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> The reality is almost always that everyone is at least partially at fault That seems like quite an astonishing claim.

sandworm101 3y ago
But that is how it works out. In this situation the pedestrian apparently didnt follow one rule. The first car didnt follow another. And the second did something so odd that, if by a human driver, probably qualifies as negligence. Nobody has clean hands. The legal debate is about who has more or less blame, who has enough to be adjudicated reaponsable for which resulting injuries.
- watwut 3y ago
  From legal standpoint, situation in which one driver is entirely at fault and another not at all is completely standard. Likewise ethically, morally or responsibility wise. The "everyone at fault" sometimes happen, but it is not clear at all whether it is majority of cases.
  - Andrex 3y ago
    "Fault" is probably too loaded a term. "Contributing to the crash / making the accident worse than it could have been" may be more accurate but longer winded.
    - watwut 3y ago
      Fault is not just loaded term, it literally means that you are to blame. But even "almost always everyone is contributing to the crash / making the accident worse than it could have been" is pretty tall claim and would require a lot of evidence. Unless you count "leaving the house in the morning instead of staying home" or something like that as a contribution toward accident.
  - sandworm101 3y ago
    >> From legal standpoint Legal determinations come after our accepted rules are applied to the situation. Those rules ebb and flow dependent on the nature of the inquiry and the legal standard applied. Even seemingly irrelevant factors such as insurance coverage can be pivotal. Where both divers are covered by the same insurer, there is a higher likelihood that both will be found somewhat at fault. An insurer on the hook for both sides isn't going to spend money arguing forcefully for an all-or-nothing determination. But such things are totally irrelevant to anyone seeking to prevent accidents from happening in the first place.
    - watwut 3y ago
      Definitely does not work that way where I live. The "guilt" is determined independently of insurance situation. The insurance companies decides whose insurance will be used to pay which does not influence fault determination at all. > Where both divers are covered by the same insurer, there is a higher likelihood that both will be found somewhat at fault. Not true at all. And in particular, beyond being fined for not having mandatory insurance, you insurance does not influences at all who goes to jail or who will be fined and for what. > The legal debate is about who has more or less blame, who has enough to be adjudicated responsible for which resulting injuries. The legal debate fairly often ends with one driver being ruled as the cause of the accident with no blame spread.
      - bluGill 3y ago
        In most accident cases nobody will go to jail. There was no crime committed, so the only people who care are those who are liable in civil court.
        watwut 3y ago
        Most accidents are parking lot accidents. The guilty one is only one - the one with moving car. That being said, accidents where someone died or ended up with injuries are large part of what criminal system deals with.
bryanlarsen 3y ago
A typical large inquest will come up with a list of several dozen items that could have prevented or mitigated a situation, and I don't think common accidents are any different from unusual ones. Perhaps you wouldn't call all several dozen "to blame", but certainly all contributed.
- logifail 3y ago
  > certainly all contributed Thought experiment - vehicle A disregards a stop sign and pulls out directly in front of vehicle B* and there is a collision. I don't see how vehicle B "could have prevented or mitigated a situation" other than by not being on that road at that moment. The driver of vehicle A is completely at fault, B is blameless. * spoiler, it's actually not a thought experiment: my mother was in Vehicle B when this happened to her when she was coming to pick me up from school when I was about 10 years old. Having your mother arrive at your school in the back of a police car was a unique experience....
  - bryanlarsen 3y ago
    Other things that possibly could have mitigated the situation: - the intersection designer - maintenance workers that didn't clear visibility obstacles - vehicle safety features, both active and passive et cetera. Your mother wasn't "to blame", but could she have prevented the situation by driving more defensively? Likely.
  - bluGill 3y ago
    If Vehicle B was paying attention they can see vehicle A not slowing down (assuming there is sight lines). The options are then to stop despite having the right away, or take a sharp turn. Vehicle B probably could have been going slower to allow more time for the above (this is one reason why round-abouts are so safe: they force everyone to go slow - which is what the other response was getting at)
  - thefaux 3y ago
    I have been in almost exactly the scenario you described as vehicle A. I came up to an intersection and my view was occluded by a car parked to my right in a no parking zone. There also was a gradual bend in the road a few hundred feet to my right. I looked right, then left and started creeping out. I then saw that there was a car barreling towards me that I couldn't see (because they weren't visible when I first looked right). By the time I saw them I couldn't stop fast enough to prevent being hit. But he barely hit the passenger quarter panel and the skid marks were completely straight which is to say that I was barely in his lane and had come to a complete stop when hit. I did mess up by not creeping slightly slower but the driver who hit me had far better visibility (I checked from that perspective). I am almost certain they were going too fast for the roadway and may not have been fully paying attention. I didn't just blast through. I was creeping out at very low speed. An attentive driver would have seen me and taken evasive action and/or honked. The third party that had illegally parked obstructing my view can and drove off while we were sorting out the wreckage. In my shock, it took weeks before I realized that they had also contributed significantly but I had no proof since they'd just driven away. I was considered fully liable for the crash since I had entered the roadway without the right of way. I accept that I made a small mistake. I understand why the insurance people made that determination. But it still burned to be considered fully at fault considering all the other mistakes (including bad road design) that contributed. I will bet though that driver B in my crash felt that I was completely at fault and might have described it exactly as your mother did her accident. In his case, I think he likely would have been leaving out his role in not paying attention and driving too fast. There can be more nuance even to seemingly cut and dried cases.
deleted 3y ago
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skywhopper 3y ago
If not “at fault”, everyone is probably doing something they could/should have done better or more safely. In this case, the pedestrian could have avoided crossing against the light, and could have continued walking rather than stopping; the Nissan could have avoided the incident by noticing the pedestrian and stopping; the Cruise could have avoided its part of the incident by having more situational awareness, and knowing that when a pedestrian is acting strangely it should probably slow down, and when a pedestrian gets hit in the next lane, it should immediately stop. All complex systems are in “failure mode” of some sort at all times. But complex systems that work have enough wiggle room and safety mechanisms that true failure doesn’t happen until there’s some criticality of overlapping errors. Yes, there are some failure modes that are so devastating that everyone else could have been behaving perfectly and it would have made no difference, but likely many if not most traffic accidents are the confluence of multiple failures, even if most are minor and would never cause an accident on their own.
bluGill 3y ago
I have almost been in many accidents, but one of the two parties (sometimes me, something the other person - in proportion to suggest we are all average drivers) was paying enough attention to see the mistake and take evasive action to prevent it. When investigators look at accidents, often even when they can assign 100% blame to one party doing something stupid: there is still evidence that the other parties could have safely avoided the accident if they had taken the correct action.

