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Judge rules cyclist’s lack of helmet “of no relevance” as taxi driver fined €1,000 for breaking rider’s leg in roundabout crash – after police noted cyclist’s dark clothes and earphones (road.cc)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/fuckcars@lemmy.world
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The dildo of consequences rarely arrives lubed.

I'm really not a fan of the cops arguing that the cyclist was partly to blame, though, and a €1000 fine is pretty damn low for breaking someone's leg and wrecking a good six months of their life.

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[–] -2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I can avoid dark objects just fine, what is difficult to deal with is people who wear what could the equivalent of camo, and getting pissed that I didn't see them until late.

A tree is much larger than a human, making it more visually distinct.

Lets take an extreme scenario, just to try and find the limits of what is the responsibility of a driver and a bicyclist, I know it is a ridiculous scenario, but it is interesting to see were people feel the limits should be.

A person wears a ghillie suit, and lies down next to the road, he is playing a game of extreme hide and seek with a few friends, well the game day just ended, and he stands up just as a car is 50 meters away, the speed limit is 50kmh, it is dusk, the driver of the car swerves to avoid potentially hitting the person, and hits a light pole on the other side of the road.

Who would you say is responsible for the accident?

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

    A tree is too large? What about a trashcan then. A person who has passed out and fallen from the sidewalk onto the street? Whatever.

    A person wears a ghillie suit, and lies down next to the road, he is playing a game of extreme hide and seek with a few friends, well the game day just ended, and he stands up just as a car is 50 meters away, the speed limit is 50kmh, it is dusk, the driver of the car swerves to avoid potentially hitting the person, and hits a light pole on the other side of the road.

    If you need to build fantastical scenarios to justify your reasoning, maybe your position isn't as valid as you think. Luckily we have rules and judges for this, someone jumping in front of your car is usually classified as insurance fraud or attempted suicide. If he was on a crosswalk, your fault for not slowing down accordingly.

    And anyway, at 50kmh, stopping the average car takes 14, 20 meters maximum, reaction time is 1s usually, let's say you're 90 years old and it takes you 2 seconds, you'll start braking after 28 meters... So essentially in the worst case scenario you'll maybe just touch the guy with your license plate.

    Which is totally beside the point by the way, because I was talking about YOUR OWN safety, forget about responsibility, imagine a sinkhole had opened on the road, if you fell in it wouldn't be your fault, right? Yet it's still preferable NOT TO DO THAT!

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    When going 50km/h the average distance needed to come to a comfortable stop including taking a whole second to figure out what's happening and react is 40 meters.

    For an emergency stop (still taking the 1 second reaction time) it's 28 meters.

    So if you can't stop with 50 meters you are absolutely unfit to get behind the wheel.

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