The assumption was for an ordinary driver, the expectation is that given sufficient lighting the vast majority of drivers would see and avoid a pedestrian. Most of the millions of pedestrian vehicle interactions daily go by without incident, one or the other party giving way, so this would be the normal expectation for an ordinary driver.
We can reasonably assume that pja is aware of the existence of abysmal drivers and fatal crashes that should not have happened. I doubt their intent was for "would" to be interpreted as "100%".
Yeeesh. Idk if it was intended that way, but this comes off very victim-blamey. So let's get an alternate take:
80% at night - drivers should be forced to slow down at night. They can't see and avoid pedestrians as well.
33% involve a drunk pedestrian - the implication of this is that without constant vigilance, your safety is in great danger. This agrees strongly with the "20% are elderly" stat. You ability as an able-bodied person to actively avoid cars is the only thing keeping you alive.
Exactly. If I had a reasonable expectation that >99% of the drivers obeyed the law, I wouldn't feel too hesitant to let my 3yo cross the street on his own. He knows how to look both ways, and cross when people have stopped. Even right-on-red is safe at face value. But I don't even believe that 5% of drivers obey all of the laws that protect crossing pedestrians. It's almost as if they don't expect pedestrians to exist.
I'm not convinced that (2) is literally true — that the pedestrian would have been likely to be killed in this particular instance — but: she was strolling nonchalantly across a four-lane roadway with a 45mph speed limit, in the dark, with dark clothing on, and paying not the slightest attention to oncoming traffic. I'm sure that if she did that regularly, sooner or later she would have had at least a close call.
But is that the actual situation we're talking about? Or are we actually talking about a situation where the person may have been jaywalking but would have had a reasonable expectation that a human driver would stop? I walk a decent distance to work every day and I don't think anyone totally adheres to the lights and crosswalks (not least because if you do you will be running into the road just as everyone races to make a right turn into the same crosswalk you're in).
> As to the driver always being at fault, obviously that is incorrect and often particularly so in what are considered "dangerous" intersections. In fact, the pedestrian may have to pay the driver in some cases even if they are the ones seriously injured and the driver was not.
Do you have examples of pedestrians crossing at a crosswalk (which these intersections already are; just not painted ones), and not against the signal, getting successfully sued by a driver that hits them?
> Without the jaywalker there is no safety issue either.
This isn’t true - a street of just cars will have lethal crashes amongst themselves even with no pedestrians. A street of just pedestrians will never lethally bump into each other. The only lethal thing in the situation is the cars.
I’d love to agree with you, but unfortunately as humans we are not infallible. We cannot rely on people to look in every direction and see every hazard constantly. The driver may have been distracted, for example by sun strike, and the pedestrian may have not seen the car due to its colour.
Roads need to be designed for their purpose, and their purpose also includes allowing pedestrians to cross safely even if the pedestrian and the driver suffer from a momentary distraction.
GP's point was that human's thoughts and intents are a lot different from randomness. It isn't likely that most people intend on running into pedestrians whenever they get in their car.
> You can't wilfully hit someone and just say 'my right of way' and be all in the clear.
Willfully perhaps, but if it's accidental and all other circumstances being equal I would say that's the pedestrian's fault. I don't understand this logic that because the pedestrian is ignorant about how traffic law works that they're exempt from following it, yes the driver should be paying attention at all times and be ready for anything to happen, but if someone breaks a don't walk light and just wanders into traffic, they should be held liable for the resulting accident.
> There's no circumstance where it is considered acceptable to hit a pedestrian, no matter how difficult the predestrian is being…
Obviously drivers are not permitted to simply run into pedestrians either deliberately or negligently no matter how obnoxious their behavior might be, though it is understood that pedestrians are perfectly capable of unilaterally creating situations where a collision cannot reasonably be avoided. However, that does not mean pedestrians cannot also be at fault for intentionally obstructing traffic. Pedestrians have priority due to their fragility, and with that comes a responsibility not to abuse said priority to the detriment of other users of the roads.
>Should we take this to mean that pedestrians may enter the flow of traffic willy nilly and drivers will always be found at fault in a collision? I assume not.
Pedestrians may enter the flow of traffic whenever they like, and the law will not punish them. If there is a collision, the driver may or may not be found at fault, it depends entirely on the circumstances.
>To me what I've been able to find sounds an awful lot like pedestrians are required to exercise due caution, and like basically less strictly worded versions of most US laws.
Pedestrians are encouraged to exercise due caution. They are not required to by law. You are confusing a common-sense recommendation with a legal obligation. Drivers should never assume pedestrians will behave as they "should". Pedestrians include children, the elderly, the blind, the deaf, drunk people, the mentally retarded, and so on: people who may not be able to sense, judge, or move in the normally expected way.
You will never be arrested for "reckless walking" in the way you might be arrested for reckless driving.
(You might counter with "pedestrians should not assume drivers will behave as they should" -- quite so! The distinction I am making is: if a pedestrian uses the road carelessly because he thinks drivers will always act properly, this is stupid, but not illegal. If a motorist uses the road carelessly because he assumes pedestrians will always act properly, this is both stupid and illegal.)
The specific thing you are quoting is the Highway Code, which is not law, but a series of guidelines.
>This one sounds an awful lot to me like cars have "right of way" when the amber light is flashing and a pedestrian has not yet entered the cross walk: "Pelican crossings. These are signal-controlled crossings where flashing amber follows the red ‘Stop’ light. You MUST stop when the red light shows. When the amber light is flashing, you MUST give way to any pedestrians on the crossing. If the amber light is flashing and there are no pedestrians on the crossing, you may proceed with caution."
