists who don't know this, and get very angry (https://ashevilleonbikes.com/asheville-cyclist-punched-face-...).

> I actually would like a ban on main roads during rush hours

Agreed. The sooner we get cars off the road the better, and... Oh, not what you meant?

I like the lane-segregation San Francisco that is (slowly) rolling out, and I understand other cities mostly in Europe already have (haven't personally been to the right city lately). A particularly dangerous corner near me has gotten far better because of it, and it seems to work well, at least so far - the intersection was averaging about a death a year, and while it is still too soon, nothing now. A side effect is that the sidewalks are more pleasant, too - the bikers, then a line of parking, then traffic just feels much more pleasant.

Drivers don't technically lose any roadway, but in practice, they can't take over the bike lane because of parking, so they seem to dislike it[1]. But that's also what makes it safer, and was the law anyway, so the complainers have mostly settled on sillier rationales.

[1] In San Francisco, the conflict is severe enough that I think certain bikers and drivers have progressed to spite-driven zero-sum bullshit, so its hard to tell who is even arguing sincerely. I don't mind the new configuration when I drive - makes right turns slightly more complicated, and of course I'm not a professional driver, so I don't care about stealing the bike lane for drop-offs/deliveries.

If you can't see what's in front of your car in time to react appropriately, you are going too fast for the current road conditions. Reckless driving is a risk created entirely by the driver, not the cyclist who happens to be in front of the driver at the time.

Right, but if the risk backfires, who pays the cost? The driver has a few scrapes on the bumper and the cyclist is seriously injured or dead.

And then in any civilised country the driver faces manslaughter charges and goes to gaol.

I've seen many times cyclists driving on poorly lit one-lane roads without dedicated bike lane, wearing black or dark clothes. It's positively scary, especially when they turn out of the side street right in front of you. I personally try to stay as far away as possible from them.

Because nearly all US police have a perverse incentive to issue easy-revenue traffic tickets. From the article:

> The New York City Police Department, for example, issued more than 96,000 citations to drivers in 2012 for excessive window tinting, which wasn’t an influence in any fatal or injurious crashes.

> By comparison, according to a October 2013 Transportation Alternatives report, the NYPD issued fewer than 12 summonses a month in 2012 to drivers who failed to yield, one of the leading causes of injurious crashes in New York.

> drivers who failed to yield, one of the leading causes of injurious crashes in New York.

That's like saying "speed causes accidents". Yes, the accident probably would have been avoidable at 5mph. Yes, not cutting people off when taking a left turn would be nice but eventually you just have to make eye contact and floor it if you want to take a left turn (granted that's not a good example but "failure to yield" is a broad enough category to be useless).

It sometimes is, and often should be.

However! The one cyclist I have been centimeters from killing or causing grievous bodily harm ought not to have counted against me, even had I been a tad less dexterous with brakes and steering. Some young woman, ears plugged into some iDevice, running a red light at full speed. Not joking about the centimeters. She would have been toast under the Toyota HiAce I was driving.

The girl continued, apparently without even registering the close scrape she just had. I chased her down and delivered the shit sermon of the century. She appeared non-comprehending and utterly indifferent.

Not claiming this to be typical cyclist behavior, but alas, it's not all that uncommon either.

I am a sometime truck driver, and believe me, I know the terror of crowded city traffic, right turns, and cyclists. Some drivers are squarely to blame when the shit hit the fan, or the front wheel the cyclist, but some are most certainly not, and may suffer undeservedly for the rest of their lives.

No, I am not reckless. I have done an awful lot of professionel driving, and haven't had an accident since 1983 when someone from a sideroad disregarded a stop sign.

By the way, I am in full favour of also potentially criminalising hitting an animal. Most roadkills would be easily avoided, if people would just pay some goddamn attention to driving while driving.

I think criminalizing hitting an animal is a terrible idea. Pedestrians, other drivers, and cyclists can be unpredictable, but more often than not they are within a certain range of expected behavior. Not so with animals.

