Misplaced kindness and the Highway Code

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shpalman
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Re: Misplaced kindness and the Highway Code

Post by shpalman » Sun Dec 04, 2022 5:46 pm

Many of the rules in the Code are legal requirements, and if you disobey these rules you are committing a criminal offence. You may be fined, given penalty points on your licence or be disqualified from driving. In the most serious cases you may be sent to prison. Such rules are identified by the use of the words ‘MUST/MUST NOT’. In addition, the rule includes an abbreviated reference to the legislation which creates the offence.

Although failure to comply with the other rules of the Code will not, in itself, cause a person to be prosecuted, The Highway Code may be used in evidence in any court proceedings under the Traffic Acts to establish liability. This includes rules which use advisory wording such as ‘should/should not’ or ‘do/do not’.
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Re: Misplaced kindness and the Highway Code

Post by monkey » Sun Dec 04, 2022 6:07 pm

bjn wrote:
Sun Dec 04, 2022 2:35 pm
Does anyone have an opinion on cycle helmets?
I like mine well done.

IvanV
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Re: Misplaced kindness and the Highway Code

Post by IvanV » Sun Dec 04, 2022 9:56 pm

Gfamily wrote:
Sun Dec 04, 2022 5:20 pm
The 1991 amendment to the 1988 Road Traffic Act gives an obligation to drive with reasonable consideration for other persons using the road (more specifically is says that failing to do so is an offence).
I would expect that, when used in the Highway code, "Should" indicates what is required to be reasonably considerate of other road users, and failure to do that may be used to indicate an offence. It's not absolute, as failing to do a "should" may be reasonable under the circumstances.
But running over a pedestrian crossing over the road at a junction is not excused because it's only a "should" that says you should allow them to cross.
shpalman wrote:
Sun Dec 04, 2022 5:46 pm
Many of the rules in the Code are legal requirements, and if you disobey these rules you are committing a criminal offence. You may be fined, given penalty points on your licence or be disqualified from driving. In the most serious cases you may be sent to prison. Such rules are identified by the use of the words ‘MUST/MUST NOT’. In addition, the rule includes an abbreviated reference to the legislation which creates the offence.

Although failure to comply with the other rules of the Code will not, in itself, cause a person to be prosecuted, The Highway Code may be used in evidence in any court proceedings under the Traffic Acts to establish liability. This includes rules which use advisory wording such as ‘should/should not’ or ‘do/do not’.
"May", "may", "may", etc. But how often in practice? Rarely, is the answer. Sufficiently rarely that these statements above more nearly wishful thinking than any kind of description of how our road environment works in legal practice. And this, by the way, is precisely why I consider road laws in this country to be not fit for purpose. You can do everything that is required of you, be perfectly careful, and get killed, and find that frequently there is no liability at all for the killer. The road laws completely fail to place any proper duty of care to avoid driving in a way that avoids substantial risk of killing people. And if they did, I think these rather curious bits of "advisory" wording would have to be thought through rather more carefully.

If it does come to court, the "should'"s above are only going to get bit-parts in the case, some small adjustment to the balance of responsibility, if you can find them guilty of something in the first place.

Running over a pedestrian (or other vulnerable road user) at a junction is actually excused remarkably frequently. If you go looking for cases, you will find numerous heart-breaking cases of precisely this. In this type of case, "Sorry didn't see them," does actually amount to a legal defence which is very hard to break down. "They must have run out in front of me, because I would have seen them." Even at a junction where you "should" give way to them, I think you will find this is a remarkably effective defence in practice, you'll find no shortage of cases where it worked for the defence.

To actually get bad drivers nicked, we need hard laws that they have broken. Or, what is essentially equivalent in this country, a system of legal precedent whereby the meaning of things like "careless" is amenable to testing against those old established cases, which currently it isn't. The a judge can say, there is precedent this action is deemed bad enough to be considered negligent.

Because ultimately, the only people who say what is "careless" or "dangerous" is the judge or the jury, and if it is at all contentious the defence advocate will advise a jury trial. Because the jury are mostly drivers themselves. And many of them go, well if that's bad enough to get you nicked, well deep inside here I know that I've done that a few times, and that was perfectly OK. So I can't acknowledge that to be "careless" or "dangerous" in way that gets you nicked.

Even if you actually break the law, you can still get off for the main event, the death. In a case a few years ago, a driver with illegally over-tinted windows all round, stationary at the kerb, opened the door and knocked a passing bicycle under a bus. Death resulted. Now "dooring" is actually a specific offence worth something like 3 pts on your licence and £150 fine or something. The heavily tinted windows something similar. So even though in this case the two contributory specific offences were committed and prosecuted, the fact that someone died as a result was completely lost. Overall outcome, some fine and a few points on the licence. So, this illustrates very nicely that even doing things you shouldn't do, in fact in this case mustn't do, doesn't necessarily lead to you taking responsibility for the enormity of the outcome. Even though it was comprised two utterly negligent acts, sufficiently negligent that they are actually illegal, that might reasonably be expected to lead to people's death. If this had been a dangerous piece of factory machinery that had been negligently managed in this way and led to someone's death, you would have been facing a manslaughter charge and a stretch. Because for some reason once it concerns personal road conveyances, the idea that drivers must avoid negligent handing of this dangerous piece of machinery has been completely lost, and explicitly so in law.

