I am sure this will surprise everyone, but I think I see why the driver probably should not be charged with criminal negligence. The key lies in the part about "the defendant should have been aware that (his) (her) operation of a vehicle created the unreasonable and substantial risk of death or great bodily harm".
The reason I have changed my mind is because I remembered something today that happened a couple of months ago. Imagine this scenario: You are driving a car on a narrow road and heading up a hill. You see some pedestrians walking on the right side of the road (no sidewalk) toward you, just cresting the hill. Before you pass them, you pull to the left to give them 3 feet of room edging into the oncoming lane, and just before you pass them, you see a car coming over the hill toward you. Instinctively you swerve to the right to avoid the oncoming car, and as a result of your swerve, your car strikes and kills one of the pedestrians on the road. Now, this isn't what happened to me. What actually happened was I saw the situation developing where the pedestrians crested the hill, and I waited to pass the pedestrians until after they were far enough down the hill that I would not have to swerve dangerously if a car came over that hill. Everyone else in the car and the pedestrians on the hill looked at me dumbfounded. They couldn't figure out why I had slowed down! The situation that I had anticipated wasn't the least bit obvious to them - and this is why, had one of them been driving instead of me and the worst-case scenario I envisioned played out, they would not be criminally negligent. Even though I foresaw the danger, it was clear that everyone else in the car could not. Now if, after telling this story about my tendency to imagine worst-case scenarios where others cannot, I were to kill a pedestrian in this manner I could very well be found guilty of criminal negligence. It really sucks that I could be held to a higher standard than everyone else. If there is a moral to the story, I think it lies in why I was able to foresee the potential danger: On multiple occasions, when I have been sitting on my bike at a traffic light, in the center of the lane (just as Effective Cycling Teaches) a car has come up on my right side, halfway into the oncoming lane, and pulled up even with me. I can immediately see that if someone turned right onto the street I was on, they would crash into the car next to me, and probably push that car into me. It was my recollection of this situation that made me think twice about passing the pedestrians near the top of the hill. Oh yeah, the moral: The more people we can get to be out there on a bike experiencing problems like this, the more able they will be to avoid this situation as drivers. - Matt _______________________________________________ Bikies mailing list [email protected] http://www.danenet.org/mailman/listinfo/bikies
