Wait, what!?
In Europe if you strike a pedestrian on the crosswalk you'll definitely loose your license and be looking at manslaughter charges too while your insurance company will murder you after paying the victim's medical/disability/court bills.
In Europe if you strike a pedestrian on the crosswalk you'll definitely loose your license and be looking at manslaughter charges too while your insurance company will murder you after paying the victim's medical/disability/court bills.
I was 16 at the time. Really shaken up about what had happened. But after collecting myself and fixing the dangling headlight I was able to drive home. I got a ticket for not giving way to the pedestrian (€45 I believe) and insurance covered everything regarding the woman. Didn't even get a letter other than one that they would take of everything.
So yes it happens here too (The Netherlands)
I.e. you weren't driving a car and you were underage.
I'm not saying that the legal system in The Netherlands is unreasonable or anything, but I feel like your case doesn't really represent the kind of case people are thinking of in this thread.
Be aware though that this is not always the case. For instance if you are driving next to a playing field you are expected to watch out and brake for children who can always show up on the road and not doing so has consequences.
If you ask a person on the street why they don't exchange a quick car ride with riding a bike or walking, they may tell you that they're scared of getting hit by a car - and this is probably before getting hit by a car.
I can't really quantify the emotional stress riding bikes costs me now each, and every time a car almost hits me (which is a regular basis), but it's something I have to now live with. And I friggin' love riding bikes.
It was night time, rainy and the victim popped out from the space between two parked cars and ran just in front of the motorbike to quickly cross the road.
There was automatically a trial anyway for manslaughter and my relative was not found guilty of anything. I think it's a good thing to automatically have a trial anyway. The rule here is "the driver must be in full control of its vehicle at anytime". It basically means that if you could have physically avoided a pedestrian (factoring in response and braking times..), you'll be found guilty even if the pedestrian was outside of a crosswalk for instance.
For example, consider a situation where the driver has to correct understeer, or lift-off oversteer, both relatively easy to achieve in cold, wet conditions.
The unfortunate truth is that people are human and humans make mistakes. You could drive to work on the same back road every day. Except one day it's particularly cold and you don't see the ice patch on the sharp right hand corner you've taken 100s of times before. The rear of the car steps out, but you don't know what to do as you have never encountered this before. You panic, naturally stamping on the brakes and end up off the road in a ditch.
The alternative: drivers must complete separate examinations for front wheel drive and rear driven cars, like how automatic and manual are separate licenses.
As part of that drivers must learn how the drivetrain affects how the car breaks traction both under power and under non-power conditions (i.e. coasting), and the appropriate corrections for both.
Let's come back to our scenario. We can assume the driver is operating a front wheel drive vehicle. Instead of slamming on the brakes, the driver has experience of lift off oversteer from their test. They apply 1/4 turn of opposite lock, then unwind the lock. The driver then applies power to the front wheels to straighten the rear.
Thanks to good training and examination driver has successfully avoided ending up the ditch.
That's true, it's also going to stay true no matter the amount of training. That isn't to say that I'm advocating against more training, but I think the training is prohibitively more expensive (even in a context where driving isn't as much of a necessity as it is here) for a gain that I perceive to be largely negligible unless linked to stricter training and re-certification in general (which is certainly prohibitively expensive).
So step number 1. is not to drive as fast that you exceed the limits of your full control.
There is no step 2.
We also get taught to inspect the car before getting in in case (for example) the exhaust pipe is blocked.
More training is needed in most countries.
I won't pretend that I've always been a perfect driver, quite far from it actually, but I don't think the law should find me excuses. If I drive too fast and find myself unable to avoid a collision I definitely don't expect to get a pass for my reckless driving because it was at night and raining.
Hopefully in the not-so-far future we'll finally get those self-driving cars we were promised and we'll be able to leave all of that to the past.
Most people drive to their limits, or their comfort. Some people do stupid things and drive beyond what is safe, but dependent on where you live this may or may not be in the minority.
What fascinates me is that we are not giving drivers the skills they need to be able to avoid accidents should the worst happen. Instead we say you shouldn't drive at speed X or in condition Y.
My argument is that we should be teaching drivers these skills not only so they can correct their mistakes, because at the end of the day we are all human and make mistakes, but if we also show drivers how easy it is to lose control of a vehicle they may just respect the road a little more than they do already.
This all sounds ok in theory, but as the article makes a great case for, this is totally impossible in America because it's impossible to get around in most places without a car. You can't just not drive when the weather is a little wet, for instance; you'll lose your job, you won't be able to get home, etc.
One big problem is that most people just have no training for bad conditions. How many people even here on HN know what "lift off oversteer" is? Or how to correct for it? I do, but most don't and would wreck. The regular barely-educated driver? Forget about it. Drivers should get far more training than they do. But even then, many people wouldn't be able to master this stuff; they just don't have the aptitude.
In Germany, people have to pay thousands to take driver training that does cover much more than what Americans are required to learn. However, it's not that hard to get around in western Europe without a car if you suck at driving or can't afford car ownership.
If you're going to use something that can kill people if mishandled, you take on a lot of responsibilities, one of which is to maintain attention / control.
Same goes for many such objects, really: power tools, guns, industrial machinery, medical equipment, etc.