You are incorrect. Cars do not have "the right of way" when the amber light is flashing, because as I said there is no "right of way" to be had, in that sense you describe. A pedestrian may legally step out into the street while the lights are green for cars. It is usually a terribly unwise thing to do, but idiocy is not against the law. Sometimes it's safe, such as when there's a traffic jam. I saw many people doing it this morning during rush hour -- nothing bad happened to them because the risk was objectively low, and they would have nothing to fear from any policeman who happened to see it, because their actions were not against the law.
For cars it is different: cars must stop when the light is red for them. That is a legal requirement and there can be fines or other consequences for breaking it.
>And yet, the UK is littered with pedestrian crossings. As near as I can tell you have an entire bestiary of different crossing types with different rules and regulations for each. Seems like they should be unnecessary if pedestrians have absolute priority over all other traffic right?
You misunderstand. I never said there was no danger -- of course there is danger! Crossings are a necessary evil in many places. As a matter of common sense, they should be used. But as a matter of law, pedestrians are under no obligation to use them. The police cannot fine you for not using them.
>So that sounds like you absolutely can be compelled by law to use a crossing where one is nearby.
This is only on A-roads, and only under specific circumstances, which local authorities must opt into. It is not a blanket ban on crossing the road, like the "jaywalking" concept is. I have hardly ever run into any such marked restrictions.
>Why? To me it sounds like a law reflecting reality. You could say a pedestrian has the right of way but when a pedestrian tries to occupy the space a bicycle is already or will be within the time that they are unable to safely stop, physics says the pedestrian will lose that fight.
This isn't about the laws of physics, it's about the laws of England. Yes, a pedestrian might end up in the hospital if he jumps out in front of me before I have time to brake. But he won't end up in jail. Why is this so hard to understand? You don't need to make something illegal for people to recognize it's a bad idea.
>It really feels like you have a misunderstanding of what "right of way" means here. This isn't some absolute authority where cyclists may mow down pedestrians in front of them, and cars may mow down cyclists in front of them, and busses may mow down cars and trucks may mow down busses. It's trying to resolve who needs to yield when a collision is likely to occur.
>It really feels like you have a misunderstanding of what "right of way" means here. This isn't some absolute authority where cyclists may mow down pedestrians in front of them, and cars may mow down cyclists in front of them, and busses may mow down cars and trucks may mow down busses. It's trying to resolve who needs to yield when a collision is likely to occur. As a general rule like I said, the person most able to prevent the collision in the first place is given lower right of way. A car already in a lane has right of way over a car trying to merge into the lane.
Priority rules for traffic is a different concept to the hierarchy of road users. The former is about on what the road users are doing, the latter is about what the road users are. We have the similar rules about which vehicles need to give way to others when it comes to merging and turning and so on. But a car will always be a car, no matter what lane it is in, and hence the driver has a greater degree of responsibility in circumstances where conflict with pedestrians is likely.
If there was poor visibility for the driver, there's almost certainly poor visibility for the pedestrian too. Most are sensible enough to walk a little further to where they can get a bit better look at what traffic is coming.
If I did hit someone at a visibility blind spot I'd expect to be shouted at by the cop too for not slowing down to a speed suitable for the visibility, and that the speed limit is a maximum sir. In that special sarcastic voice, common to all British cops. That might be later reflected in my fine or penalty. :)
Yes. And as a pedestrian, I would expect cars to slow down somewhat in advance when I would cross the street like that. That didn't even happen. Even if the car would brake in time, it would still be scary as hell compared to the same situation with real human drivers.
That's a strong assumption to make, that a human could have done better. It was dark, night, nowhere near a normal crosswalk, and not where I as a driver would normally expect a person to be. I think it would have been hard for even the most alert driver to not hit this person in this circumstance.
The law puts most of the burden on drivers quite intentionally, and I think properly. My general impression is that the average driver doesn't understand the law and don't appreciate the extent to which it is designed to favor pedestrians.
To give one example, drivers are required to yield to pedestrians in cross walks and to pedestrians approaching crosswalks while pedestrians are only required to "exercise due care," which is a much weaker requirement. If you want to see how weak this requirement really is, look at the case law. In many cases in which the average driver thinks the pedestrian is in the wrong, the law disagrees and would place the lion's share of blame on the driver.
The couple drivers I'd have to avoid as a pedestrian explained to me that they were not looking in the direction of travel. So I can't see what height or visibility would matter.
2. Visibility doesn't even have any relevance in the first-place
It has relevance in showing that the pedestrian was failing to exercise their duty of care and was thus at fault. Jaywalking at night wearing a black shirt is pretty negligent. Jaywalking even in the day is negligent in AZ, but at night, across a major artery, it's crazy.
Unless you are going to argue that they knew it was a self-driving car, and so thought that the car would see them in the dark. But they apparently didn't even know a car was there, so that's a tough sell. They didn't even look if a car was coming.
A lot of people here are having a hard time coming to grips with the fact that a pedestrian has responsibilities and can be at fault in a collision with a car -- e.g. that the pedestrian doesn't automatically have the right of way or a right to be avoided every time they step into a street. I get that this is a tough concept for a lot of people to internalize, but if you're going to be arguing that someone should be charged, then at least the broad outlines of the law in AZ need to be understood.
We can reasonably assume that pja is aware of the existence of abysmal drivers and fatal crashes that should not have happened. I doubt their intent was for "would" to be interpreted as "100%".
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