Ever been hit by a car? Was it your fault?

In My Humble Opinion
21

Although I have reached the same decision since I moved to the U.S., I’d just like to add that it doesn’t have to be this way. I grew up un the U.K., raced bikes when I was a youngster, rode my bike daily for many miles for many years around the U.K., and on trips to continental Europe. I had the odd skirmish with an asshole driver of course, but really no more so than when driving a car. I never felt my life was seriously in danger, and the only collision I recall was being brushed by a wing mirror once.

Other countries have a culture of being far more respectful to cyclists on the road. The appalling attitude in the U.S. is not fundamental to human nature.

22

I got hit on a bicycle, and it was my fault. I couldn’t see very far because of some bushes. I gambled and lost.

23

Years ago I was the passenger in a car with someone. As we approached an intersection I yelled for her to stop, several times. She finally did as another car blew through a stop sign. It was going pretty fast and I could tell it wasn’t slowing down. Each time I asked her why she didn’t stop, her answer was that they had a stop sign and we didn’t, so it would have been their fault. I finally said ‘yes, it would have been their fault and they would have had to pay for the damages and maybe you could even sue them, but you’re the one that would have relearning how to walk’. Just because it’s not going to be your fault, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t avoid an accident if you can.

Riding a bike on a sidewalk is a really good way to get hit by a car entering or leaving a driveway. They’re not expecting you there and by the time they see you, it’s too late for anyone to stop.

Don’t be nice, be predictable.

24

Yeah, UK default is that the person piloting the big dangerous thing at speed, who has to get a licence to do so, is normally the person who bears primary responsibility for hitting anything.

On a practical level, if you drive in a way that means you can’t brake for a pedestrian, you wouldn’t be able to brake for a dog, deer, or anything else in the road either. Jaywalking isn’t a thing here either; if you’re hit by a car suddenly sprinting out into a road in a dumbass place, the driver may not be found not at fault, but except on a motorway, which do have laws prohibiting pedestrians except in an emergency, there’s no law stopping you.

Also, we have so many places that would just be crazy unsafe if pedestrians had to dodge cars, due to narrow roads and no footpaths. I know of old houses in the UK with front doors that literally open into the main street, maybe a 1’ strip between the door and the closest passing cars. Our road rules were developed knowing we have places like that. Sure, kids growing up in those houses learn to be careful around cars, but if the responsibility was all on them and drivers could just shrug and say ‘They shouldn’t have been in the road’, their lives would be an endless* game of frogger.
*Probably end pretty soon actually, come to think of it.

I’ve not seen a pedestrian knocked over, though I have seen a bus knock a cyclist in a bike lane over.

25

I was hit when I was about 9 years old. Playing with a friend across the street from his house. His mother came home from the grocery store and my friend hollered “Cookies!” and we both ran, with him in the lead. He made it across, and luckily the driver of the oncoming car hit the brakes when he saw him, but was still rolling when I bolted out from between the parked cars. Hit me in the hip and sent me sprawling, receiving abrasions on my hands and elbows. The guy was ghost white when he helped me up, and came to see my parents that evening to make sure I was okay. Totally my fault, of course.

26

Pedestrian not at fault, but this is the sort of situation where (if I were that pedestrian) I’d be looking all around for potential trouble. If I get the walk sign, before I step into the street I’m looking over my left shoulder to see if there’s a car that’s going to turn right. If there’s a car there and he’s not going to turn right, I can walk. If there’s no car there yet, then I’m looking further down the block to see if someone is approaching who might stupidly turn right while I’m still in their path. Certainly not my fault if I get hit in the scenario you describe, but since I’ve got a lot to lose, I’m going to put some effort into being ready for stupid mistakes that cause drivers to violate right-of-way.

27

Yes. I despise sidewalk-riding cyclists. There have been several times I almost hit one because I was not expecting such a fast-moving vehicle in the pedestrian pathway. Never came close to hitting one in the road, where I actually expect them.

28

Never been hit as a pedestrian. Been in 3 accidents as a cyclist which were not my fault.

1: Dusk, stopped behind a truck which was stopped at a red light. I had a taillight on. A car came from behind and hit me. Apparently the driver saw right through me and only saw the truck in front of me. I was on a tall recumbent bike similar to this - admittedly it has a bit less visual cross-section than someone standing, but that’s no excuse for not seeing me directly in their path. No injury, rear wheel ruined but no other damage.

