The dildo of consequences rarely arrives lubed.
I’m really not a fan of the cops arguing that the cyclist was partly to blame, though, and a €1000 fine is pretty damn low for breaking someone’s leg and wrecking a good six months of their life.
the taxi driver’s view may have been blocked by traffic signs.
Quick quiz, what do you do when you cannot see if it is safe to proceed on entering a roundabout?
Floor it!
You never hear what colour was the car, whether driver had windows rolled up or down, wearing seatbelt, listening to music, or headlights on. But when the cyclist is the victim, suddenly everything can be used to blame them 🤔
To be fair, I also fail to see how wearing a helmet would’ve prevented his leg from being broken as well
Yeah, the helmet is a bit much.
Not wearing appropriate clothing and headphones while on the road is a fair point though.
What’s clothing that allows me to not be at fault for being run over?
I thought traffic laws are only about having two breaks, lights at night etc
I’m not talking about being at fault.
I don’t care about court, I’d rather not be run over.
This case seems like an honest accident, I don’t think the driver is too blame too much here. The cyclist got into a blind spot (which is why I hate roundabouts for cyclists) and got hit.
Nobody seems truly at fault here, but making others more aware of yourself, and being more aware yourself might have made this avoidable.
Bad road design is yet again the biggest party to blame here.
You have to drive in a way that accounts for bad road design though. if you have to crawl around a corner you can’t see well then you have to do that.
It is your responsibility as a driver to make sure that you can safely stop within the distance you can see, at all times.
If you can only see 10cm around the corner, then you have to drive at 5cm/s
If the cyclist got in that bad of a blind spot, then the taxi must have been HUGE. We have boatloads of roundabouts in NL and they are just fine.
I’m with you on that. Where I live some roafs in the city are not lit and people will wear dark clothes and bike at night without lights. Sometimes you don’t even see them until you’re right on top of them.
It can be kind of scary and even when being careful, there is a risk of hitting someone.
Something reasonably reflective and visible in low light.
If it’s dark and no one can fucking see you, part of that is on you.
Same as driving at night with no headlights on. Which the cyclist was apparently also doing, as their light was out.
Don’t dress like a fucking ninja in all black that you are only visible when you’re looking at me through a windshield while being on my car’s hood. That’s how. If anything pisses me off is people like this with lights that have battery from 5 years ago that barely makes them working. Or preferably no lights at all riding a bicycle at dawn. It’s like fucks have a death wish or something.
The difference between black shirt and a fluorescent red/orange/yellow/green/blue shirt is MASSIVE. You can spot a cyclist wearing these from kilometer away. Black one, few hundred meters or even less if it’s road through shade/forest. I’m a cyclist too and all my shirts are such bright colors because I want to be sure I’m visible to others on the roads.
No its not. The driver is at fault.
Do not blame the victim.
The driver was at fault.
Not wearing appropriate clothing and headphones while on the road is a fair point though.
I’ve nearly been hit several times (like tires screaching to a halt) while wearing high-viz clothing with the right of way.
It makes no difference when the driver isn’t paying attention.
It makes a huge difference if you yourself are paying attention, which seems hard wearing headphones.
And honestly, you said it yourself. “Nearly” hit. Could’ve been worse if you weren’t wearing high-viz clothing.
I cycle daily and just notice how little people are aware of blind spots, cyclists and drivers alike. No harm in driving a little slower, even when you have right of way.
It makes a huge difference if you yourself are paying attention, which seems hard wearing headphones.
What about the driver? Did he listen to the radio? If it seems so hard to pay attention while wearing headphones, why is it still allowed to sell car radios?
wearing high-viz clothing […] how little people are aware of blind spots
How does wearing high-viz clothing help you when you are in a blind spot? And why does no one ask which colour the taxi was? Was it high-viz or maybe gray or black like most cars?
