When is it legal to run people over?

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A few years ago, here in Brazil, we've passed new traffic's regulations, and it was so full of discrepancies, that if someone, accidentally, ran over a pedestrian with a vehicle he would get a harder penalty than if he had just shot the pedestrian in cold blood.

 

From a legal perspective any time you do something that results in the death of someone else, it's a homicide, plain and simple. The only thing to decide is what *kind* of homicide it was. It's actually pretty funny, because my wife and I saw a fictionalized crime show (CSI) in which this very topic was discussed this week. (It didn't actually involve jay-walking, but a suspected criminal was hit and killed by a police vehicle, and they had a hearing to determine if charges should be brought against the officer.) While the show is fictional, they are usually pretty accurate with their legal terminology.

Basically, a homicide can be considered justifiable, excusable, or criminal. If you deliberately run over someone just for the hell of it, or if you could have avoided it, it's going to be criminal. If you run over someone who was jaywalking wearing all black clothes in the middle of a dark country road on a starless night, it's going to be an excusable homicide. If you run someone over who is trying to kill you by firing a gun at your car, it's justifiable because you were acting in self-defense - it legal to defend yourself with deadly force if you own life is in peril.

 

Here, it is legal if you are the son of a mayor( the son of old mayor of Istanbul, it means our recent prime minister, did such a thing in the past). Generally in my country, no one cares about traffic rules but in my university, you have to wait the pedestrians to finish their crossing until the end of your life, if they want to make it that long. In my uni, traffic rules are very strict.

 

logically, a car has right of way on the road just as a pedestrian has right of way on a pavement, if a car is parked on a pavement and a pedestrian walks into it then it is the motorists fault - the car shouldnt have been there, if you hit a person on the road then it should be their fault - they shouldnt have been there.

 

Um... How do you propose someone gets to the other side of the street, other than by walking on the road? The example logically works in reverse because there's no need for a car to ever drive on the sidewalk. However since sidewalks to do not cross streets in unreasonable to say you should never walk on the road. By your logic, once you parked your car on a road, you'd only be able to walk around the block you parked on, as going anywhere else would require you to cross a street.

 

Well I don't have a driver's licence, so basically I don't know about the legislation concerning driving over people in Finland. Good thing if the driver's held responsible in most cases, but I know it's a bad thing if the situation is the pedestrians fault.

I'm still just a bit incenced of this one guy who killed a girl child with his Mercedes or whatever it was and when it was in the papers he showed bigger concern for the media getting his car model wrong. I hope he went to jail for a long time.

 

@Aldeth:
Crosswalks. It's effectively an extension of the sidewalk AND the road.

 

then you could say its the councils responsibility for not providing crossings, subways or bridges.
also, i guess you could try to argue that the council is responsible for the accident because the accident took place on public property - they were outside your car at the time of the accident, or that it is the councils responsiblity place barriers to prevent pedestrians from being on the road should a pedestrian cross that then any accident would be their fault... i dont see train drivers being prosecuted when people climb over 7ft fences to stray onto the line.

 

That would be quite a lot of subways or briges, you would not mind the tax rises that would follow? Also most accidents occur withing cities where it's practically impossible to build bridges or subways. Also on smaller streets there is no pavement so it would be impossible for anyone to get out without a car or breaking the law. In anycase I find your view on this just impractical and I'm fairly convinced that it is not law anywhere and not going to be either.

 

@Shoshino:

If you're OK with people using crosswalks, then I have no problem with it. I interpreted your original message to mean that no pedestrian should ever set foot on a street where cars drive, which is why I thought it was impractical. It's not unreasonable to ask someone to walk to a street corner before crossing.

 

where's liability theres a claimant waiting to soak it up, anyone can win anything these days, just look at the british press this week, the lags who won compensation for arguing that prisons violated their human rights making them go cold turkey from drugs - if they can win that, you can win anything.

 

Don't know about that but you can get flamethrowers attached to your alarm system in South Africa to toast prospective thieves and IIRC they are legal there