* https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/chinese-drivers-kill-pedes...
There was an article a while back (I can't find) where San Francisco's transit agency (SFMTA) joked about the same to save the city money.
It probably makes sense... a fatality pay out is $2M (using FAA standards). Long term medical care in the US? Easily over that...
Older people losing their cars is often the start of a decline unto death because there’s so little you can do with driving in many neighborhoods (which commonly won’t even have sidewalks) and relatively few people have the resources to hire someone to replace that lost autonomy. I remember when an older driver killed someone by backing over them in the church parking lot near here and so many people framed it in those terms when talking about whether she should lose her license, largely ignoring the person who no longer had to worry about it.
I'm not sure this is just because of the way neighborhoods are set up. It's also a lack of social structures to catch this. The richest country one earth, has Uber, yet can't keep healthcare costs low enough to keep the elderly alive longer.
That's the point of the article: currently, large parts of the United States are setup assuming that everyone has their own car and drives to perform each of those functions. For many people, there's a huge hit in convenience and budget if they switch transportation modes — e.g. where I live in DC, many of the suburbs were intentionally designed after Brown v. Board not to support pedestrians or transit users (presumed to be poor and brown), so there are no sidewalks and significant distances to get to anything other than houses even if you do take your chances on foot / bike. Someone who can't drive might find they have a 40+ minute walk to get to a library, pool, shopping center, etc. when you add up all of the street crossings and circuitous routes.
The solution is to replace their car with a vehicle that's less dangerous for others like an electrically assisted tricycle. That can serve their local transportation needs and won't cause nearly as much damage if they hit someone or something.
These lead to significant problems at intersections. It's best to keep vehicles of all types on roads where they obey the same set of rules.
Second, these intersections place a much higher burden on cyclists. That is, they have to check for traffic coming from behind to see if they're going to make a right turn and avoid getting hit. They have to watch for traffic coming from the side to make sure they don't get hit. And they have to watch for left turning traffic far to the left to make sure they don't get hit.
If they're riding in the standard road position (center of the lane) instead, then it's much easier to see traffic and it's easier for traffic to see them as they approach an intersection.
This is why I specified correctly designed: what you're saying is an artifact of a poorly-designed intersection which does not have good visibility or clear traffic flows.
Even the NACTO (National Association of City Transportation Officials) design guide states:
>> Driveways and minor street crossings are a unique challenge to cycle track design. A review of crossing facilities and design practice has shown that the following guidance may improve safety at crossings of driveways and minor intersections:
>>
>> * If the cycle track is parking protected, parking should be prohibited near the intersection to improve visibility. The desirable no parking area is 30 feet from each side of the crossing. >>
>> * For motor vehicles attempting to cross the cycle track from the side street or driveway, street and sidewalk furnishings and/or other features should accommodate a sight triangle of 20 feet to the cycle track from the minor street crossings and 10 feet from driveway crossing.
The distances quoted should make it evident that, at least in the US, even the guidelines aren't going to lead to "correctly designed" intersections.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neighborhood_Electric_Vehicle
Some retirement communities are specifically designed to handle those, and they work fine in many urban and suburban areas.
In most parts of the country, I doubt this story would have played out this way
[1]https://www.montlick.com/montlick-blog/auto-accidents/333-el...
The GPs comments were implying it wouldn’t happen in Europe without manslaughter charges and the US it they wouldn’t be charged. It can happen in the US with similar charges, vehicular homicide. My comment is valid.
How often do I think what happens? I live in Boston. So depending on what you are asking, the answer is probably too damn often, which is the point. See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20403831
> My comment is valid.
Oh okay.
Nope, you're wrong, this is largely untrue unless the driver fled the scene or the driver was drunk. "Whoops I didn't see them" is usually a completely valid defense and everyone shrugs and says "Oh well, accidents happen" rather than "slow down, pay attention, and learn to control your car."
http://www.startribune.com/in-crashes-that-kill-pedestrians-...
>The majority of drivers who killed pedestrians between 2010 and 2014 were not charged, according to Star Tribune analysis of metro area crash data. Those who were charged often faced misdemeanors — from speeding to careless driving — with minimal penalties, unless the driver knowingly fled or was intoxicated at the time of the crash.
https://usa.streetsblog.org/2013/11/06/no-charges-for-driver...
>Lenient laws and a culture of tolerance for traffic violence means that unless you were intoxicated when the crash occurred, the official word is most likely “accidents happen.” Even an investigation into a collision that caused life-threatening injuries might be too much to ask in a lot of jurisdictions. Streetsblog recently found that fewer than 1 percent of drivers who kill or injure pedestrians and cyclists in New York City are ticketed for careless driving, much less charged with a crime.
https://www.revealnews.org/article/bay-area-drivers-who-kill...
>Sixty percent of the 238 motorists found to be at fault or suspected of a crime faced no criminal charges during the five-year period, CIR found in its analysis of thousands of pages of police and court records from Alameda, Contra Costa, Santa Clara, San Mateo and San Francisco counties.
Also the young lady who was struck turned down an ambulance ride and got a ride home from another bystander. Injuries were not apparently life threatening. (I’m also betting the girl didn’t have health insurance.)