Driving late evening, with high beams on, no one else on the straight road, and right around the speed limit, I came upon a large herd of deer. I slowed down and kept a close eye on them. A small group decided to go from standing to running literally as I was passing them, and one grazed my right rear door with its butt as it did a 180 next to my car. They are not predictable and no amount of attention would prevent that.

That's not mentioning the small animals that can be very hard to see.

I know it's tricky. Nevertheless, it's our damn duty to keep our eyes on the road - at all times. Living far out in the countryside, I see a lot of roadkill, deer included, but have yet to hit an animal, even though I leave home every morning long before daybreak. Cats and hedgehogs really are avoidable by any competent driver.

Cats? Are you kidding? I love cats but I swear those fuckers wait for a car to be there before they cross the street.

They do. I have had some real close encounters. That's why drivers need their focus on the road ahead at all times, all the time. Not on phones or radios or views or passengers. On the road.

Because humans suck ass at preventing harm.

When cars were first introduced, they were implicitly allowed free roam over streets that were full of pedestrians, horses and carriages. They injured so many people they stopped counting, and each month would bring dozens of deaths. Only after enough people had died did they invent stop signs, traffic signals, lane markers, and one-way streets. They had to create new police departments to enforce the law on the road, and new courts to process offenses. They still didn't have mandatory driver education, brake lights, or posted speed limits. Left hand turns were difficult, drinking and driving was common, and people didn't understand why taking a corner at high speed might flip a car over.

There were literally decades of people (mostly children) killed by automobiles on a regular basis, usually by reckless drivers and exacerbated by a lack of planning. And yet, even though some drivers would be pulled from their cars by angry mobs, nobody seemed to question whether all people should even be allowed to drive a car. Rules like crossing the street at designated intersections were created to put responsibility on pedestrians for their safety.

By the mid-1920s, after two and a half decades of driving, we finally adopted national laws regarding driving, with driver education coming in the 1930's.

Can you imagine if we let just anyone fly a plane? The sheer scope of the damage done makes even the idea laughable. But once the technology becomes cheap and available, it will happen, and we'll run into the same stupid problems. Because we suck at keeping people safe.

Once automated cars become reliable and widespread, we're probably going to outlaw driving yourself, because it literally makes no sense to give a human total control over a two ton mass of steel hurtling down the road next to pedestrians and cyclists with no protection whatsoever (a curb is a guide, not protection). I mean, we don't even install metal bollards around cycling paths or sidewalks.

It was actually a fascinating early example of mass-media propaganda. Since the rule for centuries previously was that everyone had equal access to the roads, they had to repurpose a slur and frame the automotive road-takeover as progress over the yokels. Lots of lessons there that can be taken in a number of different ways.

One bit of the history here, google will give you a lot more:

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26073797

> Can you imagine if we let just anyone fly a plane? The sheer scope of the damage done makes even the idea laughable.

I can, because we did, a although in most cases the pilots only managed to off themselves; largely because there's a lot more terrain and a lot fewer people to hit once you're no longer limited to the roads.

Today you need a pilot's license, but flying an airplane has only recently become heavily regulated. The limitation was always that they're a lot more expensive than cars.

In the UK, we've recently had a very rare case of a cyclists killing a pedestrian.

The cyclist was highly irrsponsible - he had only one brake, and the law requires two. As a result he was jailed for 18 months [1].

I think his conviction is reasonable. But it's highly unfair that the same standard isn't applied to drunk drivers, or drivers using their mobile phone, or drivers who have failed to renew their mandatory annual safety test (MOT) certificate.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/bike-blog/2017/aug/2...

2014 article by the way.

This is something that's going to change slowly until legislators start rising bikes to work (not holding my breath). It's also something that may get worse - at least currently it's often possible to hear approaching cars due to engine noise. Quieter cars will make it harder for even fully alert riders to avoid approaching vehicles (I'm not implying that it's the riders' responsibility to avoid being hit, but it may be the reality).

