"There is very little accountability for drivers. In this case, Reardon only had to show she was not texting, not drunk, and not speeding. Meanwhile, pedestrians are faulted for not doing things that go above and beyond their legal requirements: like wearing bright clothing, or walking after dark."
Sure, and nor is it a good idea for women to walk home late at night in their clubbing attire. But failure to heed this "common sense" very much does not make it their fault if bad things happen to them in those circumstances.
It's fine to counsel people to dress brightly when crossing the road at night, but it's really important that that not be the focal point of a discussion about road safety— dressing brightly is a common sense coping strategy to handle the fact that there has been a cascade of failures elsewhere in the system that has led to an environment of unsafe roads, unsafe vehicles, and unsafe drivers.
Blaming pedestrian choices instead of examining root causes just excuses and justifies the unacceptable status quo.
It can be very very hard to spot someone in all black clothing walking in the same direction at traffic beside the road. That's what causes these cases to go from criminal acts to be classified as an accident.
>Blaming pedestrian choices instead of examining root causes just excuses and justifies the unacceptable status quo.
It of course varies wildly by case if the pedestrian can be faulted at all. In my examples, I would argue yes. If crossing at a crosswalk, with the light, and someone making a right turn hits them? It'd be different.
My experience is limited, but from what I can tell from my local coverage in Kitchener ON, it's rare that a driver is faulted for hitting a person walking, regardless of the circumstances. And even when a driver is charged following a collision, when you follow those up a few months later, they all end up dropped or being settled— either way, the person driving is back on the road almost immediately.
That quote is disingenuously conflating the driver's legal fault with the pedestrian's non-legal fault. The pedestrians aren't being sued for being hit.
Well, I mean... the woman died. Which really just underscores how gross it is to be advancing a "both sides" equivocation around this issue.
The driver may be inconvenienced, financially impacted by repair bills or a lawsuit, or suffer minor injuries like whiplash. The pedestrian will be seriously injured or killed. This inequality is why cars basically just do what they want and it's the implicit responsibility of people walking to jump out of the way.
Or at least stop carrying a black umbrella dressed in all black, the umbrella doesn't need to be fluorescent yellow, but at least non-black -- I think pedestrians don't realize how hard they are to see on a rainy night. My umbrella is yellow (not fluorescent), my jacket is brightly colored with reflective accents and my backpack has reflective tape.
I call them ninjas. They're quite common in my country, especially in dimly lit or not lit at all rural areas, usually coming back from work or worse - drunk from the pub. There's also a worse kind, the ninja cyclist, who rides a bicycle equipped with no lights while being dressed in black/grey and usually also drunk.
Eye contact is only meaningful between drivers. When you are asymmetrically squishy (as a pedestrian or cyclist), some drivers will take eye contact as "good, they have seen me, they will know to stay out of my way".
