In Europe, if you strike a pedestrian outside a crosswalk, the same might happen to you depending on the jurisdiction. Pedestrians create their own right of way, practically speaking (if not judicially). :-)
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...