At higher speeds I believe road noise from tires is the dominating noise factor.

We need to ban assault cars at once! No honest person needs a 300+ horsepower tank powered by a fuel that is literally explosive.

Especially the ones with the arm rests that go up.

Agreed, ban manually-driven cars as quickly as feasible.

>To the three of them, it appeared as if Norton was trying to move her car to the side of the road. But in the process, she drove over Morgan’s head, with her right front tire placed squarely on top."

What the fuck.

What's even the best way to proceed in that situation?

I know everyone screamed at the driver to back up, but to me that sounds extremely dangerous, especially with a front or all-wheel drive vehicle. Having the hysterical fool that managed to run over the victim a second time continue to operate the car with the victim's head under the tire is crazy on the face of it, even if it was perhaps the best course of action for that particular situation.

If there's enough bystanders, lifting the vehicle and following it up with a short drag of the victim from under the tire almost seems better, spinal injury immobilization concerns be damned.

Probably not enough people to lift in this particular case however, and most of the damage had probably already been done at that point.

I also can't help but wonder how much worse similar situations could get if firearms came into play. At what point is it legally justifiable for an uncompliant driver that keeps running over a victim to be shot? I'd say most juries would likely acquit for a third time, and circumstances somewhat similar to this instance could be trial of the century material.

That might sound absurd, but there's the argument that attempting to physically remove a continually-uncompliant wreckless driver would not only waste precious time, but may cause them to panic—hitting the gas and inflicting grevious harm to the victim. The driver could concievably be drunk and belligerent, for example.

Furthermore, it could be argued that the firearm user was hysterical themselves: even the coolest customer in the world might snap when the tire of some idiot's car is resting on their immediate family member's head, because they were just run over again.

things are slowly changing. this guy was recently convicted for 2nd degree manslaughter:

http://gothamist.com/2017/09/25/matthew_von_ohlen_conviction...

The joke in nyc is, after a cycling accident, nypd will be out in force ticketing bicyclists the day after.

I don't really understand the article.

The article suggests they are advocating for a blanket law. Are they saying that anytime an accident happens involving a car and a bike where the driver was at fault it should be a criminal prosecution? Is that the type of society we want? Do we expect accidents to never happen and want to criminalize anything less than perfection?

We have manslaughter laws that allow for criminal penalties when a person's negligence rises to a level of criminality. Accidents happen. Accidents that result in terrible injury and death are tragic. But humans aren't perfect; we get distracted--by things other than cell phones. Not every accident is criminal in nature; and for that we have a civil system that--while focused on monetary compensation--is simply the best we've come up with beyond demanding blood satisfaction.

I guess I wish I understood the debate better.

You're getting the gist of it. Governments and advocates have already shifted away from the term "accident" and instead use the term "collision". The idea is that nothing is truly accidental and causes can always be assessed. Think of the 5 whys. Sometimes a driver is at fault, and since drivers are the ones controlling multiple tons of metal at high speeds any fault there is multiplied by that potentiality. That's my take at least.

"The society we want" expressed in this kind of article is one where public policy actively discourages (or at least doesn't go so far out of its way to encourage) driving. "Humans aren't perfect" - so they shouldn't be permitted to drive. If draconian liability terrifies people into riding the bus, that's victory.

The state has effectively carved out an exception to the murder statutes because "hey, shit happens, humans aren't perfect behind the wheel." Challenging that is perfectly reasonable, especially if you don't accept that driving is or should be a necessary component of civilization.

I generally agree with all you're saying, but it seems like in this particular situation the driver was using the phone the whole time and therefore her negligence rose to a level of criminality and therefore it should be treated as manslaughter.

Wouldn't this lead to cycling on streets being outlawed? Should it?

It is a crime when you do it by purpose, not if it is an accident.

