Legal Question

[venta]

So: I believe that it is illegal (or at least against the Highway Code, which is not necessarily the same thing) to reverse from a road onto a more major road. I believe, as a consequence of this, that it is at least as illegal to reverse out of your drive onto the road. If the snarl up caused by the Fiat Multipla[*] in Sonning Common this morning is anything to go by, it bloody should be illegal.

However, various friends have assured me it's fine to reverse out of your drive on to the road - it can't possibly be illegal, because "everyone does it". Anyone know ?

[*]Surely the ugliest car in the world, and clearly born out of some deranged mechanic's bastard vertical cut-and-shut project.

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Does anyone else notice a bit of an inconsistency there ?

Comments

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Right, but when you're in a car you are prepared to bet on the other vehicles playing by the rules. Some days you're wrong and your car gets f*cked up and maybe you get a few bruises.

Back when I used to ride a bike regularly, I never gave a car the chance to screw up that way. Nor should you as a pedestrian.

[floralaetifica.livejournal.com]

That's soo not the point. You've shifted the responsibility from the car to the pedestrian. It's analagous to saying that young women shouldn't wear short skirts in case they 'give the chance' for perverts to attack them.

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

No it isn't.

Wearing short skirts is a significant part of the freedom of lifestyle and expression which women in our society have gained over the past 80-odd years and continue to work to protect and expand. It requires unambiguous malice (or mental illness) to attack a woman simply because she is wearing a short skirt. Thus it is a deplorable failure of society's duty of care towards women to suggest that if they choose to wear a short skirt then they have placed themselves outside the realm where society can be expected to protect them.

Walking across the road in the assumption that traffic will stop for you is not a significant freedom at all. The rules of precedence here are essentially arbitrary - from the point of view of ethics it doesn't matter who has right of way, so long as somebody does and everyone knows who it is. Thus it is reasonable to argue in favour of placing responsibility either with the driver, or with the pedestrian, according to whatever you think. I think that because of the pragmatic issues - basically predictability of movement - responsibility should lie with the pedestrian since it's easier for them to take responsibility than it is for drivers to do so.

It's also perfectly reasonable to advocate that pedestrians carry out the analogy of defensive driving, and not assume that reality will somehow conform to the highway code. This seems to be essentially what bateleur is doing.

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

Of course we'll know we're really making it as a society when men can wear short skirts and not expect to be attacked as a result.

But that social progress will not be mirrored by further freedoms for pedestrians to have more rights of way over vehicles. And for good reason.

[floralaetifica.livejournal.com]

OK, I think you've taken my analogy too far. My point was that bateleur seemed to be suggesting that it didn't matter that cars were in the wrong by not letting pedestrians cross, but rather that pedestrian's should always defer to them out of a sense of self-preservation. You might equally say that I should dress as modestly as possible out of a sense of self-preservation in the hope of avoiding comments from builders. But that doesn't mean that I should have to do so. Builders shouldn't make sexist comments, and cars should wait for pedestrians to cross when they have right of way. The more vulnerable party shouldn't always have to act defensively.

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

I won't speak for bateleur, but my view is that cars "should" stop for pedestrians, in the sense that they are in the wrong if they don't. Pedestrians "should not" expect cars to stop for them, in the sense that it is foolish to do so. At the point where you collide with the bumper, it *doesn't* matter that the driver is in the wrong. I don't imagine it's any consolation at all until much later.

I still think that the difference from builders is that builders must be callous in order to make sexist comments - and it would be an injustice for there to be a rule or law that sexist comments don't count when made to women in short skirts. Drivers only need a minor failure of communication to not notice that you are trying to cross the road, as opposed to just wandering around near the pavement edge like any number of other pedestrians. And if the rule of precedence were reversed, that would not be an injustice.

Given these factors, I don't think pedestrians can claim to have acted entirely reasonably if they do step out in front of a car about to turn, and get hit. If pedestrians did typically come to a full stop on the kerb and pause before starting to cross, then it would be somewhat more reasonable to anticipate that drivers will realise their intent and give way.