McSweeney’s bringing some hard truths with this one. We could all be doing better.
You forgot to go back in time and tell people that subsidizing the oil industry might be a bad idea.
When the oil and auto industries teamed up to bend public policy to their will, making a system of roads and parking lots that now function as a continuous subsidy and magnificent symbol of the normalization of injury and pollution, you had a lot of options. You could have objected. You could have shifted public opinion. Instead, you weren’t even born yet. And, rather than go back in time, all you’ve been doing is riding to get groceries and occasionally saying, “Please stop killing us.” On the effort scale? 1/10.
If a car hits a pedestrian or cyclist, the car is always legally at fault. At least here in the Netherlands. Is this not the case everywhere?
@BorgDrone @pbrisgreat Unfortunately no. In the United States the pedestrian or cyclist can be at fault (I, thankfully, don’t live in the US but I lived there for a while and I noticed the laws are skewed towards cars).
That would be amazing, but unfortunately not the case in many places, including Australia where instead a bike rider that gets hit by a car gets told that it is too difficult to prove blame on the driver, even when there is clear video evidence and third part witness statements saying the the driver intentionally rammed the rider.
Don’t ask me how I know…
In Iowa they just acquitted a man for driving into protesters blocking traffic.
Was that the one that posted ahead of time that they were going to do so?
Different guy.
This guy used his wife and child as eye witness testimony to prove he did nothing wrong when he drove into the crowd.
How long before they start selling pedestrian shields to drivers so they don’t dent their vehicles when running us over?
Oh lord, no. Drivers are rarely held accountable for murdering cyclists. The “accountability” usually caps out at weekends in jail, picking up some garbage on the highway, and being real real sorry.
If you want a good sense of how bad it is in the states here are two episodes of Freakomomics that do a job of exposing the issue.
“The Perfect Crime”: https://freakonomics.com/podcast/the-perfect-crime/ (From 2014)
Then a follow-up episode: “Why Is the U.S. So Good at Killing Pedestrians?”: https://freakonomics.com/podcast/why-is-the-u-s-so-good-at-killing-pedestrians/ (from July 2023)
Cyclists and pedestrians are more vulnerable, the law is there because drivers have a duty to be extra careful around them.
Yeah the part I have a problem is, is where you’re automatially at fault even when you were careful and did nothing wrong.