Raise the Hammer

I have been following this story and the police never blamed the pedestrians. One of the contributing factors was the fact the pedestrians were all wearing dark cloths. Does not matter if you are legally or illegally crossing the street if the auto driver cannot see you then he cannot avoid you.

There is a lot of blame to go around in these 7 incidents. But blaming the police seems like a bit of a stretch. Are the drivers at fault? Absolutely. Are the victims at fault? In at least some of the incidents yes they are. Even when doing everything legally there is still risk involved with crossing a street. Too many people refuse to acknowledge that, to their dismay. I am sure that none of those 7 drivers woke up in the morning and thought "today is a good day to hit some schmuck crossing the street. Even in the cases where the driver was clearing at fault and charged with careless driving the pedestrian might have been able to avoid the incident with his own actions. If he had would everyone not be further ahead? I bet he will take crossing a street more seriously then he has in the past.

I know of what I speak. Some years ago I was hit by a car while crossing the street. The driver came around a corner too fast and could not stop in time since I was crossing the street away from the crosswalk. Although the police blamed him and charged him, in hindsight I see where I contributed to the accident. I will never cross the street with out paying a lot more attention then before I got hit. Telling pedestrians to wear light coloured clothing at night or to pay more attention to cars all the time does not seem out of line to me.

I think we try too hard to make our world safe with rules and laws and barriers and God knows what else and pay too little attention to common sense and "doing your part." In the end it really does not matter whose fault it is, if you are dead you are dead. It was not his fault makes a very poor epitaph. I would much rather let an inattentive driver drive past me then step in front of him just because I have the right of way. If every body both driver and pedestrians had a little more of this attitude then we would have much safer streets. Safer then all the rules and laws can make them. Safer then all the designing and engineering can make them. We train all our kids how to cross streets safely. Yet as adults we tend to forger or ignore a lot of these tidbits.