Strict Liability: Civil Law for Civil Streets

Yesterday we highlighted a Bob Mionske column that eloquently lays out inherent biases common in U.S. traffic codes and proposes measures we can take to start correcting them. One of them is strict liability, which generally assigns responsibility for a collision to the operator of the vehicle likely to do the most damage (just as motorists are expected to look out for cyclists, cyclists must look out for pedestrians).

This video, via Copenhagenize, explains. Says narrator Hans Voerknecht:

As reader Mitch alluded to yesterday, strict liability as applied here is primarily a civil law concept. But its value in establishing a culture of equity on the roads, as Mionske writes, is hard to dispute.