A cyclist could kill a pedestrian as well in an unfortunate accident, should we treat that as a crime?

> It is a crime when you do it by purpose, not if it is an accident.

This statement doesn't seem to be consistent with the law in the US. Involuntary Manslaughter is a crime, and it explicitly covers cases in which the crime was not committed on purpose.

In some cases, yes.

Piloting a vehicle on motorways - regardless of type - is a privilege that carries a certain level of responsibility. If someone in a vehicle can't be bothered to exhibit that level of responsibility and kills someone else who was exhibiting that level of responsibility then it should be a crime.

> A cyclist could kill a pedestrian as well in an unfortunate accident, should we treat that as a crime?

Yeah, probably. If you're operating a dangerous piece of equipment the onus is on you to do it safely. Bikes are more dangerous than shoes, cars are more dangerous than bikes, and commercial vehicles are more dangerous than cars.

It's not actually that difficult to drive safely around cyclists. Go the speed limit, pay attention, and don't pass unless you can do so safely. Yes, this means sometimes you will go 15 in a 45mph zone for a couple of blocks. If someone finds that burdensome enough to risk killing someone else then I have no problem calling that criminal neglect.

It absolutely can be a crime.

yep causing bodily harm by "wanton or furious driving" is how its put in the UK

There is also "Death by Dangerous Driving", however the sentences in the UK for causing the death of pedestrians and cyclists are bad.

You could end up being sent to prison for 5 years and a 5 year driving ban while in prison. If you kill someone by dangerous driving then you should be banned for life.

Not for cyclists oddly enough

Driving vehicles requires that you undergo training and obtain a licence, it could be argued that cyclists should have to do the same, but laws need to be proportional.

Several ton metal boxes can kill people a lot easier than cyclists.

In the UK the offence would be Causing Death by Dangerous Driving [1], and it only applies to drivers of motorised vehicles. The "wanton or furious driving" charge that was used in the recent case of Kim Briggs's death [2] was used because the death was caused by a cyclist.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causing_death_by_dangerous_dri...

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/sep/18/cyclist...

no its not which is why they used such an archaic statute - there is a campaign to extend death by dangerous driving to cyclists

Case after case in the US has shown that all you need to do is claim it was an accident and you'll receive the most minor of slaps on the wrist.

Like the article says, "Criminal law punishes bad intentions and bad acts, not traffic accidents.”

Accidents happen. There is no reason to ruin two lives instead of one, by harshly punishing another person.

If driver A takes the .002% chance they'll cause an accident while driving on the phone and drive B takes the same .002% chance, it makes no sense to throw B in jail and let A off with a 50 dollar fine just because driver B actually hit someone. Drive B should be liable for all medical costs and lost income.

But society gains nothing by punishing her. It's just a way to make us all feel more control. Accidents only happen to bad criminals! Good folks like us would never have an accident!

"Like the article says, "Criminal law punishes bad intentions and bad acts, not traffic accidents.”

Well, the article is quoting the attorney of the person who ran over a cyclist, so it's fairly narrow in scope. The law finds accidents worthy of punishment everywhere, everyday -- regardless of provable ill will.

But I absolutely agree with what you've said. There is little to gain by punishing the perpetrator of an accident.

The problem arises when the truly guilty use the facade of accident to commit crimes that they want to commit.

A while ago it was suggested to me to mentally translate "accident" to "collision" in context of cars hitting cyclists. Most collisions with cyclists are easily avoidable, and caused by negligence, impatience or ignorance.

Treating collisions as unavoidable, unintentional mistakes relieves drivers of a lot of the inherent responsibility of controlling a vehicle. Watch the road. Respect other users of the road. Be patient, safe, and focused.

By harshly punishing drivers you provide a deterrent against the next accident.

It makes sure that drivers have both an atruistic reason (preventing an accident) and selfish reason (preventing their license being revoked) to pay attention.

