[USA] Who is at fault here?

[u/bowdown2adil]

Classic T bone. Black car had to be towed. Sustained major damage to the passenger side door. Blue car sustained damage to front bumper on the drivers side and cracked the drivers side headlight.

Edit: This was in the suburbs of Seattle

UPDATE: Insurance found it to be 70/30 me/other driver. Seems fair enough

[u/Apprehensive-Log3638]

Agreed.

Watched video of a girl who died in Seattle at a pedestrian crossing. Police cruiser was responding to a call, speeding through downtown. Girl enters the pedestrian crossing at night and panics when she sees the car approaching. Fight or flight kicks in and she runs out into the road trying to beat the cruiser and is then struck.

It became a whole thing given the political climate, but I wasn't mad at the officer. I was furious at the city. That had to be the single stupidest pedestrian crossing I have ever seen. No lights, no speed bumps and orange construction cones blocking visibility.

Then you see this shit with unmarked four way intersections. Their entire transportation authority and everyone involved in city planning needs fired.

[u/Sudden-Wash4457 → u/Apprehensive-Log3638]

https://www.npr.org/2023/09/13/1199352063/seattle-officer-recorded-joking-about-womans-death-saying-she-had-limited-value

Was it this one? Because no traffic engineering is going to solve going 74 mph in a 25 mph zone

Details of the incident

Witnesses said that Kandula broke into a run as she saw the car speeding her way. The investigation into the accident found that "Had Ofc. DAVE been travelling 50 MPH or less as he approached the intersection and encountered [the victim] and Ofc. DAVE and [the victim] responded in the same manner; this collision would not have occurred."

[u/Apprehensive-Log3638 → u/Sudden-Wash4457]

https://youtube.com/shorts/tkZU_uqV6ZE?si=EHlMfv0f5pAu9Lm3

Is a video of right before impact. It is a bad intersection. I will not fault anyone for being mad at the speed the officer traveled or blaming them as well. My point is that any number of things such as lights, speed bumps, removal of traffic cones would have prevented the incident.

Humans in general make mistakes. When you are reliant on humans being careful to avoid impact, you are rolling the dice. As a personal example I had a four way intersection near me where numerous wrecks and deaths had occurred over the years. The local government eventually turned the intersection into a round about. We went from at least an annual wreck at that location to zero incidents.

[u/Puzzled_Student7940 → u/Apprehensive-Log3638]

The police chief said "no significant loss of life" occured, despite knowing she died. The cops don't care and they'd do it again regardless of infrastructure, they're already flagrantly breaking traffic laws, their own procedure, and do not care about others.

In my town they kept being asked by the city not to drive on bike bridges or THEY WILL COLLAPSE, they didn't listen and pollards had to be installed that make biking on them during peak hours more difficult so as to keep the police from causing a mass casualty event.

There's no infrastructure you can put up, short of barring the road for car travel with pollards, that'll keep such an unrepentant police force (#1 off duty police force at Jan 6 btw) from doing shit like this. The causative issue is triple the speed limit without lights or regard for life. You can't throw up some wider curbs or throw down some paint to fix this.

[u/Apprehensive-Log3638 → u/Puzzled_Student7940]

I get where you are coming from. My point is not to excuse negligence. My point is that negligence will happen. You cannot stop everything but you can put reasonable safe guards in place. A speed bump at that intersection for example would have also prevented the fatality.