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Japan solved the problem of sharing crowded streets by putting liability on the vehicle every time. If you are riding a bicycle on the footpath and hit a pedes

Japan solved the problem of sharing crowded streets by putting liability on the vehicle every time. If you are riding a bicycle on the footpath and hit a pedestrian, it is your fault and you are going to be on the hook for a large amount of money. It's the same if cars hit a cyclist or pedestrian. It's arbitrary but it also makes it safe to cycle because cars are vigilant to not hit pedestrians (contrast with western countries, my experience is in NZ where car drivers bully cyclists)

closeparen 8y ago
Huh? It's the furthest thing possible from safe to do something that makes you automatically liable for any incident.
- arnoooooo 8y ago
  You're the one choosing to drive a dangerous vehicle, why should other people be responsible ?
  - closeparen 8y ago
    If your society considers a particular transportation mode so antisocial that people who choose it are automatically guilty regardless of the specifics of the incident, no one should ever make that mode choice. It's tantamount to a ban. You aren't perfect, and other people sometimes behave far outside the bounds of what any reasonable person expects (and sometimes do so deliberately to commit insurance fraud). If there's no standard like "reasonable caution" or "due care" to save you, then it doesn't matter how cautious you are, making that mode choice is playing with fire. Parent said that cyclists who hit pedestrians are automatically liable, then turned around and called bicycling "safe." That's a bizarre interpretation - with that law, Japan is messaging that Japanese people ought to stay far, far away from bicycling unless they have particularly extreme appetite for risk. To answer your question, modern cities need some method of transportation faster than walking. At speed, injuring the pedestrians who get in your way is an inevitability. Either you have a tax on the unlucky (and unable to afford real estate in the pedestrian core), or you give at least one such method immunity. In Japan, that method is trains. Japan takes the pedestrian victim-blaming even further than necessary in this case, and bills their families for the cleanup costs.
    - watwut 8y ago
      Yeah cars are totally unused in Amsterdam.
      - closeparen 8y ago
        30 seconds of Googling suggests (and a comment upthread) suggest that a defense based on reasonable expectations and circumstances beyond one's control is available to drivers in The Netherlands. The stakes are also much lower when the thing you're assigning is an insurance company payout. Cyclists presumably aren't insured when they hit pedestrians. If there were no defense available, cycling would be a bad idea. Found this: https://www.cycling-embassy.org.uk/wiki/dutch-cycle-because-strict-liability-made-everybody-drive-safely-and-play-nice https://www.cycling-embassy.org.uk/wiki/dutch-cycle-because-...
        rangibaby 8y ago
        > Cyclists presumably aren't insured when they hit pedestrians. It is compulsory in some places in Japan. ¥4,000 ($40) per year pays out up to 3 billion yen ($3,000,000) in case you hit someone.
        jessaustin 8y ago
        We'll never see this requirement in USA because it would be proof salient to everyone of how much more dangerous driving is than cycling.
        closeparen 8y ago
        We're under no illusions that cycling presents a danger to others in the same way that driving does. When we say cycling is unsafe, we mean it's unsafe for the cyclist.
        jessaustin 8y ago
        The point is that your experience in a society that privileges automobile driving has left you with misleading impressions of how other societies function. In other places poor drivers are held responsible for their poor driving, and the sky has not fallen.
  - wccrawford 8y ago
    One vehicle is dangerous to the driver. The other vehicle is dangerous to other drivers. Which one are you saying should be responsible here?
  - zip1234 8y ago
    The reason is that you should be responsible if you are indeed responsible: Insurance fraud is very real. See https://gizmodo.com/people-throw-themselves-at-cars-for-money-more-often-th-1695698432 https://gizmodo.com/people-throw-themselves-at-cars-for-mone...
  - vivekd 8y ago
    Because responsibility should be based on what you do, and whether you did anything wrong, and not based solely on what mode of transportation you were using.
    - arnoooooo 8y ago
      Choosing a mode of transportation is something you do.
- bkor 8y ago
  There are a few exceptions to it. However, that's exactly how it works in The Netherlands. Biker needs to watch out for a pedestrian. Car for bikes and pedestrians, etc. If a car could've avoided the accident no matter if a cyclist was doing something wrong, car is at fault. This change prevented loads of accidents. Before if a cyclist did something wrong the general thought was "cyclist should've paid attention". But an accident is caused by 2 people, so it makes sense that the one who can cause the most damage is fully aware of that. Liable? That's why cars have mandatory insurance. The amount of damage which can be done is way higher than e.g. 2 cyclists hitting each other.
  - closeparen 8y ago
    >"If a car could've avoided the accident" That's a pretty crucial distinction from strict liability, and is much closer to what we have in the US (at least on paper, you have a duty to avert a collision if you can, regardless of right of way). Unless you mean the most trivial sense of "you could have avoided the accident by not driving." "Needs to watch out for" is quite different from "is always at fault if it collides with."
    - bkor 8y ago
      The impression I get from statement made here it actually seems to be hugely different. Too much of "should watch out", etc. It's more of a "in case cannot be proven, car is in the wrong". In practice, good luck proving that the bike was doing something weird. As result, they watch out. I don't understand your comment of "strict liability" btw. It's not black/white situation. However, in general they rule against the car. As result, people on bicycles abuse this (especially in Amsterdam). But there's the benefit of a super huge bicycle usage, so although it's not perfect, it seems worth it.
      - vivekd 8y ago
        strict liability is a legal term of art that means something along the lines of "you are guilty no matter what the reason." It's used in North America can be found often in things like traffic tickets or regulatory offences. For example, if you were speeding, it doesn't matter what the reason is, for example it doesn't matter if your odometer was broken or if the posted street signs were impossible to see due to fog or whatever, all the prosecution has to prove is that you were going at a certain speed and you are automatically guilty no matter what. The individual you are replying to was saying that comments here made it sound like strict liability for drivers and cyclists. That even if you were driving as carefully as possible, if a cyclist suddenly appears from behind a bush and cuts exactly in front of your car while you were doing 80 km an hour and you did everything humanly possible to stop and avoid him, you would still be at fault. He's saying later comments seem to suggest otherwise.
sooheon 8y ago
I agree this is a good default. But because of this, here in South Korea we have con artist pedestrians getting purposely "bumped" by cars and going off to lie in a hospital bed, leeching medical bills from the driver until he settles.