Also - banning a driver isn't really a punishment as they'll get to discover how much fun it is to cycle to work and gain the life-long benefits of exercise and a friendly, social, activity :-)

I believe the punishment should act as a deterrent. In the same vein that DUI laws will strip you of driving privileges, extract high fines, and possibly jail. And it's in the same frame of thought, exercising poor judgement.

Being inattentive, with a 2.5-ton vehicle, at 10m/s should be treated as being over 0.08% BAC. Yet, only one of them is treated as a criminal violation.

>It makes no sense to throw B in jail and let A off with a 50 dollar fine just because driver B actually hit someone. Drive B should be liable for all medical costs and lost income.

Users have the ability to think for themselves. Laws are not code. Nobody with a brain expects them all to be followed all the time (i.e. speed limit). If decide to talk on the phone at a dumb time and cause an accident you certainly deserve more punishment than the person who happens to drive by a bored cop while talking on the phone on a mostly empty highway.

If you've killed someone using a vehicle you should be held accountable.

Would you use the same argument at a rape trial? People have, and it's utterly disgusting. "Why ruin this young man's life for a mistake," they say.

Being called "accidents" is bullshit. These things often happen for reasons.

Let me give you a real-life example of an accident:

My cousin, (completely sober, alert, and obeying all applicable traffic laws) ran over a slick substance on the road causing his car to slide into oncoming traffic. Unfortunately, his progress was halted by an oncoming vehicle. The person in the other vehicle was killed. Should my cousin be legally responsible for that death?

Regardless of cause, that's a collision.

If there was nothing they could have done to prevent that incident, if any reasonable driver would have had exactly the same problem, then perhaps they're not at fault.

If somehow other people managed to navigate that hazard without issue then there may be an element of fault. Were they driving too fast? Were they slow to react?

A good lawyer would be able to argue that the root cause of that collision was the spill on the road, which seems like a reasonable defence. If it went to trial a jury would be inclined to agree, so there's no real risk of over-prosecuting here.

Keep in mind that these sorts of cases are the exception, not the norm.

Rape and accidental or negligent homicide aren't comparable because, by law, you can't accidentally rape someone. You have to recklessly, knowingly, or intentionally rape someone for it to be a crime.

When people say that a rape was a mistake, they mean they made an error in judgment or something else.

When we are talking about a car accident, we mean that they didn't intend to hurt anyone.

> ...you can't accidentally rape someone...

"I slipped" has been used as a defense multiple times.

> You have to recklessly, knowingly, or intentionally rape someone for it to be a crime.

In America? Not in other places like Sweden.

They're car collisions, not accidents.

> Like the article says, "Criminal law punishes bad intentions and bad acts, not traffic accidents.”

To be clear, the defense attorney of someone who killed a person with her car said that, not the author of the article.

I think driving a car with reckless disregard to the safety of others is a bad act. There may be no malice, but it's not behavior that should be accepted in present day society. At best, it's more selfish than is safe to allow in an area with even modest population density. That said, I'm not usually a big fan of punishment and don't care so much about whether people who do it are punished harshly enough.

More important is to keep them from doing it again. Someone who injures or kills another person with a car should, if their negligence was a significant factor, lose their driver's license for some time and have to take active steps to improve their driving ability before getting their license back.

Of course reckless driving is a bad act. But most accidents aren't the result of reckless driving.

And we don't treat cell phone driving as reckless driving, at least typically not. It's just a 50 dollar fine.

Based on empirical data, maybe we should punish all cell phone drives as reckless like we do drunk drivers. But it makes no sense to single people out only if there was an accident.

> But it makes no sense to single people out only if there was an accident.

A driver could reasonably argue that one distraction or another didn't significantly impair their ability to drive, but when it results in an accident, that question is answered.

I do, however believe that distracted driving should result in something more than a $50 fine.

But that's a bad argument, which is often used by drunk drivers to justify their behavior. "I'm fine, i've never gotten into an accident." And they do.