  1. Dusk, riding on a suburban road, similar bike to above incident, headlight on. Car from a parking lot entered the road in front of me; I saw the car pause before entering the road, but when it started moving again and into the road, it was too late for me to stop or swerve. I believe I hit the side of the car and fell down. Minor injury (impressive hematoma) but nothing broken.

  2. Again, dusk, riding on a suburban road with very little traffic. I was riding my streamlined trike, taillight on. The bike has many reflectors on it. Car hit me from behind with no apparent reason - the only reason/excuse the driver gave was “I didn’t know what you were.” Which implies the driver saw me but chose to hit me. Minor injury (bruises and aches), major damage to trike.

In incidents 1 and 3, I was already riding in a position that should have been very easy for the driver to see. In incident 2, I may have been a little too close to the right curb; I may have been able to avoid it, or the driver may have seen me earlier, if I was a little further from the curb. Other than that, the only thing I could have done differently was to have multiple high-intensity headlights and taillights, the kind you have to recharge every day. Which I now do.

29

I was hit by a car when I was crossing with the light in a crosswalk. The car was driving in reverse, going the wrong direction on a one way street, and running a red light. While I could have noticed and anticipated what was going on (especially if I was watching in the wrong direction while crossing), I still think the driver bore a whole lot of responsibility.

30

Not exactly hit, but forcefully nudged. I’d pressed the button at the crosswalk, and the warning lights were blinking. Cars in all lanes stopped. I started across at a fairly brisk pace, and the car in the first lane surged forward just enough to nudge me. I yelled, “Hey!” and he stopped I continued two more steps, and the driver again surged forward, forcing me to do an action-movie roll over the front left corner of the hood as I (I admit it) screamed. All the other drivers stopped, and a lady pulled over to ask if I was OK. I was–just bruised.

And this was my fault how, exactly?

31

Still having trouble understanding your POV. If the pedestrian is in a cross walk with the light, stop sign or ‘yield to pedestrian in crosswalk sign’ in their favor, it’s the driver’s fault for hitting them save for weird exceptional cases we could surely construct. Same with a bike in a bike line.

So I just don’t get, ‘funny where pedestrians think it’s the driver’s fault’. In cases where it is the driver’s fault, like the general situations I just outlined, not so hard to define and not at all uncommon, why wouldn’t the pedestrian think so?

That doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to be oblivious to cars when in the right as a pedestrian or cyclist. It doesn’t mean there couldn’t be exceptions to the general rule I laid out. And sure it’s at least partly the pedestrian’s fault if hit crossing against the light, or outside a crosswalk (but then is the driver speeding?, that puts at least a lot of the blame back on them).

32

What a line of horseshit. Yes, as a pedestrian or bicyclist you are responsible for your own safety and to be aware of your surroundings rather than looking at your phone even when you have the right-of-way, but an inattentive or overly aggresive driver can put a pedestrian at risk far quicker than a person can respond. All parties concerned should be attentive for their own safety regardless of right of way, but given the amount of damage a vehicle can do even moving at slow speeds, the onus is on the driver to avoid a collision regardless of fault.

To answer the question of the o.p., I’ve been hit twice, and both were unambiguously the driver’s fault. Once was a driver blazing through a parking lot at well over a safe speed and across lot spaces, striking the cart I was pushing and jamming it into me. The driver kept going and later claimed to not have been in the area at the time of the incident even though there was clearly fresh damage to his right front fender. Fortunately, I was not seriously hurt, but because there were no witnesses he was only cited with reckless operation and given a small fine. The other was a woman driving at slow speed but clearly not looking and managed to sideswipe two cars that were parallel parked. In that case I saw her coming toward the cars and stepped back between the cars and then jumped up on the trunk of the forward car, but she managed to break a part of the wing mirror which struck me in the arm.

I also had an incident early last year where I was making a legal crossing at a well-lit intersection and a driver made an illegal left turn against a red light. I stepped back just out of the way but the car passed within a couple of feet and the driver was looking straight at me. I was so surprised and angry that I threw my book at the car, which caused the driver to back up and jump out of the car and then literally threaten to kill me. Both his passenger and I told him repeatedly to get back in the car, which he finally did after a tirade of profane and confusing insults and threats. So yes, there are overly aggressive and dangerous drivers out there as well as the inattentive, texting and video watching drivers which pose a hazard to pedestrians.