Drivers also aren’t allowed headphones where I’m from. If the cyclist had a boombox strapped to his bike, that would be comparable to a car radio, but headphones block your perception of external sound a lot more than music from a speaker
Where I’m from, drivers are sitting in sound proofed boxes called cars. The newer the car, the better the sound isolation. So unless the taxi was a convertible, the comparison is invalid.
When I’m wearing my headphones I can easily understand someone talking to me. When I’m sitting in my car I don’t hear a word when someone is talking outside the door.
That’s also a huge problem. Cars should not be so soundproof as to block out people shouting or bike bells.
I do agree that it’s better to be more visible, but that still shifts the responsibility away from the driver.
Wearing headphones is a pet peeve of mine, and I encounter pedestrians on trails all the time (multiple times per ride) who wear them. But it’s still my responsibility as a cyclist to pass with caution.
And honestly, you said it yourself. “Nearly” hit. Could’ve been worse if you weren’t wearing high-viz clothing.
Nope. These were inattentive drivers who should have noticed me (as a pedestrian or cyclist) well before making their turns.
I wear high viz, ride with lights day and night, added additional reflectors, have tires with sidewall reflectors, and even have one bike that’s high viz yellow! But I do it mostly so I could never be blamed for being invisible, and I sure as hell know that someone looking down at their phone while driving will still miss me.
I guess drivers with black cars, gray cars, … Should also be partially blamed for the accidents with other vehicles when “not guilty”, because they aren’t visible enough…
If they didn’t have their lights on, they ARE
And yet nobody ever will think about holding the color against them. Lights on or off.
You can wear whatever clothes you like if you’re on a bike. Just like you don’t have to paint your car a specific colour to be allowed to drive.
And drivers are allowed to blast music so cyclists should as well. All the safety shouldn’t fall on cyclist double standards.
I’m obnoxious and usually just blast it out loud through my phone like I would if I were driving - I would have headphones in while driving either, so definitely not cycling. Maybe bone-conductors but even then I wouldn’t want magic drowning out any part of my awareness.
I’ve had drivers not see me and pull out in front of me in broad daylight when I’ve been wearing a luminous orange top, while riding a bike with a bright flashing front light. What more should I have done to not make it my fault? Set off fireworks?
Set off fireworks?
Yes. Preferably directly at the vehicles. The big boomy ones so they really take notice. 🙃
The article lists four things about the cyclist.
- “not wearing a helmet”
Admittedly a no-go for me. There a lots of options for anyone.
- “was wearing “relatively” dark clothing”
“Relatively” already gives the impression that we aren’t talking black, just that it wasn’t a signal or hi-vis color.
- “using an earphone”
This wording makes me think the cyclist used one earbud and not both or full headphones. So he could hear his surroundings well.
- “his front light may not have been working”
Not even a fact, but a possibility.
To summarize, he was a traffic participant in a non-signal color, listening to music. That’s it.
Of course cyclist are more vulnerable than cars, but anyone who sees fault in the cyclist behavior is often overlooking similar or worse behavior in drivers.
Nobody ever asks the owner of a black car if they have a death wish or ask someone to turn of the radio, because they can’t hear the traffic as well.
I wish people would hold all traffic participants to the same standards.
More importantly the driver hit the cyclist from behind. The front light, helmet and earphones are all irrelevant to the accident. It doesn’t matter if you hear that a car is behind you or not, if the car just slams into you. If you cycle somewhere except extremely rural areas you will hear cars all the time and you can’t turn around to look at every car approaching form behing
What would be relevant instead are back lights and reflectors. The article mentions that the police had found a back light, which indicates it was broken off the bike by the hit.
areas you will hear cars all the time and you can’t turn around to look at every car approaching form behing
I do that and cars significantly slow down because they think I will turn left.
In true carbrain fashion, not only they ignore the existence of turn lights, they also ignore the existence of turn signals.
For me, riding on the road without lights would be a good point for placing blame on the cyclist. I don’t care what vehicle you are, you’re on the road at night, you need lights.
