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When protestors started using the roads, I came up with the idea of making roads (outside of crosswalks) open range cars. Meaning you can do what you want but if a car hits you not only is the car not liable for any damage done to you are liable for the damage any damage you do to the car. That remains true even if the car speeds up or aims for you. The car has a priority right to use the road, and other users must yield to that right or bear the consequences.
And people say the U.S. is too car-centric!
This would be a terrible policy. People already burn their cars for insurance fraud. This adds an obvious incentive to cause personal injuries while you’re at it.
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This seems like it would have horrendous unintended consequences, in a way ‘the police beat morons who decide to glue themselves to the street and haul them off’ doesn’t. It also seems no more likely:
If only the police were actually beating morons who decide to glue themselves to the street.
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To keep such a system fair, you would also need a lot more crosswalks perhaps one every 50 meters in dense cities. As others have implied, you would have to sacrifice one lane per side plus change for parking so that drivers can get out of their car without stepping out onto the death zone. Or you just make parking on the side of the road illegal.
I think the result would be rather hellish for drivers.
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That seems like a lot of side effects for something that doesn't happen that often.
Places with no cross walks? Places with no sidewalks so people have to walk on the road? Places where people have obstructed the sidewalk by parking on it? The fact people have to get out of cars onto the road when parking or when getting into their car?
Not to mention how it allows you to murder someone just by waiting nearby until they walk into the road to get into their car. Shoulda yielded to me! I was in a car, he wasn't! Sure he was about to get into a car, but he wasn't actually in one! Yeah I aimed for him, waited for him and accelerated to 80mph but so what?
Just like now they drivers would have to look before opening their door. Pedestrians would still be allowed to use roads, in all the ways they currently do (even protesting) they just bear all the liability if they get hit outside of a cross walk.
But if I do look, open my door step out and you deliberately speed up to hit me, I still take the liability seems entirely unworkable.
Because now, we have legalized tit for tat, you hit me, if I survive I wait outside your house and wait for you to try and get into your car and hit you.
Its entirely unworkable.
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Agreed. I think culpability should be assigned on a case by case basis. Someone jumps off a highway bridge in front of a moving truck, you can hardly blame the truck for not going slow enough so that it could come to a stop within a meter. Someone went 50km/h in a 30km/h zone and runs over some kid? Whole different story.
That…isn’t that how it already works? It’s definitely true for speeding and vehicular manslaughter sentencing. I don’t really want to spend my afternoon looking for overpass suicides, but I would not expect the truck to be blamed in that scenario, either.
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That takes a sort of good thing and goes too far and makes it a bad thing. I jaywalk all the time. Usually with the flow of traffic which makes things way more efficient (pedestrians crossing opportunistically means you don’t need 40 seconds of pausing the road for them to cross).
Your idea would make it legal for the car to speed up and kill me while driving outside of the flow of traffic conditions. Also would provide no zone of safety if I make a mistake. This applies to cars too. If I accidentally pull out in front of you it’s better you brake than have a right to ram my car.
More broadly this applies to all sorts of things. If someone in a business deal has their lawyer make a mistake in the other sides favor is it better to bankrupt the guy or adjust the contract. Maybe for the other side it’s even more profitable to burn the guy but for society as a whole it’s better to adjust and continue with the deal providing a good/service for society. In business deals like this if you always chose short term gain it would mean all deals needs more lawyers for longer contracts detailing every possibility and more eyes to catch mistakes. But lawyers overall are a negative sum game as they costs money and produce nothing.
Of course in many ways these protestors who glue themselves are shitting on the commons. We won’t run them over because saving ourselves 2 hours isn’t worth killing them just like it’s not worth killing a pedestrian who fell into the street when you could have just breaks. Yes the pedestrian is an annoyance to you and costs you 10 seconds and the pedestrian is in the wrong but the commons are that everyone is sometimes partially in the wrong and inflicting maximize damage on them for a small gain to yourself doesn’t benefit the whole of society.
For the protestors though you could argue running one over when they are costing 300k people one hour or like 13k days gets close to being net efficient.
Car collisions would remain case by case. Only pedestrians would be liable by default.
That’s just an example. You are still proposing something radical to deal with protestors blocking roads that would apply to a pedestrian tripping and falling into the street. Just legalizing murder for a death that could be avoided.
There is a much simpler solution. Give the protestors 5 year jail sentences.
And since no one with power is even willing to hand out 5 year jail sentences, how is it remotely possible that a bill allowing drivers to hit pedestrians would ever be passed? The reason the protestors get away with it is that the powers that be are generally sympathetic to, if not outright supportive of, the protestors and their cause. The minute an anti-immigrant group tried the same tactic, the police and courts would magically stiffen their resolve and start handing out the lengthiest sentences permitted by law. It’s all “who, whom.”
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So you're free to kill jaywalkers like you're in the purge? I see a lot wrong with this view. Any deviation from lawful norms should not be death. How about if a kid wanders into a neighborhood road after a ball? Free to run him down on purpose?
"I'm going to run over children and make the families pay me for the privilege!" seems like a bad platform to run for office on.
We're all in this life together. I only live every day because some asshole doesn't decide to cross the center line on my commute and kill us both at a combined speed of 120 mph. We live by the grace of others. Always.
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