The legal system draws a distinction: DUI-homicide is classified as second degree murder in many states, while DUI by itself itself is a misdemeanor.

Of course, this is a bad measure of the level of recklessness, but the legal system has taken the degree of bad result into account along with the degree of bad intent. Murder is worse than attempted murder, etc....

Accidents happen, so we try to prevent them with rules. If you don't follow those rules, then you are absolutely responsible for accidents. There might not even need to be an accident for a crime, you just need to break the rules, depending on your jurisdiction and which rule you broke.

Try to avoid the word "accident". Use crash or collision instead. A majority of fatal crashes are caused by intoxicated, speeding, distracted, or careless drivers and, therefore, are not simple accidents but the result of someone's dangerous choices.

The term "accident" is outdated and inappropriate. Please use the term "collision".

Collision is broader than accident.

"Accident" is prejudicial -- it prematurely rules out intent, negligence, and other causes.

May as well call them "oopsies" or "uh ohs". It's utterly offensive to the victims and those that are impacted by these careless incidents.

This is my biggest annoyance with the traffic act. "Running a red light" and "Running a red light and killing a pedestrian" are the same crime/penalty. I was hit by a car and injured while in a dedicated bike lane and the penalty was $50 for improper turn.

Society gains nothing by punishing any criminal. The punishments are there as deterrents and should be scaled to the risk/severity of the act. Any contact with a pedestrian or cyclist when at fault should carry extremely high punishment given the high risk. Any contact causing injury should carry a higher punishment.

There isn't a flat 0.002% chance. Many drivers drive dangerously and put cyclists/pedestrians lives at risk knowingly and repeatedly. They will continue to do so unless we make a change.

You're completely undermining the concept of deterrence. You're imposing a .002% chance of dying on someone else, you incur a .002% chance of jail.

If it were feasible, we'd never put people in jail for risky driving, we'd just have immediate unavoidable small punishments (example: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vox.com/platform/amp/2016/2...). But there's no way to fine someone $5 every time they pick up that phone in the car, short of a police state.

>You're completely undermining the concept of deterrence. You're imposing a .002% chance of dying on someone else, you incur a .002% chance of jail.

A .002% chance of jail is not an effective deterrence because people are shit at calculating low risks like that.

We should treat it like we do drunk drivers. You get caught on your phone, you face serious penalties even if nobody is hurt.

Calling all traffic collisions accidents is misleading. There are few true accidents, as in an event that is unavoidable. If a driver has a stroke or has a well-maintained tire blowout due to a manufacturing defect, that's an accident and I agree it doesn't make sense to punish the driver.

In the majority of traffic collisions the driver made choices that contributed to the incident. For example, if you speed at night on a rural highway chances are that you are outdriving your headlights. This means by the time an object in the road is illuminated by your lights it's too late to stop your car without hitting it.

The problem is that we Americans are so dependent on driving that taking away or denying someone a license is paramount to denying them the ability to commute to work or shop for groceries. Driving is a serious activity that demands care and attention but making it an undeniable right has led many to treat it trivially. The number of distracted drivers on the road is unreal.

> Calling all traffic collisions accidents is misleading.

Right. In most US states when you drive an emergency vehicle (such as, in my case, a fire engine or ambulance) you are required to take a course called EVIP - Emergency Vehicle Incident Prevention. Among other things, this course serves as a partial exemption for a CDL, and discusses other laws of the road with respect to emergency vehicles (such as the fact that even an ambulance with lights and sirens on has to stop for a school bus).

But... to your point, the course used to be called EVAP - Emergency Vehicle Accident Prevention - but was specifically changed to recognize that accidents are not preventable, but a cause of circumstance outside control, and that most collisions are in fact "incidents", not "accidents".

What an awful way of looking at things. So anything you do in the car is irrelevant to the outcomes and shouldn't be punished? Would you have said the same about DUI?