But would need to be proven, of course. “May not have been working” means literally nothing, could be from the drivers testimony “I didn’t see no lights” kind of thing
“His front light may not have been working”. Officer might as well have written “Cyclist might possibly be a pedophile”.
anyone have that meme where the view of a driver of a cyclist with and without hi-viz and both are just the driver’s cell phone?
It’s a broken leg, not head injury. That should’ve been the end of that argument.
helmets provide a flat +5 armor value, if you wear 10 helmets you are impervious to most forms of damage.
tf2 was a documentary all along
But you still take full fall damage.
gotta make sure to punch yourself in the face as you’re about to hit the ground, to give yourself some i-frames and thus cheekily negate the fall damage.
or just outright parry the ground approaching you, dealing massive damage to the planet and even giving you some health back
But if you enter Quill form, your helmet gets melded. On the plus side, the car will be struck by the quills.
Exactly, it’s unironically the type of situation where an overly pedantic DM or player would be mocked if they tried to argue helmet armor in regards to something that only does leg damage.
There’s always an excuse for drivers.
If a driver isn’t paying attention, it doesn’t matter what colour a cyclist’s clothing are, or that they had a helmet on, or insanely bright lights.
And if excuses are being shifted onto cyclists, what about pedestrians and buildings that drivers smash into on a regular basis? What excuse do you have then?
As someone living in Sweden, I have seen pedestrians and bicyclists wearing dark coloured clothing during autumn nights, they just disappear in the background and VASTLY reduce the distance I can see them at, they just pops out from the background only when you are close to them.
This is not a simple driver issue, these are people who seems to deliberately dress in camo, and then complain that drivers don’t pay enough attention.
I am not asking everyone to wear a high-viz vest all the time, but please get a reflector and show that you have some self preservation instinct
Riders should wear adequate gear to protect themselves, but drivers also must drive safely. If you aren’t able to avoid dark object, you’re driving above the safe limit for current visibility. What if there was a fallen tree on the road? Those don’t wear hi-vis
I can avoid dark objects just fine, what is difficult to deal with is people who wear what could the equivalent of camo, and getting pissed that I didn’t see them until late.
A tree is much larger than a human, making it more visually distinct.
Lets take an extreme scenario, just to try and find the limits of what is the responsibility of a driver and a bicyclist, I know it is a ridiculous scenario, but it is interesting to see were people feel the limits should be.
A person wears a ghillie suit, and lies down next to the road, he is playing a game of extreme hide and seek with a few friends, well the game day just ended, and he stands up just as a car is 50 meters away, the speed limit is 50kmh, it is dusk, the driver of the car swerves to avoid potentially hitting the person, and hits a light pole on the other side of the road.
Who would you say is responsible for the accident?
A tree is too large? What about a trashcan then. A person who has passed out and fallen from the sidewalk onto the street? Whatever.
A person wears a ghillie suit, and lies down next to the road, he is playing a game of extreme hide and seek with a few friends, well the game day just ended, and he stands up just as a car is 50 meters away, the speed limit is 50kmh, it is dusk, the driver of the car swerves to avoid potentially hitting the person, and hits a light pole on the other side of the road.
If you need to build fantastical scenarios to justify your reasoning, maybe your position isn’t as valid as you think. Luckily we have rules and judges for this, someone jumping in front of your car is usually classified as insurance fraud or attempted suicide. If he was on a crosswalk, your fault for not slowing down accordingly.
And anyway, at 50kmh, stopping the average car takes 14, 20 meters maximum, reaction time is 1s usually, let’s say you’re 90 years old and it takes you 2 seconds, you’ll start braking after 28 meters… So essentially in the worst case scenario you’ll maybe just touch the guy with your license plate.
Which is totally beside the point by the way, because I was talking about YOUR OWN safety, forget about responsibility, imagine a sinkhole had opened on the road, if you fell in it wouldn’t be your fault, right? Yet it’s still preferable NOT TO DO THAT!
When going 50km/h the average distance needed to come to a comfortable stop including taking a whole second to figure out what’s happening and react is 40 meters.
For an emergency stop (still taking the 1 second reaction time) it’s 28 meters.
