ADUK Archive

Came across this while looking for a new car and thought it might be of interest.

http://www.carbuyer.co.uk/tips-and-advi ... g-policies

Green Party: "Motorists would be presumed liable for all accidents involving pedestrians or cyclists. If the casualty of the accident has contributed to an accident occurring, then their compensation would be reduced." .... compensation? ... reduced?

As an aside, I caught a bicycle owner propping themselves up by holding onto the roof of my Land Rover, while stationary at a set of lights yesterday. My friend opened their door and the bicycle owner fell off. maybe i'll vote Green and put in a claim for compensation on the really good insurance policy all cyclists will be forced to have when the Greens win Brighton Pavillion ...again. Now about those Unicorns...

fortunately the Greens will never get into power - it is always a shame when a party has a core good idea (looking after our planet) and then struggles to turn that into a full set of policies so adds on wacky impractical ideas!

Alasdair

akirk wrote:fortunately the Greens will never get into power - it is always a shame when a party has a core good idea (looking after our planet) and then struggles to turn that into a full set of policies so adds on wacky impractical ideas!

Except they are too busy infighting to actually address things practically (for instance if climate change is a genuine concern, then building the Severn barrage should be an absolute no-brainer. But doing so offends another set of greenies).

I'm afraid that, for me, this applies to all the parties except the main 2. If you have no experience of government (and in some cases, have barely ever had an MP) how can you expect the public to trust you with the administration of the country? (not that I "trust" the others, but at least they've done the job before...). Moreover, if your entire platform is built on one particular theme - environmentalism, restricting immigration, independence for Scotland, etc. and you don't really have any policies for other mundane things like managing the economy, or education, or health etc. how do you expect the voting public to take you seriously - answer, they don't!

Mr Cholmondeley-Warner wrote:I'm afraid that, for me, this applies to all the parties except the main 2. If you have no experience of government (and in some cases, have barely ever had an MP) how can you expect the public to trust you with the administration of the country? (not that I "trust" the others, but at least they've done the job before...). Moreover, if your entire platform is built on one particular theme - environmentalism, restricting immigration, independence for Scotland, etc. and you don't really have any policies for other mundane things like managing the economy, or education, or health etc. how do you expect the voting public to take you seriously - answer, they don't!

Seems to me a rather negative view, in that, you consider the past to be the future.
Which might help explain our current problems but I'm not sure this 'site is aimed at political discussion.
However, the Greens and this planet, why the concern? This planet will survive until its inevitable demise.
That our species witters on about such is irrelevant to the planet.

WhoseGeneration wrote:Seems to me a rather negative view, in that, you consider the past to be the future.
Which might help explain our current problems but I'm not sure this 'site is aimed at political discussion.

I wish it weren't the case, but I just can't take the smaller parties seriously. The Liberals spent 2 centuries in and out of power, but they're a joke now. We're left with two parties with the critical mass (and not even then) to actually form a single government. If the others had the gumption to tone down their crankier policies and try and show that they had a cohesive set of policies for everything, they might engender enough belief to garner some votes and get their snowball growing.

That's more than I've written (or cared) about politics for the last (at least) 15 years. Now I'm going to slump back into apathy.

Guys. While not wanting to interfere with free flowing debate, I would like to clarify that my intention in posting as I did, was to encourage discussion of the Green party's (and presumably the Police too?) proposition, to treat every motorist as being guilty of an offense, regardless of the cause or evidence, while also stating that a mystical pot of compensation be administered to the detriment of justice, should a cyclist or pedestrian be involved in an accident involving a vehicle. No mention of cyclist re-education, training, insurance etc etc, just a one-sided attack on motorists. I also ride a bike around town, so i'm not the one being one-sided about this.

What I also notice is that far from being dangerous, many motorists are simply being selfish. They are looking in their mirrors and positioning themselves defensively in order to prevent cyclists from undertaking or filtering. The danger of not doing this is sometimes incidental brake lever and pedal scratches along the sides of your car. So it's very much a case of tortoise and hare in Brighton and Hove and one will repeatedly meet the other along a road and have to go through the same rigmarole at every set of lights. That means it doesn't work. Slowing cars down to 20mph also doesn't work, unless a car and cyclist collide but that's very very rare and an example of using an exception to make a rule. Cyclists need to pull over to the side, get off and cross at right angles to the road on certain roads, rather than hang about in the middle of the road for a gap. It all about time and perceived importance.

As for the Greenwash party and it's daft Planet-saving notions, they are designed like a failing quasi-Marxist/ fragmentary 'Trot' party, the likes of which I haven't seen since the '70s or in The Life of Brian. Splitters! If it wasn't so true... I don't think they need to exist as a separate party. Perhaps they could administer just the recycling and bin collection as an internal department within another party?