I’ve never struck anyone as a driver but I’ve had some close shaves with pedestrians who decided to cross against the light, or step out from between vehicles, or just step right behind me as I was clearly backing up in motion. As I’ve matured as a driver, I’ve learned to be more cautious in any circumstances where people or animals may be present because you cannot always predict what someone will do.

Stranger

33

No worries. We could have a happy discussion about who is at fault in a variety of given scenarios. It’d be fun and interesting, and it’s tempting. But what I’m soliciting here is different. I get a bit stubborn on some issues, I realize that, and I’m looking for different perspectives. Arguing/agreeing with a position would, I believe, discourage contribution. I’m shutting up and listening, to the point of resisting clarifying my general position as stated in the OP. OP could have been formulated better, but I’m not always as eloquent as I could be. I’ll get misunderstood or misinterpreted as a result, that’s on me.

34

Once as a pedestrian, at least once as a cyclist.

The pedestrian one may have been my fault. I was knocked out and have no memory of what happened immediately before I was hit. It was at a crossing I know well, and even though I was twelve years old I was much more careful than usual about crossing roads. This was partly because a girl at my school had been knocked down and killed by a drunk, speeding, red-light-jumping driver while crossing at a zebra crossing showing a green man* - I assume you won’t claim that was her fault? So it would be out of character for me to just walk into the road without checking. However, the driver claimed I’d just walked out in front of their car and I wasn’t really in a position to argue, so it’s certainly possible it was an accident of my own making. I wasn’t about to try to get the driver charged with something based on my own knowledge of my road habits.

The cyclist one was, without question, not my fault. The car came out of a driveway without checking for oncoming traffic. It was a difficult driveway to exit but what that means is that they should have edged out gradually rather than just coming out at normal speed. I wasn’t injured (nor was my daughter, on the back of the bike in a child seat) because I’d had a couple of near misses on that driveway before, but since we toppled over backwards on a hill there’s an element of luck there. After that I’d just get off and walk the bike carefully past the driveway, but even then there were some near misses.

Actually I know I was hit in a minor way by cars while on my bike at least a couple of other times, but can’t recall the details right now. They also weren’t my fault. I don’t cycle any more but was always careful to avoid going anywhere lorries or other high-sided vehicles, did actually stop at traffic lights, etc. A minority of drivers seem to have a strange idea of how much space a cyclist needs - it’s like they assume that you need the space of the width of your bike, as if you don’t have legs and arms as well.

While some pedestrians do seem to act as if they are playing human frogger on the streets, some drivers are also inattentive, thoughtless etc. And since pedestrians at some point will generally have to cross a road, you have to just size up the risks and get on with your life. And hope that you’re allowed to do that latter part :smiley:

Now because I’m disabled I’m really, really slow when crossing the road. A couple of times I’ve had drivers edge up dangerously close to me on pedestrian crossings, and I wouldn’t be able to jump out of the way if some arsehole came zooming up the road. But I still have to cross roads now and then. What else do I do, never leave the house?

Do you think every time a car is hit by another car, the car that was hit was at fault? Or if it’s about relative danger, is it always the fault of a car driver if they’re hit by a truck?
*In the UK we have a green man for go for pedestrians. So I always said to my daughter to watch for the green man at crossings. When visiting New York I had to change this to watch for the white man and that felt really odd to say :smiley:

35

I was hit by a car while I was crossing the street in the crosswalk. The car was stopped at a stop sign. For some reason the driver didn’t see me although I was pretty much directly in front of the driver. Now, it wasn’t really a big deal because I was literally a foot away from the front bumper when the car began to accelerate so it was going maybe 3 miles an hour when it hit me. I just kind of pushed myself up onto the hood of the car, turned over and rolled off the hood to the side of the vehicle. It was a completely controlled manuever and I wasn’t injured in the slightest. The car didn’t stop though and the driver yelled something nasty. And I let it go because I had places to be and people to see, as it were …and I wasn’t injured at all. Sometimes I think about that and I really wish I’d stuck around and made a bunch of trouble for the driver. There were witnesses and they were pretty appalled.
Not sure if it was preventable on my part. I live in a city and I walk everywhere and that involves walking in front of cars that are stopped at an intersection. I probably do that well upwards of a dozen times a day.

