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Comment by WalterBright | Hacker News Reader

Never? Some accidents involving bicycles and cars are the bicycle's fault, some are the car's fault. Some are both, some are neither's.

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Dutch law has a nice solution: liability correlates with weight. The more weight you put on the street, the more explaining you have to do, because you chose to potentially cause more damage. In a collision, the weightiest vehicle therefore is by default liable, unless they can prove otherwise. This means that in bicycle-car accidents, drivers almost always pay, and in bicycles pedestrian accident the cyclist.

I've seen cyclists drafting behind trucks, where they ride about 5 feet behind the right rear bumper of a panel truck going 35 mph.

If something happens up front and the trucker has to hit the brakes hard, is it his fault if the cyclist goes under his rear bumper?

For every well intended law there has to be someone who can conjure a ridiculous scenario out of thin air to prove that the whole concept is meaningless. But guess what: this is traffic, not programming. And intent matters.

It's not ridiculous. I've seen them do it with my own eyes (I was driving a bit back from the truck, I gave the pair a lot of extra space). I've heard other cyclists talking about how they regularly draft.

Yes, but you are using this to make it seem as though the law is ridiculous because it does not account for situations like that. Which it does. If you run into the back of a vehicle due to stupidity and reckless behavior (which applies to bicycles just as it would to other vehicles) then you will find that you can't claim it was the driver of the vehicles fault.

You are trying to make an argument that default liability is unjust and you are failing at that.

Well, looks like the law will work there. He'll have lots of explaining to do and the explaining will be easy. Hardly sounds like a counter-example.

The idea of "default" liability is unjust. Who is at fault needs to be proven, at least with a preponderance of evidence. If that cannot be done, then liability should be shared.

No, the idea of "default" liability is just. Since driving in most places is a privilege not a right, arbitrary restrictions can be imposed. In this case, the restrictions simply involve increased risk of sanctions for the ability to drive increasingly risky vehicles.

This has a strong precedent: Class A vs Class C licences.

Mixing modalities like that is forbidden and not necessary in almost all of the Netherlands. Locations can always be reached by bike path, and only slow speed often urban roads allow mixing. The trucker could point out the bike was on a road it wasn't allowed.

It is only abroad that I started to see such dangerous cycling, and then discovered this idiotic war between the modalities.

> 5 feet behind the right rear bumper of a panel truck going 35 mph.

Most cyclists would struggle to go much more than half of that speed. I think this must be an outlier.

I've also seen cars drafting behind trucks on the motorway doing 90kph. But they are a minority.

We are trying to persuade our government here in Scotland that presumed liability [1] would be very effective. It is common throughout Europe.

[1] https://www.cyclelawscotland.co.uk/blog/article/the-time-is-...

In all fairness that sounds a lot like "laws do not exist for cyclists". Having to prove your innocence is incompatible with the idea of rule of law.

As a car driver, I would start setting up dash cams (which are illegal in Europe thanks to GDPR) to help me proving my innocence.

Both parties in the accident would need to prove their innocence. All else being equal, the party that introduced more kinetic energy onto public roads will be taken to be the most likely source of excess kinetic energy causing the accident.

> which are illegal in Europe thanks to GDPR

Is CCTV also illegal now?

Monitoring public spaces is.

> (which are illegal in Europe thanks to GDPR)

Its wrong, dashcams are legal in most EU countries, but you don't have any right on the image diffusion.

[edit] I just checked, and tbh, you should search "are dashcam legal in the EU", yoiu'll have a list of countries in which its legal or illegal. Nothing to do with GDPR.

> you chose to potentially cause more damage

Seriously? I surrounded myself with a metric ton of rigid metal and bazillion safety systems (and pay ridiculous sums for that, mind you) to protect myself and my family in a deadly environment. Cyclist chose to go there practically naked.

And before you say it's not a "deadly environment", it's "deadly people" - that's mostly false. Any human has limits to reaction time, can't see everything and so on, fixing that substantially is really hard if not impossible (self-driving cars, maybe).

Yes, as a driver I basically chose to sign a blood contract to kill people with low probability cause I'm not a perfect machine. But did I have much choice? Driving my mom to a hospital on a bike is impossible. Are you sure you didn't sign other such contracts in you life for yourself and your family? Are you sure your quality of life you chose does not condemn other people to poverty and death?

What fraction of your trips are driving your mom to the hospital?

By entering a heavy vehicle capable of generating orders of magnitude more kinetic energy than human beings on foot, yes, you have assumed the consequent responsibility of being more likely to cause severe accidents.

Fortunately hospitals here are accessible by both bike and public transport, and there are insurance provided taxi's for people who can't use them but do have to get to a hospital.

But, none of this means you can't drive a car. It just means by doing that you accept the appropriate responsibility, which plenty of Dutch people do every day! We are known for bikes, but the truth is that we are also amongst the biggest drivers (in terms of distance) in Europe.

As you can afford a car, you can buy a dashcam to demonstrate to a court what the cyclist was doing wrong that might have caused you to crash into them.

> Seriously? I surrounded myself with a metric ton of rigid metal and bazillion safety systems (and pay ridiculous sums for that, mind you) to protect myself and my family in a deadly environment. Cyclist chose to go there practically naked. > > And before you say it's not a "deadly environment", it's "deadly people" - that's mostly false.

It's a "deadly environment" only because there are people who choose to surround themselves with "a metric ton of rigid metal."

I see the problem with the headline, so I can understand the overreaction. But you're right, "never" is as unrealistic as the headline.

I had to execute an extreme manouver to avoid hitting a kamikaze that cut through three lanes almost perpendicularly in very heavy traffic downtown Madrid. He scared the hell out of me, I still remember it clearly fifteen years later.

> I had to execute an extreme manouver to avoid hitting a kamikaze that cut through three lanes almost perpendicularly in very heavy traffic downtown Madrid.

How curious. You take issue with the exact interpretation of 'never' and yet use a figurative interpretation of 'kamikaze'.

Allow me to simulate a response to your comment in the style of GP:

> Kamikaze? You saw a Japanese attack aircraft cut through three lanes perpendicularly in very heavy traffic in downtown Madrid fifteen years ago? That sounds very unlikely.

For none of them it's useful to think of "an accident" because that doesn't lead to actions that prevent future crashes.

An accident is an unintentional crash, which is not the same thing as not somebody's fault or not preventable.

IMO, the word 'accident' implies a lack of negligence.

Google says:

"an unfortunate incident that happens unexpectedly and unintentionally, typically resulting in damage or injury."

I'll stick by my remark on it :-)

Absolutely. Motorcyclists are actually pretty good at adopting this philosophy, or at least the ones I know. Of course motorcycles (for the most part) have the advantage of being able to out accelerate most cars on the road so they have some extra options.

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