i almost hit a pedestrian today

[schwza]

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Obey the speed limits .... the cops would have measured your tire skid marks and would have been able to extrapolate your speed. If you were obeying the law = ok. if not = [censored]

glad it worked out ...

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i believe i was following the speed limit, at least in the "32 in a 25" sense, but i can't be sure. also i took my foot off the gas for a second or two when i saw the parents at the curb so that probably slowed me down a little bit too. i might have hit the brake when i saw them also, but i'm not sure.

one of the worst parts of all of it if i had hit the kid would be not knowing how fast i was driving (especially if it couldn't be determined from skidmarks). it could've made for some terrible courtroom decisions (lie and say i was definitely going no more than 20 vs tell the truth and say i don't really know). i know i wouldn't have said anything at all until i had a lawyer present, i've learned enough from law and order to know that.

edit: someone mentioned booze. i was totally sober and i hadn't had a drop of alcohol all day.

[SonofDjugashvili]

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So the parents weren't holding their child's hand?


Were the pedestrians at a crosswalk? Does anyone know a driver's liability if someone is hit while jaywalking?

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As a PI lawyer in my former life, I can tell you a situation like this would probably wind up being settled on a 50/50 basis - i.e. the driver's insurance company would pay out to the kid (or his guardians) 1/2 of his assessed damages (based on injuries).

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i had personal liability coverage of either 40k or 20k. if it had gone 50-50 and the kid were seriously hurt/dead i'm sure that that coverage would have been a drop in the bucket and i would be totally broke. that woulda sucked. i had actually tried to purchase additional personal liability, which the agent told me was for $1 million, but when the guy printed out the contract it said 100k instead, so i didn't get it.

do you happen to know what the criminal situation would be? i'm in massachusetts and i was driving a rental car.

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I'm in Canada, so I don't know what goes on in MASS, but if the kid was j-walking and jumped out from behind a car, you were probably OK, criminally speaking UNLESS you were going real fast. So if you were doing 40 in a 20 you could be charged "with careless driving causing...". 40 in 35 is no big deal. Of course, they'd also have to prove how fast you were going if you were smart enough to keep your mouth shut. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img] General tip - always keep your mouth shut except for "I want to see a lawyer", and NEVER consent to a search without a warrant.
I can't believe that you are allowed to drive with that little coverage. The min here is $200K. So, if you hit the kid and he became a quad, you'd both be screwed - you'd have a huge judgement hanging over you and he wouldn't get anything (basically).

[b0000000000m]

A bit on the legal aspect. Generally speaking, any pedestrian that gets hit while on a road but not in a crosswalk, is going to be found 100% at-fault in a civil trial against you, and there is pretty much zero criminal case possible against you. Only when you start adding in other crimes, e.g., drunk driving, does criminal liability enter the picture when you hit a pedestrian who is crossing illegally.


Usually they have to prove something like willful/gross negligence to get any sort of financial liability against a driver when the ped wasn't in a crosswalk. Simple speeding is not going to meet this burden by any stretch of the imagination. Speeding that displays willful disrespect for human life might meet that burden.

Amsterdam has a variant of this, where in any accident between a bicycle and a car, the car's driver is 100% at-fault, no matter what.

So if it provides any solace, things would've probably ENDED UP just fine with any court proceedings. And there would've been no criminal proceedings, that seems 100% clear to me.

This isn't to say that you wouldn't have been sued. People sue all the time without the law "on their side" -- and yes, it would've been a protracted ordeal, possibly fairly torturous.

p.s. Mind explaining why you'd want $1MM of liability insurance? I thought it was never wise to get such insurance in excess of your total exposure to judgment (i.e., all of your assets and in some rare cases, future streams of income -- e.g., future income from being a partner in a law firm).

Glad to hear it worked out alright.

[SonofDjugashvili]

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A bit on the legal aspect. Generally speaking, any pedestrian that gets hit while on a road but not in a crosswalk, is going to be found 100% at-fault in a civil trial against you, and there is pretty much zero criminal case possible against you. Only when you start adding in other crimes, e.g., drunk driving, does criminal liability enter the picture when you hit a pedestrian who is crossing illegally.


Usually they have to prove something like willful/gross negligence to get any sort of financial liability against a driver when the ped wasn't in a crosswalk. Simple speeding is not going to meet this burden by any stretch of the imagination. Speeding that displays willful disrespect for human life might meet that burden.

Amsterdam has a variant of this, where in any accident between a bicycle and a car, the car's driver is 100% at-fault, no matter what.

So if it provides any solace, things would've probably ENDED UP just fine with any court proceedings. And there would've been no criminal proceedings, that seems 100% clear to me.

This isn't to say that you wouldn't have been sued. People sue all the time without the law "on their side" -- and yes, it would've been a protracted ordeal, possibly fairly torturous.

p.s. Mind explaining why you'd want $1MM of liability insurance? I thought it was never wise to get such insurance in excess of your total exposure to judgment (i.e., all of your assets and in some rare cases, future streams of income -- e.g., future income from being a partner in a law firm).

Glad to hear it worked out alright.

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This is completely wrong on liability, at least in Canada - what jurisdiction are you talking about? Here you can have a drunk Indian stumbling across a highway and it'll still go 50/50 usually.
As far as insurance goes, I carry $2M - it's not just a question of assets. Here, if someone injures me in a car accident and, say, I am badly hurt, if they only have $500K of insurance, my own insurance will step in for the difference between their coverage limit and the value of my claim (up to $2M in this case). Since, if I were disabled, I would have a huge future income loss claim, it's worth it to me to have $2M or even more insurance.

[cbloom]

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A bit on the legal aspect. Generally speaking, any pedestrian that gets hit while on a road but not in a crosswalk, is going to be found 100% at-fault in a civil trial against you, and there is pretty much zero criminal case possible against you.


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Are you just making this up? Most people have this belief and it's wrong so far as I know. In most states "cross walks" have little legal significance (other than defining "J walking"). Pedestrians are defined to have the right of way regardless of where they are on the road. I think this is a state-by-state thing in the US so the details vary.

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Amsterdam has a variant of this, where in any accident between a bicycle and a car, the car's driver is 100% at-fault, no matter what.


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I need to move to Amsterdam.

[schwza]

hey, thanks for the info. i'm guessing this came up in law school?

as for the liability insurance question, the only options were the basic one (20k per person and up to 40k total) and the bigger option (initially described as 1mm, on the contract as 100k), so i couldn't pick an exact level of coverage.

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I thought it was never wise to get such insurance in excess of your total exposure to judgment (i.e., all of your assets and in some rare cases, future streams of income -- e.g., future income from being a partner in a law firm).

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i don't see why this necessarily would be true. suppose i had 100k in assets and i incurred 300k in liability. in that case i would definitely rather that i had 300k+ in coverage rather than only 100k (which would leave me broke).

it is true though that having 300k of coverage would have really only saved me 100k, so it's possible that the insurance would be too expensive to justify its cost.

it is necessarily true that you should not have a deductible higher than your net worth.