But that is how it works out. In this situation the pedestrian apparently didnt follow one rule. The first car didnt follow another. And the second did something so odd that, if by a human driver, probably qualifies as negligence. Nobody has clean hands. The legal debate is about who has more or less blame, who has enough to be adjudicated reaponsable for which resulting injuries.

watwut 3y ago
From legal standpoint, situation in which one driver is entirely at fault and another not at all is completely standard. Likewise ethically, morally or responsibility wise. The "everyone at fault" sometimes happen, but it is not clear at all whether it is majority of cases.
- Andrex 3y ago
  "Fault" is probably too loaded a term. "Contributing to the crash / making the accident worse than it could have been" may be more accurate but longer winded.
  - watwut 3y ago
    Fault is not just loaded term, it literally means that you are to blame. But even "almost always everyone is contributing to the crash / making the accident worse than it could have been" is pretty tall claim and would require a lot of evidence. Unless you count "leaving the house in the morning instead of staying home" or something like that as a contribution toward accident.
- sandworm101 3y ago
  >> From legal standpoint Legal determinations come after our accepted rules are applied to the situation. Those rules ebb and flow dependent on the nature of the inquiry and the legal standard applied. Even seemingly irrelevant factors such as insurance coverage can be pivotal. Where both divers are covered by the same insurer, there is a higher likelihood that both will be found somewhat at fault. An insurer on the hook for both sides isn't going to spend money arguing forcefully for an all-or-nothing determination. But such things are totally irrelevant to anyone seeking to prevent accidents from happening in the first place.
  - watwut 3y ago
    Definitely does not work that way where I live. The "guilt" is determined independently of insurance situation. The insurance companies decides whose insurance will be used to pay which does not influence fault determination at all. > Where both divers are covered by the same insurer, there is a higher likelihood that both will be found somewhat at fault. Not true at all. And in particular, beyond being fined for not having mandatory insurance, you insurance does not influences at all who goes to jail or who will be fined and for what. > The legal debate is about who has more or less blame, who has enough to be adjudicated responsible for which resulting injuries. The legal debate fairly often ends with one driver being ruled as the cause of the accident with no blame spread.
    - bluGill 3y ago
      In most accident cases nobody will go to jail. There was no crime committed, so the only people who care are those who are liable in civil court.
      - watwut 3y ago
        Most accidents are parking lot accidents. The guilty one is only one - the one with moving car. That being said, accidents where someone died or ended up with injuries are large part of what criminal system deals with.

