Hitting a pedestrian

[numbnuts]

After reading all of this it looks like as a cyclist we are “stuffed every which way you can”

 

[GrumpyGregry]

I'm pretty sure the fault can be ascribed 100% to one party.

There have been two posts by OP, neither describes what happened. You are deliberately being irritating. I am blocking you. Ain't no one got time for this.

Excellent.

Mind how you go.

 

[KneesUp]

We're not in the playground any more @GrumpyGregry

 

[GrumpyGregry]

However, let's take your point purely in terms of responsibility. Can you not imagine a situation in which the cyclist is being perfectly responsible and the pedestrian walks out on him anyway? Have you really never ridden a bike and thought 'they didn't see me'? Do you really expect every cyclist to ride at walking pace in case a pedestrian waiting to cross steps out in front of them?

No, for the reasons explained above and below

This always comes up, and it simply isn't true. I'm a relatively nippy commuter by Swansea standards, and I also cycle a lot in London, where there are plenty of faster people than me but I'm still no dawdler. There are occasions when one does have to slow almost to a standstill, but most of the time it is possible to maintain a reasonable speed by anticipating and choosing a different line. One learns to read the trajectory of pedestrians quite well. Not infallibly of course, but the obvious advice is that the less sure you are, the greater the allowances you need to make. The simplest way I can put this is to say that you should take responsibility for the danger you present to others and cycle within the limits of your abilities.

 

[Dogtrousers]

I agree most people would argue that the pedestrian is at fault, but in the eyes of the law, the pedestrian has no legal responsibility to cross safely.

I am happy for someone to find any relevant law that says otherwise.

Try this: http://www.farrarsbuilding.co.uk/latestDetail.php?Personal-Injury-Update---September-2011-67

There have, historically, been many cases where the pedestrian was found wholly liable and are worth noting for defendant practitioners:
Brophy v Shaw (1965) Times, 25th June [...]
Barlow v Smith LTL 15/5/2000 EXTEMPORE [...]
Roda Sam v Atkins [2005] EWCA Civ 1452, [2005] All ER (D) 113 (Nov)
...etc...

Although you can balance this with, from the same source: "A man had an absolute right to be (on the road) and it is a duty of drivers of vehicles not to run him down" so said the House of Lords in Craig v Glasgow Corporation (1919) 35 TLR 214.

That link above is an interesting read.

 

[GrumpyGregry]

We're not in the playground any more @GrumpyGregry

You may not consider this a playground of sorts but you can not be certain that is not how it is viewed by others, myself included.

As to @TheJDog his "I am blocking you" response, like I give a toss having never knowingly interacted with this person before in my life, is the equivalent of him sticking his fingers in his ears and standing there going "la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la" in the playground.

 

[KneesUp]

No, for the reasons explained above and below

anticipating and choosing a different line. One learns to read the trajectory of pedestrians quite well. Not infallibly of course, but the obvious advice is that the less sure you are, the greater the allowances you need to make. The simplest way I can put this is to say that you should take responsibility for the danger you present to others and cycle within the limits of your abilities.
​

(my bold)

You can never know what pedestrians will do with absolute certainty. Now matter how sure you are, you can never be totally sure - so by the logic of the post you quoted above, you should always make some allowance for that uncertainty. This much I agree with.

The point is that given that you can never be totally sure, there is a chance that the amount of 'allowance' you are making is incorrect - which you seem to be saying means that any incident will be the fault of the cyclist because you seem to think the pedestrian has no responsibility at all.

But the logical conclusion of the post you quoted is that unless you are totally sure that no-one is going to leap out in front of you, you should ride at walking speed or slower. And given that one can never be totally sure that won't happen, I might as well hang my bike on the wall and call it art.

 

[Cold]

I'm pretty sure the fault can be ascribed 100% to one party.

There have been two posts by OP, neither describes what happened. You are deliberately being irritating. I am blocking you. Ain't no one got time for this.

All I know is that the kid stepped off the pavement and was hit by a cyclist from behind and that the road he was hit on is very wide with no parked cars.

 

[KneesUp]

You may not consider this a playground of sorts but you can not be certain that is not how it is viewed by others, myself included.