Do we execute doctors for murder every time it's conceivably possible that a patient's death could have been avoided?

The law is hardly ever consequentialist. In almost any position where you can kill someone by mistake in the course of a legitimate activity, punishing the killer requires evidence that they were unusually reckless.

> The law is hardly ever consequentialist.

I would actually argue the opposite. The law is almost always consequentalist, it merely has a wider view of the consequences.

Punishing someone for a mistake when they weren't unusually reckless would have negative consequences for society that outweigh the potential benefits of doing so, therefore we don't.

We 100% hold doctors accountable for killing patients if it was through negligence.

Correct. We punish doctors for negligence, not for the outcome alone.

No, I'm saying the punishment for risktaking or negligence should be the same whether or not the results were bad.

I'd harshly punish DUI but I wouldn't suddenly demand 20 years for a DUI fatality.

The crime is causing the risk.

That's not only a ridiculous way at looking at things but also not how the law works. Murder and attempted murder are different charges dude.

Yes they are, and that is the ridiculous way of looking at things. Poor murder skills do not morally redeem homicidal intention.

What really grinds my gears is the frequency with which cyclists are legally forced onto the roadway in a high-traffic area, when there is a perfectly good sidewalk available.

Just assume that Bob is going to have an accident on his bike today. Would you rather see him struck by a car and become a likely fatality, or see him hit a pedestrian and cause a few scrapes and bruises? Why would you unnecessarily force people into a potentially deadly situation for the crime of riding a bicycle?

Sidewalks aren't flat, and they don't have priority at junctions.

This makes them unsuitable for commuting or serious cycling.

To make it a viable form of personal transport it's better to keep cyclists on the roads.

This is ridiculous. Sidewalks are not thoroughfares - cyclists on the sidewalk put themselves in grave danger at virtually every intersection.

Without commenting on whether or not it's legal, if you're cycling in the sidewalk then you should at least attempt to act like a pedestrian.

This means waiting for a walk light at the crossing, and not cycling into the road at above a walking pace even if it happens to already be green.

This is just common sense, really.

Intersections include more than just those with traffic lights.

It is outright illegal to cycle on a sidewalk in many places. Here if you have a wheel diameter more than a foot you can't use the sidewalk. That exception is intended to allow little kids to use the sidewalk without issue.

It's also extremely uncommon for cyclists to hit pedestrians, and even more uncommon for those collisions to lead to a fatality. There's just not enough kinetic energy involved. Joggers are nearly as likely to bowl someone over and kill them.

if the goal is making more livable and efficient cities, please don't start by taking it out on the pedestrians. 'unlikely to get killed' is kind of downgrade from 'able to carry my groceries home without fear'

Pedestrians bitch about a small, aggressive subset of cyclists, typically couriers, but get killed by cars. Take your pick.

If you're scared of bicycles maybe you should stay indoors. There's things like squirrels and pigeons out there that might attack you.

I've walked cities for decades. I know how to deal with cars. someone jumping in front of me at speed screaming at me to get out of the way for being on the sidewalk every day - not so much

Cycling on a sidewalk is punishable by 6 months (!!!) in jail in my city.

what city is that?

Santa Monica, CA

Ironically if you veered onto the sidewalk and mowed down ten people you'd probably face the same amount of jail time, if you even got that.

Sidewalks are not bike lanes, and are not appropriate for biking on.

They're not, but sometimes there are no bike lanes and cycling in the roads looks dangerous. What am I supposed to do?

Well, I'm a bit split between getting off the bike (and walking next to it), or cycling at a walking pace (and taking up less space). Depends on the situation, really.

An accident is an accident, is an accident, is an accident.

We've all had accidents, and we know what that feels like.

Negligence, maliciousness and depravity all have clear definitions.

There's no clear rule for discerning human intent and emotion, retrospectively, but it's outlines are often detectable through residual evidence. It is often obvious when an event required careful planning, contrasted against chaotic incidents that couldn't possibly be replicated if you tried.

