Hacker News Reader

Comment by eric_b | Hacker News Reader

So, he was drunk, high, and riding on a sidewalk without a helmet. And now it's the City's fault?

Do we blame the city when drunks crash their cars in to lane barriers? Or trees?

I don't like those scooters and I think they are dangerous - but even the man in the story admits he rode them many times previously, and knew he was not supposed to ride on the sidewalks. He knew what he was getting in to.

This trend of "no one is ever responsible for their own actions" is not going to end well. When do we start holding people accountable?

View on HN

No, that's what Bird is saying. In fact they're expressly saying he was drinking the night before. There was no ABV test done on him, so there's zero proof to their accusation. His blood showed levels of cannabis. However, if you've ever had to pee in cup you also know that cannabis shows up in blood/urine far after you've smoked or consumed.

They're trying to bash his reputation with utterly unprovable claims to make him seem like a degenerate (because, yea... who drinks and smokes weed in LA?). If he wins he can probably come after them for slander now too.

I hope he wins.

I hope city/Bird wins, him being irresponsible without helmet and riding illegally on sidewalk is not tax payers fault.

Too many people want Bird/City to loose just because they hate corps.

> His blood showed levels of cannabis. However, if you've ever had to pee in cup you also know that cannabis shows up in blood/urine far after you've smoked or consumed.

yes, metabolites show up for a long time in urine, making it useless for this sort of thing.

they don't stick around nearly as long in blood, and it is suitable (along with expert interpretation) for getting a sense of whether or not somebody recently high.

> However, if you've ever had to pee in cup you also know that cannabis shows up in blood

peeing in a cup does not give you insight into this.

Bird shouldn’t be in the middle here. The fact that it was a Bird scooter instead of his own seems to be immaterial, the scooter itself seems not to be at fault.

If you’re illegally operating (invalid vehicle for the road), your ability to complain diminishes quite a bit. Sucks to be that injured, this is where socialized medicine sort of helps out.

I'm not convinced Bird is irrelevant, specifically because the city made a rather convoluted agreement with Bird to enable its use in the city.

Use that is _known_ to be largely done outside of the terms of use and/or city law.

He was allegedly “drunk or high” and it remains to be seen if wearing a helmet in this case would have prevented becoming a paraplegic based on how his accident is described. His neck (cervical spine) injury is likely the primary cause of his disability rather than the skull fracture.

I think we are all ignoring the elephant in the room: absolutely terrible infrastructure for anything besides car. The US collectively has spent billions (trillions?) in new roads and highways but not much else in between.

So when are we going to hold ourselves accountable for the mess that O&G has gotten us into and reverse this trend?

If you actually read the article, you would have noticed that birds lawyers are contending that he was somehow intoxicated from drinking the night before. Also anyone with a passing familiarity of marijuana would know that the half life of it sitting in your bloodstream is almost an entire month.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com