I was rather suggesting that your "ner ne ner ner ner I'm not bothered anyway" response was somewhat beneath you.

Perhaps I was wrong.

 

[KneesUp]

If anyone's interesting, there's a rather good explanation of the current case law here.

I'm not interesting, but I'll read the link

 

[GrumpyGregry]

But the logical conclusion of the post you quoted is that unless you are totally sure that no-one is going to leap out in front of you, you should ride at walking speed or slower. And given that one can never be totally sure that won't happen, I might as well hang my bike on the wall and call it art.

That is not a logical conclusion but rather an example of reductio ad absurdam surely?

I think we are far better at assessing and managing risk than to require that sort of attenuated response.

You/we cannot be sure you/we won't be one of the several thousand cyclists killed or seriously injured on our roads each year. And yet you/we still ride.

 

[KneesUp]

That is not a logical conclusion but rather an example of reductio ad absurdam surely?

I think we are far better at assessing and managing risk than to require that sort of attenuated response.

You/we cannot be sure you/we won't be one of the several thousand cyclists killed or seriously injured on our roads each year. And yet you/we still ride.

But you're ruling out the possibility that there can be a crash between a cyclist and a pedestrian in which the pedestrian is at fault - which means you *must* have concluded that in any situation where the two collie, the rider wasn't paying enough attention, even if the pedestrian leapt out at them from a concealed location. As we can never rule this out completely, the only way to be totally sure you are never at fault is not to ride a bike.

It's your complete reluctance to accept that a pedestrian can ever have any fault that leads to the absurd conclusion that one cannot ride at all.

 

[theclaud]

You can never know what pedestrians will do with absolute certainty. Now matter how sure you are, you can never be totally sure - so by the logic of the post you quoted above, you should always make some allowance for that uncertainty. This much I agree with.

The point is that given that you can never be totally sure, there is a chance that the amount of 'allowance' you are making is incorrect - which you seem to be saying means that any incident will be the fault of the cyclist because you seem to think the pedestrian has no responsibility at all.

But the logical conclusion of the post you quoted is that unless you are totally sure that no-one is going to leap out in front of you, you should ride at walking speed or slower. And given that one can never be totally sure that won't happen, I might as well hang my bike on the wall and call it art.

Presumably you actually ride a bike already, so unless you are either very lucky or actively bullying people out of your way, then you are probably making such allowances every day. If you fear you are likely to hit someone, then you probably need to be making more. If you are overconfident of your abilities and hit someone as a result, it's your fault. If you're confident you have the skills, then you might (for example) judge it likely, when a gang of teenagers are larking about on the nearside pavement and you are batting along at 25mph, that one of them might drift or be bounced into the road. So perhaps you check your right shoulder to see what will be overtaking you at the moment you will need to pass them, hold off the would-be overtaker with a hand gesture, and pull out very wide whilst simultaneously taking account of any oncoming or forward hazards. Then you can hold your speed. If you can't manage doing whatever it takes to create the space to pass them wide, then pass them nearer but slow down accordingly. The closer you take it, the slower you'll need to go and the more ready you'll need to be to hit the brakes, plus if you're squeezed between them and other traffic you're no longer taking control of your lane so you will probably worrying more about the car behind. You could even ride on the pavement, but then you'd probably be stuck behind a gaggle of annoying teenagers. The point is that none of this is their problem.

 

[GrumpyGregry]

But you're ruling out the possibility that there can be a crash between a cyclist and a pedestrian in which the pedestrian is at fault - which means you *must* have concluded that in any situation where the two collie, the rider wasn't paying enough attention, even if the pedestrian leapt out at them from a concealed location. As we can never rule this out completely, the only way to be totally sure you are never at fault is not to ride a bike.

It's your complete reluctance to accept that a pedestrian can ever have any fault that leads to the absurd conclusion that one cannot ride at all.

Where have I said a pedestrian can never have any fault? Where have I said a cyclist can never "be to blame"? Cos if I have, I'm obviously talking cr@p.

 

[GrumpyGregry]

I was rather suggesting that your "ner ne ner ner ner I'm not bothered anyway" response was somewhat beneath you.

Perhaps I was wrong.

I'm flattered. But very little is beneath me.