I will start out by saying that I am all too familiar with this pedestrian fatality, as my mother, a life-long pedestrian, was struck and killed by a driver late at night 23 years ago.
The police were all too eager to lay the blame at my mother's feet including. They said that my mother's decision to not cross at a cross walk was the reason she was killed. While it was true that she did cross in the middle of the road, this was because the nearest one was one mile away, and the only sidewalk was on the opposite side of the street to her apartment. So to get to a cross walk, she would either have had to walk that far on the shoulder of the road, at night, to get to the next cross walk, or a half mile in the opposite direction to her destination, for the other . This happened at 10:00 at night. The initial police report faulted this, and her choice of "dark" clothing for the accident. The county DA went as far as saying that my mother had "walked into the side of the car" (to my face).
When the facts finally came out, the story was just wee bit different:
1) My mother's "dark clothing" consisted of a white nurses uniform, white hose, white shoes and a brought red jacket. To be fair, when covered with blood these items looked dark. When I asked the DA why he didn't notice this in the accident scene photos, he told me he had not looked at them, he simply read the police report.
2) My mother died of massive head trauma, from where her head had struck the passenger-side windshield, something a bit difficult for a person "walking into the driver's side of a car in motion".
3) The driver had been drinking, but no field sobriety test, breathalyzer, or BA blood test was done. My mother, on the other hand, was whisked off to the morgue for a full autopsy, and a drug/alcohol screen (both negative).
4) The driver was traveling at an estimated 70mph in a 40moh zone, had skidded 116 feet up a 3% incline, with 92 feet of the skid against the curb.
You may wonder about the competence of the police (and the press who reported the above facts as Gospel at first) but let me add this last fact.
5) The driver was an undercover narcotics detective for the county police department. A detective sergeant, in fact.
Much was made of my mother's "negligence" along with scorn and incredulity (some of which I am seeing here in these posts) about a person WALKING some place in this day and age (1995), as if her failure to drive was a character defect (we plead poverty).
The issue dragged on for another 18 months and I will cut my recounting down to these few fact: Charges were not filed initially. Then they were. The policeman, thanks to the failure of any proper investigation, was found not guilty in a trial that lasted less time than it has taken me to type this recollection.
I tell you this, not to solicit sympathy, but to get my personal bias right out in the open on this topic. Having so done, I now give you my assessment of the facts of this case:
A) The brightest clothing in the word and six yards of reflective tape would not have mattered since the various sensors seemed to have failed to "see" her at all. There is no evidence the vehicle tried to break at any point prior to impact. The driver sure as Hell didn't see here, and wouldn't have seen a bloody brass band crossing in front of her.
B) The car was speeding, 38 in a 35.
"But, what difference does three miles make?", you ask. When a pedestrian tangles with 2 tons of steel, every mph matters. 3 miles per hour can literally mean the difference between life of death. Your chance of survival starts dropping fast for every mile per hour over 25. At 40, it become an almost certainty. There was ZERO reason for exceeding the speed limit. One mile over the limit is ILLEGAL by statute. Also, drivers have a legal obligation to SLOW down further in cases were conditions warrant, such as "poor visibility" due to weather or darkness.
C) The drivers (both human and machine) failed to exercise reasonable caution given conditions.
There seems to be a view that the victim bears the majority of, if not all, the blame. She should have known better. She's a grown woman, etc. As a person who crossed a number of dark streets at night (I was the first person in my family to drive), I can tell you that sometimes you can misjudge the speed of a car's approach, and cars can change speed and throw off your estimates quickly. A car approaching in the passing lane which you may safely clear, can screw up that determination by changing lanes (this is what happened to my Mom, based on reconstruction of the accident). I will also point out that our road design, until quite recently, has been pretty hostile to pedestrians. The bigger the road and the heavier the traffic, the less likely it is to have a sidewalk, well marked crossing areas, and crossing lights.
In the end, who was in a better position to prevent this accident? A poor homeless woman walking her $100 bike? Or a $50 billion, rules averse, corporation, with car loaded with a few hundred thousand dollars in cutting-edge tech, supervised by someone I am pretty sure is not an engineer, or even particularly well-trained?