Now I have two close friends and an acquaintance that were hit by cars while walking and were seriously injured — one incident was really recent. And they were all hit while they were on the sidewalk, a crash occurred on the street near them and a car lost control and ran up onto the sidewalk. Not really their fault at all — things like that happen really fast without warning and I don’t think they had time to react.

36

I have not been hit as a pedestrian, but have on a couple of occasions while crossing with the light had an inattentive driver try to turn right into me–I carry a big heavy purse and they do tend to stop when you whang that hard on the hood. Gets their attention.

In Oregon they passed a law that says if a pedestrian is at ANY street corner, whether there’s a crosswalk or not, who signals a “clear intention” of crossing has absolute right of way. Which is fine, and as a driver I keep an eye out for those people and stop. However, if there are multiple lanes of travel, I have NO control over anyone in any other lane and I’ve seen some very near misses as the clueless idiot in the lane next to me pays NO attention to my stopped car and blasts right through. I’m fully prepared to see someone die some day because this happens a lot.

The other thing that happens a lot is that a very many pedestrians have decided that they have the right of way no matter what and will dart out into traffic from between parked cars in the middle of the block where they most emphatically do NOT have right of way but they seem quite determined to push their luck–these are the ones that would turn my hair grey had it not already happened. It’s not going to surprise me a bit if I see one of these idiots flattened and I just hope it’s not on my bumper that it occurs. Seriously, why do they DO this?

37

Because they’re immortal and invulnerable. Just ask 'em, they’ll tell you.

The last thing they’ll think as they take their last breath is “this wasn’t supposed to happen…”

38

I have never been hit, but there have been several people *killed *in front of my apartment building because drivers did not look where they were going. Here is the scenario:

It is an intersection of two busy streets, North & South each have three lanes - two for going straight, one for turning east & west. The cars in the North/South lanes were stopped at a red light, so the pedestrian had the light to cross and was walking North. Suddenly, a car traveling *South *(four lanes *away *from the pedestrian crosswalk) floors it and turns *East *right through the crosswalk, striking and killing the pedestrian. He did not have the light and there was no way to know a car was suddenly going to whip around that corner.

Please tell me **Inigo **how the driver is not 100% at fault, unless you think all pedestrians should be psychic and know that a car will start moving at a red light and make an illegal turn.

The city has since completely removed that southbound turning lane.

39

I do teach my daughter (and anyone else I get a chance to) to always look the wrong way up one-way streets, not assuming that just because a driver isn’t supposed to be coming down that street in that direction, that no drivers will. And if a driver is ignoring a one-way sign they may well also be dangerous in other ways.

The other thing I always told her is that there are many ways you can die, apart from illness. Trying to save another person is one sad but worthy way to die. Being in the wrong place when someone decides to bomb it is mostly out of your control, so is not worth worrying about. Dying because you wanted to save 30 seconds crossing the road in dangerous conditions is neither worthy nor completely out of your control.

But you can still do everything right and be hit by a motorist who, for that moment, wasn’t. The only way to totally guarantee never being hit by a car as a pedestrian is to never be a pedestrian. That’s not desirable for anyone.

Case in point: the girl I mentioned before. On a zebra crossing, with the lights in her favour, and the driver was not only speeding but ran the red light and was too drunk to stop immediately. The only way she could have avoided that car was to make sure the road was clear for half a mile in all directions before she crossed at the pedestrian crossing. She’d have been there forever.

Why did you feel so bad for the driver? Your agility was the only reason the accident wasn’t worse. Drivers can’t act as if everyone crossing the road is able to jump up onto the hood of their car. He got lucky - you shouldn’t feel bad for him at all.

40

It was quitting time at the factory I used to work at. At the buzzer many people would jog or even run the 1/8 mile or so to the hourly employee parking to get out of there as fast as possible. The parking lot was at the back of the property, past 3 buildings and so you got in your car and drove back the same route you just walked to get to your car. By the time I started walking back there, there would already be a steady stream of oncoming cars. It was normal for people to walk on both sides of this steady, oncoming traffic. One day I was on the right side of the car traffic and wanted to cross to the other side. I waited for a break in the oncoming traffic and headed for the other side.
Boom! Got nailed by a car going the other way! My fault for not looking but honestly, I don’t recall ever seeing a vehicle going that direction at that time of day. Fortunately I was not injured much. It was a gravel drive and on impact the car pushed my feet sideways about a foot before I went up onto the hood and windshield. Some bruising and soreness in the impacted leg. I apologized to the driver and we went our separate ways.