Sometimes, things are curiously a little bit in between. Most of reality is imperfect, and we have to accept that.

"I was just texting in my phone. I didn't mean to run over that lady."

That is not an accident. These are not accidents. The very phrase "accident" leads to the sort of thinking you're espousing here.

These are collisions. These are deaths. These are manslaughter. These are negligent homicide. These are avoidable.

If you're operating a vehicle and not paying attention, not driving according to the road conditions, aren't keeping your vehicle in proper mechanical shape, or don't have sufficient training, you're a hazard and shouldn't be on the road. Period.

That’s exactly the same as saying “I was just drunk. I didn’t mean to run over that lady.” When the driver deliberately impairs their ability to drive, they assume culpability for any accident that might occur.

Ah, so every collision is the product of a willful decision to enter into circumstances that place others in harms way, and may be readily equivocated to handling a loaded gun, with the intent to possibly destroy things, yes?

And I suppose collisions are thus to be perceived as, not merely likely, but having been inevitable once they transpire, at least in the eyes of the law.

So, every traffic infraction is the result of someone waking up and trying to do harm, or in some way cause a problem they may have inflicted (or intended to inflict) upon the world. And especially so, when proven guilty by a trustworthy legal system, immune to manipulation.

Everyone is suicidal, everyone is self destructive, everyone is negligent, and these collisions are just representative of the moments in which such people succeed in fulfilling their desires.

I see how it works now. Thanks for the enlightenment.

Not sure where this malice comes from, but GP specifically said "impairs their ability to drive." You're striking at strawmen.

You're grasping for informal logical fallacies, because it makes you feel smart to level them at people on the internet.

Within the context of this article, there's no real evidence of an impairment to the driver's ability, willful or otherwise.

From TFA:

  ...remembers the driver [...] getting out of her car 
     with a cell phone pressed against her ear...

But there's no statement that this was a cell phone related accident. No evidence denoted that the driver was willfully negligent, even after being convicted of criminal charges, which likely would have surfaced any relevant call records from the cell provider.

So, the very premise is bullshit with regard to this specific case, because GP's false quote not an actual statement from the situation at hand, in this case. It's hypothetical rhetoric.

As far I can tell, this is not really any kind of criminal assault. The law is being manipulated to achieve a desired outcome. Maybe this is an accident, in violation of the three foot rule, but a court requires evidence, not mere suspicion.

In reality, to classify this as assault is to equivocate this with intentional wrongdoing, which it isn't. Wrongful injury? Something deserving real consequences? Sure, but you'd never convince me of an assault charge, personally.

Revocation of driver's license? Yeah! Fines? Damages? Yeah!

Jail? Loss of rights? No way. This is not a very obviously violent person, to be removed from society on a whim. It's not a person who's behavior was so reprehensible that they get demoted from participating in civil society. Maybe they lose access to the roads, and vehicles therein, but this case is not deserving of further justice in the criminal sense. The conviction is really just a demonstration of contempt. It's not true justice, but the making of an example, and only to send a message, while the actual laws on the books remain an inadequate expression of social boundaries.

GGGP was not discussing the article per se. When GGGP said "impairs the ability to drive" and you responded to it, you assumed they were talking about the article. I think it's clear enough that this comment thread has opened lines of discussion beyond the limited context of the article.

I disagree.

Negligence has a clear definition. The driver who ran me over, in a bike lane, didn't see me because they didn't bother to look. That's negligence, not an accident.

The issue at hand is that while the vast majority of drivers injuring cyclists/pedestrians are negligent, less than 1% are charged with careless or negligent driving (source: the article we're discussing).

In this case sure. But not in all cases. And remember, you’re reading a journalistic retelling of only these cherry-picked events, crafted as an emotionally poignant and compelling narrative. Interpet that aspect of this article as you will.

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