There is absolutely no excuse for a car to hit a pedestrian in or at the end of a crosswalk, regardless of “signaling”. The car should be driving slow enough to make this impossible, and for the worst-case scenario to be the pedestrian walking into the car.
I don't think so. The police have said that 1) the pedestrian was at least partially at-fault for not crossing at a crosswalk and 2) given the circumstances, the same outcome would have occurred with a human driver.
Are you referring to the pedestrian who's almost crossed the crosswalk on the left side of the screen? This is still a proper yield as far as I can see. The car just enters the intersection before that person has finished crossing.
With a pedestrian in / on the edge of the crosswalk. And there was even another car that had been moving just a few seconds earlier stopped there too...
Watch again. Those pedestrians were in the crosswalk before the car turns. That's illegal at best, and definitely dangerous for those pedestrians. The car wasn't taking a tight right turn either.
I've been struck by a car while in a crosswalk. I waited to cross until the car stopped. It started again while I was in the crosswalk staring at them. Drivers are the problem not pedestrians.
The car did have the right of way though, as the crosswalk had a red light on. As to why one of the pedestrians decided to stand in middle of the road during a red light, I have no idea.
I thought California law was to let the pedestrian fully cross, but apparently not:
> In California, the law does not state that a driver must wait for the pedestrian to fully exit the crosswalk or the street before they proceed on their way in their lane. A pedestrian must be safely out of the driver's path of travel for them to begin driving again.
If a pedestrian steps out onto a crosswalk and you cannot stop without behaving erratically, you were going too fast for road conditions or you weren't paying attention and you're at fault.
If your quick stop causes problems for any vehicles behind you, they were going too fast or weren't paying attention and they're at fault.
For every complicated question there is an answer that is simple and wrong.
The person becomes visible as separating from the cross walk in the video 1 second in and intersection with the crosswalk happens about 3 seconds in. A reaction time of 1 second gives you 1 second to bring the car to a complete stop.
Pedestrians playing frogger by stepping out directly in front of cars that can't reasonable react in time are often deemed at fault. In one particular groan inducing situation a pedestrian was successfully sued for the damaged caused by the collision.
Beyond legal liability slamming on the brakes in this situation is just logically the wrong thing to do. A good driver would note that they are going to pass the pedestrian without incident. A bad driver slamming on the brakes drastically increases the chance of an accident in an attempt to slavishly follow a poorly understood interpretation of the rules at the expense of actual safety.
If you slam on the brakes at one second you will come to rest 3 feet from the pedestrian who will predictably freak out.
If you slam on the brakes at 1.5 seconds you probably hit them.
If you slam on the brakes at 2 seconds you will probably come to rest in front of them pointlessly.
If the pavement is wet or your car is even slightly shitty you will almost certainly hit them
In any case you risk injuring yourself, risk a collision with another car which you will be responsible for.
I don't think the law says that you need to treat people not entering a crosswalk as attempting to cross it. We can play this game all day if you just want to be obtuse about using words. But nothing you described was impossible to work out, nor was the scenario you most immediately described in your recent post even remotely troublesome. Do you mean if people are in the crosswalk but don't cross? How often does that really happen? Ironic considering that in this case, the pedestrian was in the crosswalk and the car drove through anyway. Pretty dangerous IMO
That's a valid point to make in the general case, for times when you have no good option, and hitting the pedestrian in the crosswalk may be the lesser evil.
But in this case, hard breaking would have been plenty fine and with little downside risk (beyond the general problem of excessive unnecessary braking). The car's computer was aware of an obstacle in sufficient time, as would a human driver have been.
That’s really awful. These kind of incidents need to be investigated. Whatever situation caused the car to just run into the path of a pedestrian in a crosswalk can’t be allowed.
The pedestrian stopped as soon as they saw the car suddenly veering towards them; not just once the driver intervened, as far as I can tell.
Whatever the hypothetical (it certainly might have missed the pedestrian, or made a last second emergency stop) - it suddenly veered towards a pedestrian that was already walking on the road, and that alone is absolutely not OK. Scaring the living daylights out of people isn't acceptable, even if you might not have killed them without an intervention. And let's be fair, if the pedestrian had not paid attention, and the driver neither, this certainly could have lead to an accident. Even if it were "just" an unexpected emergency stop; that itself isn't without risk.
The pedestrian was about 3/4 of the way across the road when she was struck, and was walking a bicycle that was partially laden with goods. That suggests that quick evasion on the pedestrian's part would have been somewhat difficult, but given that the road was empty of other vehicles, there was a long clear sight distance to the pedestrian, and there was ample space to maneuver, any reasonable driver would have been able to stop or switch lanes to evade the pedestrian.
The driver was not paying attention to the road and was incapable of performing a timely emergency maneuver (be it a stop or lane change).
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