Originally Posted by
david58
At what point do we accept responsibility? Was she riding so fast she couldn't react? Filtering thru peds? Not paying attention? $10K is almost nothing - cheap "go away" money. If she wins, she got away with blaming someone else for her inattentiveness.
Don't you dial in and get careful on a railroad crossing?
I agree wholeheartedly with you here, but I'm kinda cursed with the ability to argue both sides of an issue. I think that anyone designing or developing specs for a design involving a road feature should really think about anticipating and evaluating potential for design-related hazards. My gosh, this crossing integrates with a MUP. Wouldn't it be reasonable to expect bike traffic. I expect architects and engineers to think proactively and not just plan to fix things after beta testing by the public.
I cross a number of rail tracks on my daily commute and definitely pay attention. She should have done, too, but had the design were not screwed up, the probability that she would have crashed would be way lower. Think of it this way: when people do dumb things, they deserve negative reinforcement. The cyclist did a dumb thing and was duly reinforced. The crossing designer was also dumb and so should be slapped around as well.