Monday, February 13, 2017

Shared responsibility for accidents

I find the law to be an ass when it comes to vehicle accidents. It seems like it's always one person's fault and not the other, when in truth, every accident is the product of shared blame.
For example if you're driving and you hit a pedestrian who has walked into the road without looking (the most common type of car-pedestrian accident), it should not be solely the driver's fault. The pedestrian should share responsibility because it was their carelessness that created a situation the driver was then forced to deal with. Right now, the driver would always be to blame for this, which means a pedestrian could literally step into the road 5 meters in front of a car doing 120km/h - the driver would of course have zero chance - but it would become the driver's fault in almost every country.
The same would be true for a truck driver who collects a car across the front of his truck. The truck driver would always be to blame but the car driver must typically have done something to get themselves into that situation. The most common of these is drivers who merge on to motorways without properly waiting for an empty spot, and then get themselves picked off by a truck.
Sadly, without a dashcam, most accidents fall into this legal soup and the blame gets apportioned where it always has, irrespective of what actually happened.
Given the amount of crappy driving I see every day, I'm seriously considering a dashcam for no other reason than making an offshoot website or youtube channel that does nothing but show how incapable drivers are around here :)

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Unless the pedestrian were on a pedestrian crossing, I don't think that the blame would be put on the driver (I assume that the driver is sober and going within speed limits). At least not in my country. The police would open a file and investigate, but the result would be in favor of the driver.

Regarding the truck example I mostly agree that it is shared blame. People should know better not to drive in the blind spots of such vehicles (or any other vehicles for that matter); but, the one who changes lanes should be careful when engaging in that maneuver.

Paul said...

I'm looking at a dashcam for my wife, my daughter and myself. There are way too many idiots out there.
Oh, and I'd subscribe to your channel!!! :-)