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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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