So if you can’t stop with 50 meters you are absolutely unfit to get behind the wheel.
Of course, I’ve experienced this myself (pedestrians wearing all back on trails at night).
But the responsibility still rests with the driver.
In this case, it was argued that their view was obstructed, which should have meant they slowed down and paid attention even more. Nobody should be driving blindly.
The cyclist here did have a rear light, and was rear ended.
You are right that noone should be driving blind, I fully agree with that, and yes I know that the driver is ultimately legally responsible for the safety of unprotected people in traffic.
But where does the responsibillity of the pedestrian end?
I wrote a rudiculous extreme scenario in another comment in this thread about a person in a ghillie suit playing hide and seek near a road which lead to an accident, please feel free to respond and tell me who you feel are responsible and why in that situation.
There are no right or wrong answers to that scenario, I am simply trying to take this kind of scenario to the edge to try and figure out what the limits are
about a person in a ghillie suit playing hide and seek near a road which lead to an accident
Did they intentionally try to get hit or cause a crash? If yes, then they bare some (or all) responsibility.
But people wearing regular clothes should not be punished.
We never, EVER see motorists involved in crashed be blamed because they were driving a back car.
This particular crash happened on a lit roundabout where the cyclist apparently had a rear light. The driver was either going too fast, or wasn’t paying enough attention.
But where does the responsibillity of the pedestrian end?
This is a good thought experiment. There are legal answers, but logically, blame could be given to a pedestrian when the norms are broken (i.e. suddenly changing lane on a path while oneone is trying to pass).
As a cyclist, or motorist, I make a huge effort to ride defensively. If not to avoid people, then to avoid animals popping out of nowhere.
In Sweden, it’s illegal for bicyclists to not have lights and reflectors (both front and back) and the law is at least enforced to some degree by police.
I’m a cyclist and I also drive a car. Let us be honest, yes the driver should have been more careful but, with dark clothes cyclists are often almost non visible on the road. I have myself been surprised more than a dozen times finding myself almost rear ending a cyclist because I didn’t see them cause of their dark clothes.
That’s why I have always worn a hivis jacket, even More now that I have a driver’s licence. It’s better to be lit like a christmas tree than invisible to other road users.
Literally. I bike and drive and wouldn’t blame the cyclist at all, but I would hardly be surprised if I was hit while cycling at night in dark colors with even one headphone in.
Obviously, I would love to live in a utopia where cyclist can travel just as carefree as most car drivers, But we’re on two wheels and completely unprotected, so there is a certain level of additional caution that goes into traveling by bike. I just wish more people, cyclist and driver alike, used their common sense.
Speedy recovery to the victim.
No one is commenting on the fact the driver was a taxi driver, around my area taxi drivers are some of the worst drivers I’ve ever seen.
I’m not really familiar with the laws over there. After this criminal ruling, does the cyclist now have grounds for a civil suit?
Man, after reading the article i feels like it’s no good ending for everyone involved. The driver is at fault for not taking a glance, the city is at fault to have a road sign obstructing view, and the cyclist, while not at fault, but would totally turn out different if he wear a hi-vis vest.
At least the cyclist isn’t fined.
In my criminal justice system we break the judge and the police’s legs and give them 1k. We keep doing that until they take these crimes seriously. Then we break the legs of the town planners until they build sustainable transport solutions. Imagine how quickly people would learn the benefits. We would be living in paradise in no time.
To those downvoting this comment, heads up it’s parody and I feel it’s a disservice trying to hide it. And you know what’s crazy? I have multiple friends IRL who have had both of their legs simultaneously broken by cars plowing into them from behind while they were waiting at a red light. I also had a roommate who spent over a year in recovery after he was right-hooked by a van in a crosswalk and dragged underneath for half a block at 35MPH as the asphalt grated off his clothes and skin leaving his spine and skull visible. Is that too much violence for you? Too graphic? I have a downvote button too, if you’d like others to not be bothered by hearing of all this suffering.
