Antique & Classic Cars Blog
No Crossing Guards for Adults
Thursday, May 22nd, 2008Three times this week, I’ve had to brake for a pedestrian crossing the road without looking. Morally or legally, they are right–juries cast a mean frown at drivers who mow down pedestrians.
Still, on the logic scales at my house, Not Having a Shattered Pelvis and Punctured Aorta handily outweighs Morally Correct.
There’s a certain assertion of right here that I understand. Cars should always stop for pedestrians, especially at a cross walk–where two of the three crossed–albeit not one at a controlled intersection.
We all might occasionally step out expecting a car to stop when we’ve been kept waiting a while and the cross walk serves as notice that we’re right. I try to keep an eye on the car, though. None of these people–a runner, a woman with her dog, and a guy in a shirt and tie–looked at me as I braked. They may have seen the truck earlier, but they acted on faith when they moved in front of me.
Sure, motorists are obligated to stop. Sure, experience and reason tell us they’re looking forward as they navigate down the street. Yet even a conscientious driver can get struck with a sneezing fit, a seizure, or sudden blinding light as the setting sun emerges from clouds. At those moments, it’s better to note a distracted driver from the safety of the curb, or be ready to high-step if you observe the vehicle holding its pace.
9 Responses to "No Crossing Guards for Adults"
Agree with all you said here Kris, but still, as you noted above, the jury will look askance at any contact between your vehicle and a pedestrian, no matter how stupid that pedestrian may have been.
Here’s a scary one.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7462816148420281564&q=&hl=en
A lady in a PT Cruiser runs a red light, t-bones another car, then watch the left side of the screen. Scary.
Believe it or not, the pedestrian survived the accident, albeit with serious injuries. But at least he was alive. Plus, the police ticketed him for jaywalking, since he was crossing against the red right.
That video’s horrifying. If the part about the pedestrian getting ticketed is true (not questioning your veracity but you know how the ‘net is), the police are being quite harsh–as if the guy’s medical payments are not punishment enough!
It looks like one of those scenarios where a car or two goes through after the light turns red. Amazing how many people do that. I see it all the time in town. Wish the police would spend as much time ticketing that stuff as speeding–it’s more dangerous because the risk of accident is so high. Sure people can crash when they speed but running lights when you have perpendicular movement is a gilded invitation for twisted metal.
–And how ’bout the justice here? Among the three parties involved, the PT Cruiser driver seems to come out of it least affected.
Did some more research on this. This happened in Dayton Ohio 4 years ago to the day ironically, and was captured by a “red light camera.”
Here’s the story on Snopes.com
http://www.snopes.com/photos/accident/pedestrian.asp
They mention nothing about a ticket for the pedestrian.
By the way, Kris. Here’s a fun game you should try.
I got 16 out of 18. 
Nice work tracking the details. I showed it to my wife and we both cringed. What a perfect example of the grave risks of taking things for granted–the pedestrian that people would see and look out for him and the PT Cruiser driver that life at the wheel is easy and requires only a little movement of the wrists and feet with complete air-conditioned stereophonic comfort otherwise.
–Jaywalking is unwise, but a man doesn’t deserve to be run over because of it. :^(
I don’t know how much truth there is to this but, I was told once if a person runs into or is running in the crosswalk they just lost all their rights as a pedestrian. Does anyone know about this, is there any truth to it? I see people doing it all the time. What about bicyclers if they walk the bike across the road they are a pedestrian but, if they ride they are concidered a vehicle and the laws of the road apply.
Here’s my sense of it. If you’re in a crosswalk–and have the “walk” light, if there is one-a driver who hit you would have criminal and civil liability for your injuries.
If there is a law on the books prohibiting crossing outside of a crosswalk (jaywalking) the pedestrian is no longer fully “in the right.”
A court/jury would look at pedestrian and driver. In the first situation, the pedestrian crossing with the light in a proper crosswalk will win a lawsuit. Now you mention running. In a crosswalk that is not at a controlled intersection, it’s the presence of a pedestrian that alerts the driver to his duty to stop. If he couldn’t see you and you ran out without looking and no reasonable driver could stop in time, that would be a good defense for him.
Even where there is no crosswalk, the driver still has obligations. He is legally obliged to obey the speed limit, to be sober, to be in compliance with any requirement he may have to wear eyeglasses….
He also has a legal duty to exercise due care and to avoid injuries to others that are foreseeable. In a residential area on a summer day where children and parents are playing football and basketball and soccer and throwing frisbees and riding bikes and skateboards, it is reasonably foreseeable that someone might come into the road.
If a child darts from between a tall van and SUV such that no driver could have seen and avoided her, the driver would not be liable. But if he’s got his stereo so loud he can’t hear their voices and he’s got passengers he’s laughing and joking with and playfully punching and he’s swerving around trying to be funny or looking at a cell phone or iPod or GPS screen instead of the road, he is not exercising due care. If a jury concluded that these distracting circumstances prevented him from seeing someone who stepped into the road that a driver using ordinary care would have seen, he might get hit with a big jury award even though the pedestrian was technically jaywalking.
A family that crossed a residential street near their church on Sunday in broad daylight that got hit by an inattentive driver, screwing around or drunk, would also have a strong position for a legal settlement even if technically they should have been crossing at the corner….
The basic justice of it works like this: even if you’re jaywalking, a driver still has a duty to avoid hitting you if possible. Your legal infraction does not remove their duty of care. But the fact that you are not crossing at a crosswalk, the legally defined place where your right to move is superior to a car’s, counts against you. When you’re moving lawfully at a crosswalk drivers have a duty to yield to you; jaywalking they have only the duty of exercising reasonable care to avoid injuring others and it may come down to a court fight to determine whether or not the driver could have avoided you.
A legislature might have the power to declare jaywalking an absolute bar to recovery, but that seems pretty extreme.
I don’t think we have that here and even if we did, it wouldn’t eliminate the driver’s duty of due care.
Seems to me, in say the church example above, that if some distracted driver plowed into them and seriously injured or killed some family members, they would have a decent argument that a law absolutely barring them from recovering against the negligent driver because of a technical jaywalking violation was constitutionally infirm.
**This is a car blog’s lay discussion of the law. I am not giving legal advice, nor guaranteeing that the opinions expressed above are correct. :^) **
Dave, forgot to say I tried the motor quiz. Pretty tough! The website, or my wireless connection, hung about 2/3 through the first time I tried it, so I started again from the beginning. It hung up for a second again half way through, but then continued. Mysteriously, it scored me with 18 of 19 right that time–peculiar, since there are only 18 questions.
I had missed a handful on the first go though, reminding me that much of my engine-IDing ability is vehicle based, knowing what motors a manufacturer was building in a certain era. Pegging them by cylinder head shape and distributor location without accompanying make and model clues is much trickier.
Nice job missing only two. I need to get back out to the boneyard and peak under hoods–great summer fun.
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MotorMouth Kris Palmer, freelance auto writer and editor, blogs about vintage cars, the collectible auto scene and just about anything else that goes vroom.
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