At that point, the rally participants escalated, by striking the vehicle, which is common in these situations with protester too: Driver honks his horn or tries to inch his way through and protesters, for some fucking idiotic flawed “reasoning”, they decide to run into the path of the vehicle, slap it / hit it, throw things , etc. That’s what the motorcyclists decided to do too.
I agree. I don’t believe I’ve claimed he was / should be authorized to accelerate into / over / through them prior to that point.
You are advocating for a law that would make it trivially easy for people to get away with running over protestors that inconvenience them. That you would not personally do that does not really make it any better.
I don’t believe the law would make it “trivially easy for people to get away with running over protestors that inconvenience them”, but I do believe it would protect motorists like the driver in the UCSD case who (it seems pretty clear to me) unintentionally collided with a wayward protester.
Yes, that’s what I am asking about. Nudge them, push them, however you want to characterize it.
What if I keep going (at less than 1 mph)? That’s what I am talking about.
If it is OK for me to be inconvenienced by not being able to use the road, is there a point where it is OK for him to be inconvenienced by not being able to stop me?
Fine, if someone starts swinging a baseball bat and approaching you, I maintain that you cannot draw your weapon and shoot them, because you’d just be acting on whatever psychological trauma that a special snowflake might feel by having to step out of the way of a maniac with a baseball bat and refusing to stop.
The only substantive conditions are the lack of permit for a demonstration and the requirement for the assault to be unintentional. Which means my question about why someone should enjoy immunity from accidentally killing someone with a sign in their hand, but not from someone with a ball in their hand, is still a good one.
That becomes battery. If you are walking through a store, someone is in your way and you shove them over so that you can proceed, that can be seen as an aggressive act which can get you into a fight (that you effectively started). With a car, it is worse. You have several tons of mass protecting you, and a tiny nudge can lead to real injury. If your car gets attacked, you asked for it.
You do not get your rights for free. If you are irresponsible with them, you can have them legitimately breached. Which, yes, goes for the protesters as well. But, if you unilaterally choose to breach the rights of people who are in your way (who were already there), you will be in the wrong. Just fucking roll your window down, stick your head out of it, and negotiate for passage. Failing to do that puts you in the wrong.
Then we know who is really committed to the cause.
But he might be well-advised to be sure I saw him laying down. That might be harder to see than someone simply standing there. But yes, I would think I would be morally compelled to stop, so that might be a better option than simply standing there. Protests are one thing. Being a speed bump is something else.
Nor should a protest endanger anyone’s life and that’s what the thread is about. I don’t think there’s anything problematic about this. If a driver genuinely fears for his life or the lives of his passengers of course he can try to get away. If someone is hurt in the process then a court of law will decide if there was justification or not.
A better one might be if some group is protesting in front of a store, like a striking union. I don’t care, and I am trying to get to the store to buy condoms and a rotisserie chicken. Some striker gets in my face and tries to block my entrance to the store. He won’t let me get around him. At some point, I am justified in shoving him out of the way. IMO.
Yes, it does go for the protestors too. Their breach of my rights puts them in the wrong - I have the right to the uninterrupted use of the public highways. They don’t have any right to block the public streets.
This isn’t absolute - I am not advocating gunfire or whatever. But at some point, what goes around comes around, and the fact that they are making my life marginally more miserable means that I may have to take steps to make their lives equally miserable. Equally, not necessarily more.
And I am not rolling down my window under almost any circumstance. There is a fine line between protests and public riot - I prefer not to take any chances.
And when insane people go shooting up a school or workplace, people tend to flee the school or workplace. Running for one’s life does not indicate which party is in the right.