The claim is not that one can run over “anyone in the vicinity”. It’s that one can take necessary steps to extricate oneself from a life-threatening situation. If the threat’s companions are too slow to get out of your way, that may be unfortunate, but will likely not result in a criminal conviction, at least given the one real-world scenario that either one of us has put forward for review. If you are aware of some other situation in which a fearful driver ran over a bystander to escape a threat, please provide some information about it and we can examine how it might alter our understanding of the legal landscape.
That’s a pretty remarkable legal claim (given the fact, as you are driving off, “companion” can mean the party of school children obscured just behind the guy whaling on your windshield). Unless you can come up with an actual legal opinion to back it up I will stick to my original opinion:
Running over a random bystander because you feel threatened in your car should and probably would result in criminal conviction, no matter how valid the original threat was
Jesus Christ, for someone who has criticized others for misrepresenting the proposed bill, will you clearly state for the record that nothing in this post has anything to do with the proposed bill, because the proposed bill does not require the driver to be threatened in any way?
You’re just projecting this concept of self defense on all these various scenarios, when the bill is actually not about anyone being threatened at all.
Where did I say that about “someone swinging a bat”? IIRC, my “snowflake” comment was about protesters in the street (where they have not “lawfully entered”) being nudged aside by a slow-moving vehicle.
I am not at all convinced that they were “well visible” to the driver. It was night, most of the crowd was still on the side of the road. The part that I think was “being treated poorly” is that he has to face a civil suit and all the expense, stress, and time-consuming aggravation that entails because the protesters “were stupidly in the freeway”. I’d prefer he didn’t have to undergo all that for a sequence of events that I see as largely / entirely the fault of the protesters themselves.
Except that it did NOT result in a criminal conviction in the one case we are aware of that fits those parameters. (Mieses was a random bystander run over by Lien, who justifiably felt threatened, and Lien was not convicted). Your opinion is at odds with reality (but you are, of course, more than welcome to continue holding it).
I have not claimed that SB 1096 has anything to do with self defense. It quite evidently does not. There are (at least) two separate strands of this thread, and I’m participating in both. One of them, with griffin1977 (and encompassing the post of mine that you quoted), discusses whether one is justified in running people over when facing a threat of great bodily harm. We’ve been discussing Lien and the Hollywood Stuntz rally. It got started when andros asked “When is it acceptable to commit assault with a deadly weapon?” in post #7 and I responded in post #9.
Another strand of this thread, running in parallel to that discussion, is my conversation with you and a few others about whether SB 1096 is good public policy. I think it is. You do not. Neither one of us thinks it has anything to do with self-defense in the face of a genuine threat to one’s safety.
Your response to this issue affirms my view that your opinion on this matter is inseparable from your disdain for liberal protesters in general.
You saw the video, right? How long was the crowd in the freeway before the woman was struck?
Do you consider a driver who reportedly evaded a police effort to slow down traffic to be exercising due care?
And again, I’m pretty sure you don’t care to have the obvious negligence of this driver to be questioned by a judge or jury on the merits of the facts, probably because you’re rather happy to see protesters in general punished for not being the type of people you prefer.
Seems to me if a person tries to push their car through a crowd they will be provoked so the person driving the car has no legal protection for being in fear for their life.
You cannot walk into a bar filled with African Americans and yell “nigger” and then shoot them when they get pissed because you are in “fear for your life” and expect to not go to jail for it.
It doesn’t matter what the protesters are doing or what side they are protesting. You don’t push through them with your car. If they are breaking the law, you call the police–you don’t get to enforce the law by driving on through, and hoping they’ll get out of the way. If you do, and someone gets hurt, that’s your fault. And, even if no one does get hurt, there’s a chance they will, so it makes sense to legally discourage such tactics.
The only exception I can come up with is some sort of genuine emergency where either you are yourself in danger, or you need to hurry along to save someone else. But, otherwise, I don’t get to assault someone just so I can get somewhere on time.
Now maybe an illegal U-turn, I could justify. U-turn and take another route. Point out the protesters when you get wherever you were going, if they are upset at you for being late. But vehicular assault? No.
The idea that my entitlement to drive on a street is as important as their entitlement against assault is ridiculous. Yes, Shodan, even if they are wearing MAGA hats. I may wish they didn’t exist, but that doesn’t entitle me to harm them.
And if others are attacking you and you’re in fear for your life you just have to take it because God forbid you should hurt their accomplice who is lying down to stop you escaping? You may be prepared to nobly give up your life in such circumstances. Most people sensibly wouldn’t. They would drive off and let the courts sort it out later.