A woman I have met before that lives nearby has been killed while walking her dog.

She was hit by a car.

The woman that hit her stopped and instantly called the police, much to her credit. 

Needless to say, there was speculation and as usual a lot of fingers pointed at the driver who may/may not be held responsible.

I had met the woman that got hit a while back and she seemed okay. The again it was a case of one of her neighbors and I met her in the condo parking area where they both lived. I met her a couple times afterwards and briefly spoke to her.

Twice I heard that when she was walking her dog, who was also killed in the accident, that she seemed to be in a daze of some sort because a number of people had waved at her while she was walking the dog in bright daylight and seemed to have not noticed them.

She was walking her dog near a well known corner that should should have been a four way stop instead of a two way stop. Of course after she was killed there is a hue and cry to make the corner a 4 way stop.

She was reported to have been wearing a reflective vest of some sort which is what people should do because as a driver I have had to deal with too many Johnny Cash (The Man in Black) look-alikes that walk their pets after dark in black clothing. Then again, what kind of reflective vest was she wearing?. Some of them have a stripe or two running down the back and the commonly worn dark colored backpack makes the vest worthless to someone coming up from behind.

It's winter now and it gets dark early and lately as I have gotten older I try to drive at night as little as possible. Still, when I'm out I see people walking pets or simply walking with their backs to traffic dressed in very dark clothing. 

While I have never hit one of them, I have had a couple scare the holy hell out of me when I spot them. A couple of them over the years have been walking in the middle of my lane backs toward me, not a care in the world. 

I'm a slow driver in residential areas, especially in the Miata for a few reasons. The Miata is a little loud and sometimes people think I'm going faster than I really am. I try and make an effort, at the very least, in my own neighborhood. This holds doubly true after dark mainly because of the Johnny Cash dressers that are out and about.

Of course the usual suspects are quick to point out that pedestrians have the right of way and automatically will assume the driver is responsible. Fine. We'll get to this later.

As many of you know, I'm a retired mariner and as such have made my career have lived under maritime law. I also have some fairly extensive sailboat cruising under my belt. One of the first things someone learns for a captain's license are the Rules of the Road, a fairly complex set of rules establishing a pecking order for the right of way. by day under various circumstances there are day shapes that must be displayed. By night there are various lights that are displayed. 

The Rules of the Road go back to to about 1897 and were established to prevent collision at sea. This was long before the invention of radar and bridge to bridge radio communication. 

There is also one unspoken rule for mariners. It's called The Law of Gross Tonnage. It means you can be following the Rules of the Road to a T and still get clobbered. Nothing absolves one of their duty to prevent a collision at sea by any means necessary.

During my sailboat cruising period, under sail I was supposed to show port and starboard running lights and a stern light in darkness and inclement weather. However, in addition to this I religiously hung a radar reflector in my mast. Small plastic boats do not show up very well on radar because the aluminum mast doesn't reflect radar waves very well.  I've tested my radar reflectors before and they work and work rather well. (update: two years ago about the time I retired these became mandatory)

I have lived in a world of ships up to 1500 feet in length that traveled at 27 knots or greater and while we religiously adhered to the Rules of the Road, we also adhered even more religiously to the Law of Gross tonnage. To a man the people I sailed with were very proactive in preventing collisions at sea. The very, very few times, and I can only recall one where we had a close call the tug skipper did exactly the right thing and a collision was averted. Instead of slowing down he instantly hooked up to all ahead full.

Incidentally if you are involved in a marine casualty and were in compliance of the Rules of the Road don't go running to some accident attorney or some shoreside shyster because you are not going to some court downtown. You are headed to Admiralty Court and it's an entirely different ball game. Dewey, Cheetham and Howe, injury lawyers are probably going to get chewed up and spit out like popcorn and YOU may very well wind up deeply in debt. 

Admiralty courts don't assign blame as such. The decide a percentage of the responsibility. If the total damages total to a million bucks and you get held with 5% of the blame then you can be required to pony up $50,000. Seldom does one party simply walk off cleanly with no percentage of the responsibility assigned.

I have been a witness in an Admiralty court once and 

Back to the accident.

The driver as of now has not been charged with anything. I suppose she could be charged with manslaughter or negligent homicide if the police believe it is warranted. So far she has not been charged.

Legally and socially I suppose it's fairly easy to assign blame. Car hit pedestrian. Car guilty. The End.

Now let's get down to responsibilities. 

Cars are inanimate objects. They can not be assigned blame except in the very, very rare case of manufacturing defect in which case the manufacturer can be dragged into the situation. 

For one thing, this shows she was not likely fiddling with her damned cell phone as this is one of the first things the police usually check in the event of a fatal accident. Has she been she likely would have been charged with something.

So far I have seen no evidence that she was distracted or any wrongdoing on the driver's fault. While I am not certain of where she came from, if she was a local it's highly likely she was aware that the intersection was a bit on the tricky side and was paying reasonable attention. It's also highly unlikely there was any malice involved. That was displayed by the fact that she stopped instantly and notified the police immediately. Still, she shares a portion of the responsibility which is yet to be determined.

As for the victim, it appears to me from what I have heard she was known for not paying attention. However, she reportedly was wearing a reflective vest of some sort. Some people have said that she didn't seem to pay attention to her surroundings. I'd have to assign her a portion of the responsibility.

One thing is certain, though. She shares one thing in common with Elvis Presley. They are both still dead and that's simply the way it is. That's a cold, hard fact.

One other cold hard fact is that if either of the two parties had seen the other the odds of this terrible accident are that it probably would not have occurred. The woman driving certainly didn't want to hit the pedestrian and it pretty damned likely the pedestrian didn't want to die, either. In fact she certainly didn't even want her dog killed, either. FWIW her Sheltie was killed, also.

We teach drivers to drive like their lives depend on it yet we tend to ignore the responsibilities that pedestrians have to take care of themselves. 

As of now I don't have anywhere near enough to act as a mock admiralty court juror and assign percentages of the responsibility I can say with certainty that both parties carry at least some burden of responsibility for this accident. It's pretty clear to me that both parties should have been paying more attention to their surroundings.

As for the aftermath, we have one dead woman, one dead animal and one living woman who has had her life changed forever and has to live with this.  

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Of course this well never end. A couple of days ago someone mentioned to me about someone that walks from his condo to the nearby supermarket in dark clothing. He walks with his back to traffic on the way to and faces traffic on the way home carrying his groceries. He's also reportedly hearing impaired.

He sounds like another Darwin candidate to me and if he does get hit by a car I will not be surprised. Not even a little bit.

 

To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY