Drive slower, or walk yourself if you can’t see well enough to drive.
Comment on Drivers Tend To Kill Pedestrians At Night. Thermal Imaging May Help.
NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 10 months agoThen please enlighten me as to how you manipulate the laws of physics to increase the reflectivity of clothing while your night vision is impaired by all the headlights at face level angles too far to the left?
Defensive driving is acknowledging problems and trying to mitigate them. Stupidity is pretending there isn’t one
paultimate14@lemmy.world 10 months ago
justJanne@startrek.website 10 months ago
The law says, regardless of the speed limit, you need to be driving slow enough to react to someone suddenly stepping on the road. If you can’t do that while driving at the speed limit, you’ll just have to drive slower.
nevemsenki@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Taken literally, that means that since you won’t be able to stop if someone steps just in front of your vehicle, you should never drive faster than ~10kmph. Which can be a valid interpretation, but I doubt it’s going to be a widely accepted one. For example at least where I live, if someone steps in front a vehicle within breaking distance driving at the speed of the road’s legal limit, both pedestrian and driver will share responsibility (the exact ratios being determined by the exact situation).
justJanne@startrek.website 10 months ago
If you actually think about it, it’s absolutely makes sense. The Autobahn has additional stopping lanes for broken down cars and several meters of grass to each side, which means you can safely drive hundreds of kilometers an hour while still being able to see obstructions early enough to brake in time.
Slower motorways have smaller setbacks, but still enough to keep their speeds.
City streets where you can’t see people entering the road in time to brake usually have relatively low speed limits to reduce the braking distance as well as the damage caused by a collision.
But if the visibility or braking distance are affected due to weather or broken streetlamps, it’s up to you to slow down accordingly. But even for situations like that traffic planners usually add additional signs, it’s common to see roads with signs that say
to warn people to drive slower when the road is freezing or signs that say
to warn of crossing animals and set a lower speed limit.
The same obviously applies when it’s not crossing deer but crossing pedestrians.
LemmyIsFantastic@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Not how that shit works. At all.
First, throwing out generic legal advice is dumb. It’s not consistent in any way. Second, in most states and countries you’d have to prove negligence. You absolutely will not and should not be held responsible if some idiot runs out between two cars and gets hit while you are following the law.
justJanne@startrek.website 10 months ago
Actually, in EU countries the law explicitly says you have to drive slow enough to react to unexpected changes on the road. If you as a driver hit something or someone, you are automatically at fault because you violated that law. There is an incredibly high burden of proof required to not be at fault as a driver.
But that’s usually not an issue, because road planners are only allowed to set speed limits that are low enough that drivers can actually react to unexpected changes. Which is why e.g. the Autobahn has a separate lane for broken down vehicles and significant setbacks and green areas to both sides of the road so you can see from a long distance away if something is in the road.
LemmyIsFantastic@lemmy.world 10 months ago
👌👍
NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 10 months ago
Ah. So you don’t have a magic secret but will still smugly pretend you do.
That seems safe
justJanne@startrek.website 10 months ago
Slow. Down. That’s all there is to it.
NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 10 months ago
I guess people angrily speeding past and honking means they would hit the ninjas, so… kudos.
Unless they just get angry and blast high beams into my rear mirrors even more.
Don’t disrupt the flow of traffic