closeparen 8y ago

Huh? It's the furthest thing possible from safe to do something that makes you automatically liable for any incident.

arnoooooo 8y ago
You're the one choosing to drive a dangerous vehicle, why should other people be responsible ?
- closeparen 8y ago
  If your society considers a particular transportation mode so antisocial that people who choose it are automatically guilty regardless of the specifics of the incident, no one should ever make that mode choice. It's tantamount to a ban. You aren't perfect, and other people sometimes behave far outside the bounds of what any reasonable person expects (and sometimes do so deliberately to commit insurance fraud). If there's no standard like "reasonable caution" or "due care" to save you, then it doesn't matter how cautious you are, making that mode choice is playing with fire. Parent said that cyclists who hit pedestrians are automatically liable, then turned around and called bicycling "safe." That's a bizarre interpretation - with that law, Japan is messaging that Japanese people ought to stay far, far away from bicycling unless they have particularly extreme appetite for risk. To answer your question, modern cities need some method of transportation faster than walking. At speed, injuring the pedestrians who get in your way is an inevitability. Either you have a tax on the unlucky (and unable to afford real estate in the pedestrian core), or you give at least one such method immunity. In Japan, that method is trains. Japan takes the pedestrian victim-blaming even further than necessary in this case, and bills their families for the cleanup costs.
  - watwut 8y ago
    Yeah cars are totally unused in Amsterdam.
    - closeparen 8y ago
      30 seconds of Googling suggests (and a comment upthread) suggest that a defense based on reasonable expectations and circumstances beyond one's control is available to drivers in The Netherlands. The stakes are also much lower when the thing you're assigning is an insurance company payout. Cyclists presumably aren't insured when they hit pedestrians. If there were no defense available, cycling would be a bad idea. Found this: https://www.cycling-embassy.org.uk/wiki/dutch-cycle-because-strict-liability-made-everybody-drive-safely-and-play-nice https://www.cycling-embassy.org.uk/wiki/dutch-cycle-because-...
      - rangibaby 8y ago
        > Cyclists presumably aren't insured when they hit pedestrians. It is compulsory in some places in Japan. ¥4,000 ($40) per year pays out up to 3 billion yen ($3,000,000) in case you hit someone.
        jessaustin 8y ago
        We'll never see this requirement in USA because it would be proof salient to everyone of how much more dangerous driving is than cycling.
        closeparen 8y ago
        We're under no illusions that cycling presents a danger to others in the same way that driving does. When we say cycling is unsafe, we mean it's unsafe for the cyclist.
        jessaustin 8y ago
        The point is that your experience in a society that privileges automobile driving has left you with misleading impressions of how other societies function. In other places poor drivers are held responsible for their poor driving, and the sky has not fallen.
- wccrawford 8y ago
  One vehicle is dangerous to the driver. The other vehicle is dangerous to other drivers. Which one are you saying should be responsible here?
- zip1234 8y ago
  The reason is that you should be responsible if you are indeed responsible: Insurance fraud is very real. See https://gizmodo.com/people-throw-themselves-at-cars-for-money-more-often-th-1695698432 https://gizmodo.com/people-throw-themselves-at-cars-for-mone...
- vivekd 8y ago
  Because responsibility should be based on what you do, and whether you did anything wrong, and not based solely on what mode of transportation you were using.
  - arnoooooo 8y ago
    Choosing a mode of transportation is something you do.
bkor 8y ago
There are a few exceptions to it. However, that's exactly how it works in The Netherlands. Biker needs to watch out for a pedestrian. Car for bikes and pedestrians, etc. If a car could've avoided the accident no matter if a cyclist was doing something wrong, car is at fault. This change prevented loads of accidents. Before if a cyclist did something wrong the general thought was "cyclist should've paid attention". But an accident is caused by 2 people, so it makes sense that the one who can cause the most damage is fully aware of that. Liable? That's why cars have mandatory insurance. The amount of damage which can be done is way higher than e.g. 2 cyclists hitting each other.
- closeparen 8y ago
  >"If a car could've avoided the accident" That's a pretty crucial distinction from strict liability, and is much closer to what we have in the US (at least on paper, you have a duty to avert a collision if you can, regardless of right of way). Unless you mean the most trivial sense of "you could have avoided the accident by not driving." "Needs to watch out for" is quite different from "is always at fault if it collides with."
  - bkor 8y ago
    The impression I get from statement made here it actually seems to be hugely different. Too much of "should watch out", etc. It's more of a "in case cannot be proven, car is in the wrong". In practice, good luck proving that the bike was doing something weird. As result, they watch out. I don't understand your comment of "strict liability" btw. It's not black/white situation. However, in general they rule against the car. As result, people on bicycles abuse this (especially in Amsterdam). But there's the benefit of a super huge bicycle usage, so although it's not perfect, it seems worth it.
    - vivekd 8y ago
      strict liability is a legal term of art that means something along the lines of "you are guilty no matter what the reason." It's used in North America can be found often in things like traffic tickets or regulatory offences. For example, if you were speeding, it doesn't matter what the reason is, for example it doesn't matter if your odometer was broken or if the posted street signs were impossible to see due to fog or whatever, all the prosecution has to prove is that you were going at a certain speed and you are automatically guilty no matter what. The individual you are replying to was saying that comments here made it sound like strict liability for drivers and cyclists. That even if you were driving as carefully as possible, if a cyclist suddenly appears from behind a bush and cuts exactly in front of your car while you were doing 80 km an hour and you did everything humanly possible to stop and avoid him, you would still be at fault. He's saying later comments seem to suggest otherwise.

sooheon 8y ago

I agree this is a good default. But because of this, here in South Korea we have con artist pedestrians getting purposely "bumped" by cars and going off to lie in a hospital bed, leeching medical bills from the driver until he settles.