bryanlarsen 3y ago

A typical large inquest will come up with a list of several dozen items that could have prevented or mitigated a situation, and I don't think common accidents are any different from unusual ones. Perhaps you wouldn't call all several dozen "to blame", but certainly all contributed.

logifail 3y ago
> certainly all contributed Thought experiment - vehicle A disregards a stop sign and pulls out directly in front of vehicle B* and there is a collision. I don't see how vehicle B "could have prevented or mitigated a situation" other than by not being on that road at that moment. The driver of vehicle A is completely at fault, B is blameless. * spoiler, it's actually not a thought experiment: my mother was in Vehicle B when this happened to her when she was coming to pick me up from school when I was about 10 years old. Having your mother arrive at your school in the back of a police car was a unique experience....
- bryanlarsen 3y ago
  Other things that possibly could have mitigated the situation: - the intersection designer - maintenance workers that didn't clear visibility obstacles - vehicle safety features, both active and passive et cetera. Your mother wasn't "to blame", but could she have prevented the situation by driving more defensively? Likely.
- bluGill 3y ago
  If Vehicle B was paying attention they can see vehicle A not slowing down (assuming there is sight lines). The options are then to stop despite having the right away, or take a sharp turn. Vehicle B probably could have been going slower to allow more time for the above (this is one reason why round-abouts are so safe: they force everyone to go slow - which is what the other response was getting at)
- thefaux 3y ago
  I have been in almost exactly the scenario you described as vehicle A. I came up to an intersection and my view was occluded by a car parked to my right in a no parking zone. There also was a gradual bend in the road a few hundred feet to my right. I looked right, then left and started creeping out. I then saw that there was a car barreling towards me that I couldn't see (because they weren't visible when I first looked right). By the time I saw them I couldn't stop fast enough to prevent being hit. But he barely hit the passenger quarter panel and the skid marks were completely straight which is to say that I was barely in his lane and had come to a complete stop when hit. I did mess up by not creeping slightly slower but the driver who hit me had far better visibility (I checked from that perspective). I am almost certain they were going too fast for the roadway and may not have been fully paying attention. I didn't just blast through. I was creeping out at very low speed. An attentive driver would have seen me and taken evasive action and/or honked. The third party that had illegally parked obstructing my view can and drove off while we were sorting out the wreckage. In my shock, it took weeks before I realized that they had also contributed significantly but I had no proof since they'd just driven away. I was considered fully liable for the crash since I had entered the roadway without the right of way. I accept that I made a small mistake. I understand why the insurance people made that determination. But it still burned to be considered fully at fault considering all the other mistakes (including bad road design) that contributed. I will bet though that driver B in my crash felt that I was completely at fault and might have described it exactly as your mother did her accident. In his case, I think he likely would have been leaving out his role in not paying attention and driving too fast. There can be more nuance even to seemingly cut and dried cases.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

skywhopper 3y ago

If not “at fault”, everyone is probably doing something they could/should have done better or more safely. In this case, the pedestrian could have avoided crossing against the light, and could have continued walking rather than stopping; the Nissan could have avoided the incident by noticing the pedestrian and stopping; the Cruise could have avoided its part of the incident by having more situational awareness, and knowing that when a pedestrian is acting strangely it should probably slow down, and when a pedestrian gets hit in the next lane, it should immediately stop. All complex systems are in “failure mode” of some sort at all times. But complex systems that work have enough wiggle room and safety mechanisms that true failure doesn’t happen until there’s some criticality of overlapping errors. Yes, there are some failure modes that are so devastating that everyone else could have been behaving perfectly and it would have made no difference, but likely many if not most traffic accidents are the confluence of multiple failures, even if most are minor and would never cause an accident on their own.

bluGill 3y ago

I have almost been in many accidents, but one of the two parties (sometimes me, something the other person - in proportion to suggest we are all average drivers) was paying enough attention to see the mistake and take evasive action to prevent it. When investigators look at accidents, often even when they can assign 100% blame to one party doing something stupid: there is still evidence that the other parties could have safely avoided the accident if they had taken the correct action.