On 9/30/2018 7:13 PM, jbeattie wrote:
If a motorist violates a traffic law, he's presumed to be at fault. If a motorists simply fails to exercise due care, he's at fault. It's not hard to prove that a motorist is liable in the ordinary traffic accident scenario. ... I think the current system works fine.

I resisted giving my opinion until others had their chance.

IMO, the current system does _not_ work fine. First, you say that (in
Oregon) a motorist could be 49% at fault but suffer no penalty? Even in
a perfectly unbiased legal system, that would seem unfair. But in the
American system (which varies by state) the frequent assumption is that
bicyclist has no right to be there. To me, that seems terrible.

We live in a society where "I didn't see him" is accepted as a valid
excuse for manslaughter. Where motorists can kill through egregious
violations of law or by inexcusable recklessness, yet be allowed to
drive again. Where death or maiming of cyclists and pedestrians under
those circumstances are brushed off as "unfortunate accidents."

I think that situation is bad, and that system is _not_ working well.
While I don't see strict liability as a silver bullet, I think it would
be a step in the right direction. Perhaps it might motivate insurance
companies to lobby for stricter licensing standards or tighter
enforcement. After all, it's not being proposed as a criminal standard.
It's civil, affecting mostly the economics of the situation, which is
mostly "whose insurance is going to pay the bill?" And more than
anything else, it's just flipping the current default assumption. It's
replacing "the guy weird enough to not be driving probably wasn't
careful enough" with "the person operating the deadly machine was
probably not careful enough."

I'll also mention that friends of ours in Zurich said that the
imposition of strict liability there made a tremendous difference in the
behavior of motorists. Admittedly, that's just their impression; but
they were very happy about it.

Again, I don't think it would be a silver bullet. I think any benefits
would be slow to come in America, and probably only after education
campaigns. Worse than that, I think it has almost no chance of getting
passed into law for the foreseeable future. But I do think it would
help, and I'd welcome it.


--
- Frank Krygowski