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Re: Misplaced kindness and the Highway Code

Post by Millennie Al » Mon Dec 05, 2022 12:24 am

IvanV wrote:
Sat Dec 03, 2022 5:37 pm
because the car behind you will rear end you if you screech to halt to give way to a pedestrian who thinks they can step out in front of you turning left.
a) that's their problem - everyone should be able to stop in the distance they can reasonably expect to be clear
b) you shouldn't need to screech to a halt because you are planning ahead and if you couldn't see the pedestrian due to an obstruction you should have been going slower because your view was obstructed

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Re: Misplaced kindness and the Highway Code

Post by Millennie Al » Mon Dec 05, 2022 12:26 am

Bird on a Fire wrote:
Sat Dec 03, 2022 8:32 pm
The scenario: a December weeknight, late rush hour. You are crawling between two sets of traffic lights at 10 km/h. A full bus has been trying to pull out of a bus stop in front of you for several minutes. What do you do, and how do you communicate your intention?
Stop further back than necessary and wait. The bus driver can then see you are waiting and can rely on the laws of physics which ensure you can't accelerate suddently into the bus.

Or you could just flash your lights (or whatever the socially accepted signal is). You're a human - not a robot.

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Re: Misplaced kindness and the Highway Code

Post by Millennie Al » Mon Dec 05, 2022 12:26 am

bjn wrote:
Sun Dec 04, 2022 2:35 pm
Does anyone have an opinion on cycle helmets?
Harmful things. Should be discouraged.

Millennie Al
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Re: Misplaced kindness and the Highway Code

Post by Millennie Al » Mon Dec 05, 2022 12:27 am

IvanV wrote:
Sun Dec 04, 2022 4:48 pm
What then is a "should" in the Highway Code?
It means something you should do but which you cannot rely on others doing.

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Re: Misplaced kindness and the Highway Code

Post by IvanV » Mon Dec 05, 2022 9:20 am

Millennie Al wrote:
Mon Dec 05, 2022 12:27 am
IvanV wrote:
Sun Dec 04, 2022 4:48 pm
What then is a "should" in the Highway Code?
It means something you should do but which you cannot rely on others doing.
Indeed. Exactly. As a pedestrian, trying to cross the road at a side turn, I do not rely on traffic stopping for me. It would put my life at risk if I did. Sometimes a car might stop for me, but I would make absolutely sure that was what was happening, and that there were no other road users putting my life at risk, before crossing.

Curiously, if as a regular bicycle user you stop at real zebra crossings for a pedestrian on the kerb, as I routinely do, you will discover some curious things, that you may be unaware of if you are not a regular bicycle user. First, quite a high fraction of pedestrians, who do actually wish to cross, will indicate that they didn't want you to stop for them, and wave you on. Second, quite a few pedestrians are surprised, and there will be a longer delay than with a car while they process that you have actually stopped before starting to cross. Third, a surprising number of pedestrians are just loitering at the end of a crossing with no desire to cross at that moment.
Millennie Al wrote:
Mon Dec 05, 2022 12:24 am
IvanV wrote:
Sat Dec 03, 2022 5:37 pm
because the car behind you will rear end you if you screech to halt to give way to a pedestrian who thinks they can step out in front of you turning left.
a) that's their problem - everyone should be able to stop in the distance they can reasonably expect to be clear
b) you shouldn't need to screech to a halt because you are planning ahead and if you couldn't see the pedestrian due to an obstruction you should have been going slower because your view was obstructed
As a vulnerable road user, it is very much my problem. I cannot take the risk of being hit, even if it is their fault - which will in practice be very hard to prove in court if I survive.

Normal custom and practice on the road, at least in central London, is that the pedestrians don't expect the traffic to stop, and the traffic mostly don't stop. In fact, if you do stop, you end up with that delay situation I mentioned when pedestrians are surprised I even stopped for them at a zebra when on my bike. Then there is the risk of the will-they-won't-they that can lead to misunderstandings and a collision. My wife discovered this within 2 minutes the first time she used a bicycle in London, and ended up on the road with a broken wheel after a car hit her from the side, due to precisely one of these will-they-won't-they misunderstandings when someone doesn't confidently assert the legal priority they have.

This whole thread was founded on the basis that varying from custom and practice causes confusion, danger and delay. That matches my experience. That is why I will continue to maximise my safety by conforming to this particular piece of normal custom and practice on the roads in central London, even if this particular piece of custom and practice varies from one of the "should" statements in the Highway Code. That is because there is danger in varying from normal custom and practice. The Highway Code is a document full of stupidities. That arises in part because of our stupid and not-fit-for-purpose road use laws. Many road users seem to be unaware of its contents. This particular bit of it is so stupid that the great majority of road users do not apply it, even if they are aware it is there. I have no expectation that other road users will comply with other advisory statements, even when I'm the intended beneficiary. In fact, I rail against the stupidity of constructing things as advisory statement in the highway code is enough, in the case of things that road users really, really should do.

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Martin Y
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Re: Misplaced kindness and the Highway Code

Post by Martin Y » Mon Dec 05, 2022 10:42 am

Millennie Al wrote:
Mon Dec 05, 2022 12:26 am
... Or you could just flash your lights (or whatever the socially accepted signal is). You're a human - not a robot.
I gather this is a genuine problem for robots. Or rather for people trying to create autonomous vehicles. Not only do you need to teach your cars the rules, you have to teach them the real rules too; the driving culture which isn't actually written down but "everyone knows" and which varies from place to place.

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