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Comment by mslate | Hacker News Reader

Yes yes, the person outside of a car must provide deference to the car owner. Poor people serve the rich.

It's not about class, it's about staying alive. Cars win any encounter, hands down. My rule of crossing streets is to assume I am invisible and the drivers are not aware of my existence. This is, IMO, the only safe rule to follow when crossing the paths of fast moving, multi-ton machines with only minimal requirements made of the driver.

But we're talking about writing laws here. For example:

>with only minimal requirements made of the driver.

could easily be changed by changing the requirements.

No law is going to physically protect you from a 2 ton hunk of steel.

Not so sure about that one.

Commercial drivers are involved in collisions less frequently, and the more stringent licensing requirements (i.e. a law) are probably helping with that.

Drivers knowing that they will get away with mowing down a pedestrian so long as they say they didn't see them is also going to encourage dangerous driving.

Most importantly, laws that promote safer street designs make a massive difference in pedestrian fatalities.

All this to say that: laws do protect people from 2ton hunks of steel.

> Drivers knowing that they will get away with mowing down a pedestrian so long as they say they didn't see them is also going to encourage dangerous driving.

This is silly. Nobody thinks this. ”Mowing down a pedestrian”, even if one has a perfect legal defense, would be incredibly traumatic even for the driver. Traffic rules ought to be engineered with practicality (physics, the limits of human cognition and visual perception, etc.) paramount.

If you have a point you can feel free to make a point instead on snidely putting words in someone else's mouth.

And where exactly do you live where only rich people drive cars?

Reddit tells everyone that only rich people drives cars.

Are you saying that car ownership is equally distributed even down to the poorest 1%?

Again, if you have a point to make then make the point. These leading questions, and putting words in other people's mouths, is silly and useless.

Of course they must. It's a two ton block of metal traveling at about 10 meters per second. Not yielding to the massive energetic slab of metal is quite simply irrational. Cars yield to trucks too. Anyone who doesn't has some kind of death wish. Some reality denying law doesn't really invalidate physics.

That's what always gets me with these "won't you think of the poor pedestrian" arguments. I never see people arguing for their god given right to stand in front a moving locomotive. Aircraft? Only time pedestrians are allowed anywhere near the runways where they accelerate is to board the plane. But somehow with cars it's alright. Dude walks in front of a train and it's suicide. Same dude walks in front of a car and it's murder.

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