Originally Posted by sudo bike

I very much doubt this would happen. In fact, in many states, in a civil lawsuit, cyclists are considered the same as if it was a car/pedestrian collision (in our favor, this time) and the driver has a far heavier burden to prove it was the other that caused it. While criminal law hasn't caught up, civil law is actually usually pretty fair to cyclists... the man with the more dangerous vehicle is found to have more responsibility.

And I don't think any court, anywhere, will find 8mph too fast for conditions. The driver clearly has the responsibility to yield to traffic in the bike lane, at least according to every state law I know of. Almost by definition, if a cyclist hit her, she didn't yield. A driver would have to prove that, even with her not yielding, the cyclist had a "last clear chance" to avoid the collision, and that's a heavy burden to prove (and even then may only see a partial judgment).