The issues we (in Brighton and Hove) have been party to as a direct result of frankly bizarre mismanagement by the Greens, is nothing short of farcical, unless you think a '6% council tax rise or we'll cut your services off', which many members of the Green party voted against (Splitters!), is an acceptable threat. Millions spent on exacerbating congestion by giving much needed traffic lanes over to unnecessary cycle paths that are still barely used, then blaming the resultant single-laned traffic congestion on bad driving and over-use of cars.

However, the local Tories think the Greens will retain their only seat, so it may well be that the Greens get their way and create a congestion tax along the seafront after all.

Strict liability in the case of cyclist accidents has been in place in the Netherlands and elsewhere for a long time, since the 90s I think, so is hardly that radical.

I may vote Green, but it won't be because I agree with every set of policies, but instead in the hope of registering some interest in a progressive set of values. The next best alternative is probably spoiling my ballot, and then some distance after that, Labour.

Kimosabe wrote:Guys. While not wanting to interfere with free flowing debate, I would like to clarify that my intention in posting as I did, was to encourage discussion of the Green party's (and presumably the Police too?) proposition, to treat every motorist as being guilty of an offense, regardless of the cause or evidence, while also stating that a mystical pot of compensation be administered to the detriment of justice, should a cyclist or pedestrian be involved in an accident involving a vehicle. No mention of cyclist re-education, training, insurance etc etc, just a one-sided attack on motorists. I also ride a bike around town, so i'm not the one being one-sided about this.

Might I suggest that you do a little research into the difference between Guilt and Liability, not to mention the difference between civil and criminal law?

Presumed liability has been part of our law for many years now, whether the liability of Employers for accidents at work, or the liability of a gun owner if someone even comes close to being injured with their gun. Frankly it is about time that motoring law and practice was brought into line and people realised that throwing tonnes of metal around at speed is a potentially life-threatening responsibility (including being responsible for the potential mistakes of others, should they enter your trajectory - a bit like not pointing a gun at people TBH).

The policy in question seems to be this one:

TR156 The Green Party calls for the introduction of "proportional liability" (also known as "stricter liability") for road users, which acknowledges that the duty of care for one's actions when using the road should be proportional to the degree of danger that you impose on other road users. (http://policy.greenparty.org.uk/tr.html)

The words used are different from the one in the report in the original post, and it isn't clear even from the policy exactly what they propose. I don't think there is any question but that road users, drivers or otherwise, have a 'duty of care' towards each other, but duty of care is only one element of negligence liability. The policy doesn't seem to have anything to do with criminal liability at all as Ancient points out.

I expect the gist of the policy is to switch the burden of proof. That chimes with proposals I've seen in the past from the cycling lobby. Instead of it being the claimant cyclist or pedestrian who has to prove the driver was negligent, it would be for the driver to prove, on the balance of probabilities, that they were not. That is different from strict or absolute liability where the ability to defend the case would be limited or non-existent.

As a car driver and ex-cyclist I would support it as a means of partially redressing the particular vulnerability of these classes of road users.

I can't see reversing the burden of proof when the standard is the balance of probabilities having a significant effect on the chances of being found at fault. This isn't likely to have the effect its supporters appear to think it will have.

What went through my mind was, ooh, there's a way to get some money.
Me, a pedestrian, town centre, slow moving traffic. I just have to amble out into the path of a vehicle, "bounce" off the ns wing and fall down screaming. It'll traumatise me such that I just won't be able to go into town again.
No doubt some lawyers will assist me in getting my "compo".
Unintended consequences.

WhoseGeneration wrote:What went through my mind was, ooh, there's a way to get some money.
Me, a pedestrian, town centre, slow moving traffic. I just have to amble out into the path of a vehicle, "bounce" off the ns wing and fall down screaming. It'll traumatise me such that I just won't be able to go into town again.
No doubt some lawyers will assist me in getting my "compo".
Unintended consequences.

+1

fungus wrote:

WhoseGeneration wrote:What went through my mind was, ooh, there's a way to get some money.
Me, a pedestrian, town centre, slow moving traffic. I just have to amble out into the path of a vehicle, "bounce" off the ns wing and fall down screaming. It'll traumatise me such that I just won't be able to go into town again.
No doubt some lawyers will assist me in getting my "compo".
Unintended consequences.

+1

Just like it does (not) in the rest of Europe?

MGF wrote:I can't see reversing the burden of proof when the standard is the balance of probabilities having a significant effect on the chances of being found at fault. This isn't likely to have the effect its supporters appear to think it will have.

What effect do you think its supporters think it will have?

A less serious view....

http://sniffpetrol.com/general-election ... Ujrm010y71