Manslaughter charges typically only happen if the driver is drunk or flees. Otherwise it's a traffic ticket AT MOST.

From my link above

>Leah Shahum from the San Francisco Bike Coalition told the New York Times last year that her organization does “not know of a single case of a cyclist fatality in which the driver was prosecuted, except for DUI or hit-and-run.” Kristin Smith, also of the SF Coalition, says that “Last year, four people were hit and killed in San Francisco and no charges were ever brought,” including for a collision captured on video that showed the driver was at fault.

Well, accidents do happen, don't they? Thing is so, if one party was reckless it amounts, usually, to some charges of hurting / injuring someone.

But you show nicely the differemce between history / facts (number of accidents from official statistics matched against charges and results of analysis of each accident) and feelings / story / narrative (someone says something to a journalists who then reports on it).

Ok, this article shocked me more than the post this thread is about. What has manslaughter have to do with whether you are drunk or not? Does that make the person you killed any less dead? Is this a consequence of DAs being elected officials in most of the US? So, as long as there are more drivers who could see themselves in this situation than cyclists who could get mad about this in the electorate, drivers killing cyclists will be off the hook?

The definition of vehicular manslaughter is unlawful or negligent operation of a vehicle resulting in a death. If the driver was not driving unlawfully, such as DUI, then it is not manslaughter. Fleeing the scene of an accident is unlawful so that also makes it meet the definition. Other reasons could include speeding or running a red light.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/vehicular_manslaughter

That still leaves us with the second part - "...or negligent". I find it a bit hard to believe that in all those cases the cyclists were at fault? Unless you consider that they were already acting recklessly because they tried to use a bicycle on a public street (I know a lot of people subscribe to this opinion, but I don't).

You can have accidents, even deadly ones, without being negligent. Hard to swallow sometimes, but true.

I don't want to be too insistent, but: if you get hit by lightning or a falling rock while cycling or driving along, that's no-ones fault. But as long as two vehicles are involved, there is a set of well-defined rules that are designed to make sure that these vehicles don't collide, and if they do collide, in the overwhelming majority of cases one (or both) of the parties involved has failed to follow these rules, i.e. negligence.