This change prevented loads of accidents. Before if a cyclist did something wrong the general thought was "cyclist should've paid attention". But an accident is caused by 2 people, so it makes sense that the one who can cause the most damage is fully aware of that.
Liable? That's why cars have mandatory insurance. The amount of damage which can be done is way higher than e.g. 2 cyclists hitting each other.
That's a pretty crucial distinction from strict liability, and is much closer to what we have in the US (at least on paper, you have a duty to avert a collision if you can, regardless of right of way).
Unless you mean the most trivial sense of "you could have avoided the accident by not driving."
"Needs to watch out for" is quite different from "is always at fault if it collides with."
I don't understand your comment of "strict liability" btw. It's not black/white situation. However, in general they rule against the car. As result, people on bicycles abuse this (especially in Amsterdam). But there's the benefit of a super huge bicycle usage, so although it's not perfect, it seems worth it.
The individual you are replying to was saying that comments here made it sound like strict liability for drivers and cyclists. That even if you were driving as carefully as possible, if a cyclist suddenly appears from behind a bush and cuts exactly in front of your car while you were doing 80 km an hour and you did everything humanly possible to stop and avoid him, you would still be at fault. He's saying later comments seem to suggest otherwise.
Parent said that cyclists who hit pedestrians are automatically liable, then turned around and called bicycling "safe." That's a bizarre interpretation - with that law, Japan is messaging that Japanese people ought to stay far, far away from bicycling unless they have particularly extreme appetite for risk.
To answer your question, modern cities need some method of transportation faster than walking. At speed, injuring the pedestrians who get in your way is an inevitability. Either you have a tax on the unlucky (and unable to afford real estate in the pedestrian core), or you give at least one such method immunity. In Japan, that method is trains. Japan takes the pedestrian victim-blaming even further than necessary in this case, and bills their families for the cleanup costs.
Well, that's the point. You are supposed to be riding or driving at a speed that you can safely stop if you need to. This is the same in every country, right?
> Japan is messaging that Japanese people ought to stay far, far away from bicycling unless they have particularly extreme appetite for risk.
Bicycling to work or school is very common here
> Japan takes the pedestrian victim-blaming even further than necessary in this case, and bills their families for the cleanup costs.
They sue for damages because they have to arrange buses for tens of thousands of people. It's not cheap
If you're on a 45mph road and someone puts themselves in your path 10 feet ahead, no, we don't say that you should have actually been going 5mph just in case something like this was going to happen. You're required to yield at crosswalks, but there's an expectation that mutual acknowledgement between you and the pedestrian happens at a reasonable distance before the pedestrian enters the roadway. Similarly, if someone enters an intersection on red, you have a duty to try and avoid the crash, but if it's too late, that's on them.
This is why roads should be designed not to cause such a situation. If you have a pedestrian path really close to a 45mph road the design is bad. I'm not aware of anywhere having such a high speed road where a pedestrian could walk along side it (in Netherlands). Usually it's more closed off with pedestrians being banned.
Solution: _don't cycle on the bloody footpath_; that's not what it's for. Cycle in bike lanes, or, if unavailable, the road.
Found this: https://www.cycling-embassy.org.uk/wiki/dutch-cycle-because-...
It is compulsory in some places in Japan. ¥4,000 ($40) per year pays out up to 3 billion yen ($3,000,000) in case you hit someone.
As they should be everywhere. What seems crazy, though, is the belief that every collision is necessarily an instance of a poor driver committing poor driving, with no reference to how a reasonable person would have handled the situation differently.
Which one are you saying should be responsible here?
If you are riding a bicycle on the footpath and hit a pedestrian, it is your fault and you are going to be on the hook for a large amount of money. It's the same if cars hit a cyclist or pedestrian.
It's arbitrary but it also makes it safe to cycle because cars are vigilant to not hit pedestrians (contrast with western countries, my experience is in NZ where car drivers bully cyclists)