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Comment by scarface74 | Hacker News Reader

And that's how people usually react when someone is hit on 2 wheeled vehicle: trying to find a reason the rider deserved it.

If I’m in a car and disobey the traffic laws and get in an accident with someone who was following the law - by definition, I’m at fault.

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What you deserve and what you are at fault for are not the same thing. Fault is a legal concept - as you said, by definition - of who is responsible for the outcome. But that doesn't mean that breaking the law means you deserve broken bones and misery: things you deserve are things you should be rewarded with or punished by for an action. If you deserved it, the punishment for illegal lane splitting (or an equivalent crime, like speeding) would be for the police to take a baton to your knees.

After jumping to blaming the rider, you graciously accepted you were wrong about the law in some jurisdictions. Unfortunately, you then continued trying to blame the rider without taking the lesson that you may not be aware of what's safest for a bike rider to do. The only explanation I see for this is that you place people on bikes in a different mental tribe to your own.

If I drive into oncoming traffic, run a red light, fail to stop at a two way stop, etc. why shouldn’t I expect to be in an accident? I’m intentionally breaking the law and drivers expectations.

Why shouldn't the other road users expect you to break the law?

You drive with the expectation that someone will be going the wrong way?

Well if you're hit while lane splitting, it's because someone didn't indicate or look

And if you are hit while driving the wrong way, is it also because someone wasn’t looking? The lane splitter did something they knew was illegal (in the jurisdiction in question), why should I be on the lookout for illegal behavior?

From even a practical standpoint, if I’m on a motorcycle, I know that I’m at an increase risk of injury. Why wouldn’t I be more careful?

No, that's not true. Take the simple case, you're not belted in (therefore disobeying laws, let's choose California, for example) and the light turns green but it turned for both you and the other side because of a malfunction. You would be marked down as no one at fault.

You were both obeying the traffic laws. In the case of lane splitting where it is illegal - one person clearly wasn’t. Not wearing your seat belt didn’t cause the accident.

Oh no, one person wasn't following the laws: no belt. You'll get ticketed for that in CA (where the scenario is set).

That's to illustrate precisely the idea you mentioned. The violation of laws must contribute to the accident for it to count towards fault.

Now that it's clear to me that you agree with that, I'm happy to close the discussion.

And most people will agree with that if directly asked the question. But given a situation with even the slightest hint of potential ambiguity, people tend to basically erase the familiar elements and scrutinize the people who are the most unusual.

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