Old 08-10-07, 09:01 AM
  #18  
sggoodri
Senior Member
 
sggoodri's Avatar
 
Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Cary, NC
Posts: 3,076

Bikes: 1983 Trek 500, 2002 Lemond Zurich, 2023 Litespeed Watia

Mentioned: 0 Post(s)
Tagged: 0 Thread(s)
Quoted: 3 Post(s)
Liked 3 Times in 3 Posts
Since you say the driver was turning left where the path crossed the street, this sounds like an intersection with a sidewalk-type path transitioning to a crosswalk. Since you say your son struck the driver side door of a left-turning car, I infer that he was traveling on the left side of the street (but on the sidewalk rather than the roadway).

Drivers don't scan reliably for contra-flow traffic traveling faster than walking speed. It's much safer to travel on the right side of the street even if you are using the sidewalk. Even at walking speed it's a problem; collision rates for pedestrians on sidewalks and crosswalks are higher for those walking on the left side of the street rather than the right. Drivers are used to looking in the direction where other vehicles are usually coming from, and forget to look elsewhere.

Depending on the state, the law for crosswalks is that the driver must yield to pedestrians who are already in the crosswalk and about to move in front of them, but the pedestrian may not move in front of a driver who is so close to create a danger. This sets up a sort of race condition; if the driver gets to the crosswalk area first, the pedestrian must wait until the driver clears. In your case, the driver was already in the crosswalk when your son struck the side of the car. The race condition isn't so dangerous when the pedestrian is moving at walking speed and can stop instantly and even step back. But for the driver of a vehicle on an interesecting course with another driver, it's a bigger problem, which is why drivers of vehicles have different rules, which don't include using sidewalks.

I'd like to look at the location using satellite photos. What are the names of the two streets, and the city?

Last edited by sggoodri; 08-10-07 at 09:20 AM.
sggoodri is offline