“Cyclists only permitted users of the road, not intended”: US Court shirks pothole responsibilities and claims no liability for cyclists; Christmas jumper-wearing Tadej Pogačar does wheelies in the middle of the road + more on the live blog

mattw wrote:

The Chicago has judges all over 55, and is heavily gerrymandered in favour of Democrats.

But I don't think these will be getting any help from the Trumpite majority on the US Supreme Court.

Speaking as someone who has been over fifty-five since October, I'm not sure that's an age at which, as you seem to imply, one becomes incapable of decent decision making.

The West Midlands Police seems to think that this sentence will shock potential offenders, whereas he will be out in 6 months and like-minded drivers will simply think 6 months isn't too bad, and the only penalty for driving without a licence would be a longer ban to ignore

Obviously too lenient but a good result when compared to this one from essex

https://road.cc/content/news/motorist-racially-abused-and-reversed-cycli...

suspended sentence and 20 month ban for delberately ramming and injuring cyclists.

Obviously too lenient but a good result when compared to this one from essex:

https://road.cc/content/news/motorist-racially-abused-and-reversed-cycli...

suspended sentence and 20 month ban for deliberately ramming and injuring cyclists.

The driver of the silver people carrier should hand their licence in too - for being a see you next tuesday and not stopping.  What the hell is wrong with people.

And hi-viz counts for nothing if drivers don't look.  As the driver didn't come to a halt, it's a classic of two moving objects on a constant converging course relative to each other.  Again.

Seeing that highlights how I got to spend 9 hours in St George's A&E for the same sort of incident.

The reason I mentioned hi viz and helmet is that the defence would not be able to use lack of these in mitigation. They obviously shouldn't be able to do that any way but it has been done in the past.

brooksby wrote:

I can't be bothered to google it but iirc there was a similar US court case some years ago, where a cyclist went between the planks on one of those quaint wooden covered bridges. The local authorities had removed planks for repair and not bothered signposting this fact because no cars would fall through. Long story short, the cyclist lost the case and the town council was found to have no liability then either 

That was the previous Illinois precedent that this case unfortunately upheld. Both terrible rulings. I'm in Illinois (not Chicago though). Hopefully the legislature does something about it. They did improve bike law somewhat just five years ago or so, so there's hope.

ubercurmudgeon wrote:

This is the country, after all, that necessitated the addition of "May contain nuts" warnings on packets of peanuts.

With peanuts being legumes rather than nuts, and with nut allergies capable of being fatal, what is wrong with warning nut-allergy sufferers that a bag of not-nuts might contain trace elements of something that might kill them?

Surely they have it arse about face. Motorists are the ones who need a licence to dive on the roads and as such, are literally permitted. Cyclists have the right to be there.

Part of the issue is that social media allows idiots to find each other really easily and pat each other on the back for their shitty world view that even a retard would probably question. Even 2 minutes of googling would tell them that cars don't even come close to contributing enough for road maintenance through any direct taxation of motoring related items. Fucking morons. 

Can't be bothered to google it now but I thought that "direct" motor taxes more than covered "the roads budget" e.g. the construction and maintenance of motor infra?  The maintenance bit is clouded by this being split between national (e.g. Highways England) and local groups (national parliaments, councils and local authorities) of course and it is now apparent that we haven't doing enough of the latter.

However - what it doesn't cover is all the "externalities" - these are "what we choose not to include in these figures" e.g.:

Environmental effects such as pollution, rapid water run-off from all the non-permeable surface e.g. roads.

Health effects - pollution again including particulates from tyres; direct KSIs from crashes - detailed guide to economic impacts / UK summary of  economic impacts - assessed as a notable fraction of GDP (allowing for estimates of unreported crashes also), encouraging sedentarism, effect of road noise on sleep etc.

Damage to infrastructure (crashing into "road furniture", buildings - although if you throw in insurance perhaps that covers some?) etc.

Of course we should note the benefits of mass motor transport and haulage.  Although given that motor travel is bound up with our "way of life" (of the last 100-ish years, say) that can be hard to quantify.  There is far more than the bare economics of it - private motor vehicles tie in to our concepts of adulthood, status, "freedom" and autonomy... and even "keeping people connected" although often that's actually patching around the physical disconnection which was facilitated by mass motoring in the first place etc.

chrisonabike wrote:

Can't be bothered to google it now but I thought that "direct" motor taxes more than covered "the roads budget" e.g. the construction and maintenance of motor infra?

This article is about the US, though. Federal fuel taxes go into the Interstate Highway Fund, which doesn't collect enough to even maintain the Interstate system (our M roads) that cyclists mostly aren't allowed on. State auto registration fees barely cover the cost of collecting them (most states it's $100-$300 per year for any vehicle.) State fuel taxes typically cover 30%-70% of state roads. The rest are county and local roads which are paid for almost entirely from the general fund, which usually comes from property taxes and sales taxes.

Even the direct costs of motoring are massively subsidized here.

andystow wrote:

This article is about the US, though. Federal fuel taxes go into the Interstate Highway Fund, which doesn't collect enough to even maintain the Interstate system (our M roads) that cyclists mostly aren't allowed on.

Quite right, I was reverting to my UK parochial goggles again!  And another nice reminder that while the US may contribute much to e.g. cycle design, flagging up the issues with motoring and highlighting good ideas from elsewhere - it's definitely not the place to copy anything from regarding active travel, planning and zoning, the suburbs or public transport...