rydabent

joey

Yup I spoz to play it "safe" I could hid under my bed with my blankie in the middle of the house and hope a drunk driver wouldnt make it that far into the house.

OTOH driving drunk is not necessary, and nailing them hard should be done.

JoeyBike

Now you are getting the idea. The middle of your house, or the back end of your house might expose you to less risk from a car shooting off the road. Sleeping on the front porch might slightly increase the risk. Sleeping in your front yard has slightly more risk than the porch. Sleeping on the shoulder of the road in front of your house will increase the risk further, and sleeping in the travel lane increases the risk tremendously as compared to the middle of your house.

Drunk drivers already get nailed pretty hard in most states. Yet, because alcohol diminishes the capability of a human brain to have good judgement, people still, and will FOREVER drive drunk on highways all over the world. Some highways are inherently more dangerous for cyclists than others. If we choose to take a nap (or ride our bikes) on those highways we are choosing to accept a certain amount of risk. Or we can just ignore the risk and take our chances with distracted, diminished motorists along with all of the honest mistakes motorists make behind the wheel.

dpeters11

To say the cyclist was partially at fault for being there suggests that the driver should get a reduced sentence because there would have been no accident if the cyclist wasn't there.

FBinNY 

I think advocacy is getting in the way of common sense on this thread.

There's a difference between acknowledging responsibility for the consequences of bad judgement, and fault or responsibility for causing an accident.

The rider's choice of road might have been poor (I'm not saying it is, just that it might be), but that doesn't make him responsible in the legal sense. The driver who him is at fault, plain and simple.

It's analogous to getting mugged when walking in a bad neighborhood. In retrospect, you might say, "gee that was dumb, I should have known better than to go into that neighborhood". But that in no way changes the fact that the mugger committed a crime and is 100% at fault.

In this case, the situation might be different if the cyclist were riding on the interstate which was clearly marked "no bicycles".

rydabent

fb

I agree with your assessment.

JoeyBike

I am suggesting no such thing. If it were up to me drunk drivers would be shot in the head right there curbside.

As FB paraphrased above - If you are leaving a conference and heading to your hotel room (for instance), and you choose to traverse a sketchy neighborhood instead of paying for a Taxi, and you get mugged, part of the BLAME is on you. All of the CRIME is on the mugger. Sure, in a perfect world you should be able to walk (or bike) anywhere you please at any time of day or night and be guaranteed safe passage. But we live in THIS world. So if you want to stack the deck in favor of the drunk drivers and muggers of the world, that is your call and YOUR RESPONSIBILITY.

J.C. Koto

Follow up to this tragedy, the driver was sentenced to 12-16 years.