The Duck Lady In Canada

[TheHuckster]

Ah the weekend sentencing thing makes sense now. I wonder if they do things like that in the US (probably not).

I know someone who was not paying child support and wound up in jail only on nights. He was able to work (since part of the sentence involved requiring him to pay up by a certain date, which would be impossible if he had no income) but had to report to jail immediately following his shift, where he'll sleep and be released in the morning.

I've known of celebrities who also got sentences like that, where they can still work in the movie lot when they need to, but their free time had to be spent in jail for a certain period of time. I remember that happened to Kiefer Sutherland after a DUI when they were filming 24.

[BlaqueKatt]

The driver of the motorcycle was speeding and not paying proper attention to the road ahead. A motorcycle has better handling than a car; if the car ahead was capable of avoiding the stopped vehicle, then the motorcycle was very much capable of it.

I'm going to assume you missed this part:

when the Motorcycle saw the other car move, he could not move in time because there were cars in the way.

Meaning the motorcycle, while having better handling had nowhere to go except space occupied BY ANOTHER CAR.
l x l s l <-x=stopped car, swerved car
l m l o l <-motorcycle, occupied space

[Rageaholic]

^

That gives me a better picture. Though I'm still not clear when the actual impact happened. If it happened seconds after she pulled to the side (indicating that she essentially pulled out in front of the cyclist), she's a fucking moron. Otherwise, she's just a moron.

[Andara Bledin]

I'm going to assume you missed this part:


Meaning the motorcycle, while having better handling had nowhere to go except space occupied BY ANOTHER CAR.
l x l s l <-x=stopped car, swerved car
l m l o l <-motorcycle, occupied space

I didn't miss that part at all.

If another driver had time to move, then so did the motorcyclist.

Because the other driver was in front of the motorcyclist, it is impossible for the motorcyclist to have had less time to move than the other driver when you consider that motorcycles are far more maneuverable than cars.

I've been behind people who have swerved suddenly to avoid obstacles and have managed to avoid those same obstacles myself, even when driving vehicles with greater mass than the typical car, much less a motorcycle.

The likelihood is that when the first car moved, the motorcyclist sped up to pass and was paying more attention to the car that moved than he was to the road in front of him. This is a very common trap a lot of drivers fall into.

Even moreso, the motorcylist wasn't paying attention to the road in front of the car ahead of him at all, or he would have been able to spot the stopped car prior to the car ahead of him swerving to miss it. If the car ahead was something like an SUV and prevented visibility, then he should have been following at a greater distance and definitely been wary at a sudden lane change.

Either way, they all contributed to the accident.

The woman for stopping her car where it had no business being stopped, the other car driver for letting themselves be distracted by the woman to the point where they nearly hit her car, and the motorcycle driver for one of several possible mistakes that culminated with being unable to stop or avoid the stopped car with the most likely being that he, too, was distracted -either by the car that had just moved out of his way or by the woman who stopped- to the point where he never noticed her car in the road.

[siead_lietrathua]

Because the other driver was in front of the motorcyclist, it is impossible for the motorcyclist to have had less time to move than the other driver when you consider that motorcycles are far more maneuverable than cars.

this is a big assumption. the car in front of the bike might have had a gap to narrowly swerve into, where the bike would have been unable to have a gap to hop into by being parallel to other cars. you can't avoid what's in front of you if there is something both beside you, and pacing you.

to go and expand BlaqueKatt's diagram back a step in time:

l x l o l <-stopped car, occupied space
l s l g l <-swerving car that moved into gap, gap
l m l o l <-motorcycle, occupied space
l m2 l o l <-second biker, occupied space

if M and O are moving at the same rate of speed, and S hops over into the G space to avoid X, then all areas beside M are now occupied. when you add in the concrete barrier to the left, they're boxed in. they have no choice but to hit the car in front of them, or sideswipe the car next to them, or sideswipe the barrier. all options are likely fatal to a biker at highway speed.


it's a HUGE assumption to say he wasn't paying attention to the road in front of him, especially if the car in front of him was barely able to avoid colliding with the dumbass as well (as it says in several articles i read). depending on his type of bike/ type of car in front of him he could have blocked his view, like a van or a big hatchback. or it could have been the one unlucky second he was looking in in his blindspot, and turned back to a trunk. we can't know for sure what happened, but we shouldn't be blaming the victim of some dumbass who stopped their car in the middle of the road.

@rageholic: there was no shoulder in the part of the road she was at. she stopped in the passing/ fast lane of a highway. i checked images of the road section when it first came out. the side of the road was concrete barriers.

[BlaqueKatt]

it's a HUGE assumption to say he wasn't paying attention to the road in front of him, especially if the car in front of him was barely able to avoid colliding with the dumbass as well (as it says in several articles i read). depending on his type of bike/ type of car in front of him he could have blocked his view, like a van or a big hatchback. or it could have been the one unlucky second he was looking in in his blindspot, and turned back to a trunk. we can't know for sure what happened, but we shouldn't be blaming the victim of some dumbass who stopped their car in the middle of the road.

We can also add, braking distance at highway speeds for a motorcycle is around 60 meters(if the rider can safely panic brake, reading about it, it's WAY MORE involved than panic braking in a car, standard braking is four steps), hard braking causes loss of traction and stability. or 15 car lengths. If the vehicle in front had little warning with full view of the road, how is someone looking through the vehicle supposed to be more aware with a narrower viewing space?
for a car is around 73 meters.

[siead_lietrathua]

for some perspective, this is a video of a guy doing a high-speed emergency motorcycle break on a near-empty bit of road. you can see both how long he has to see the potential accident, and hear when he starts breaking. he goes quite a long distance and gets extremely close to the car that cut infront of him. (start around 016)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOpba5DQ0bY

[s_stabeler]

if the only reason you can be sure there was no collision was the fact that the motorbike stayed upright... (Good for the Bike driver, though- if I was him, I would have hit the car through not being able to see it in time.)

[siead_lietrathua]

@s_stabler, i figured since the video said it was a good example of emergency braking on a bike, it was not a video of a collision but a near miss.

[HYHYBT]

moreso, the motorcylist wasn't paying attention to the road in front of the car ahead of him at all, or he would have been able to spot the stopped car prior to the car ahead of him swerving to miss it. If the car ahead was something like an SUV and prevented visibility, then he should have been following at a greater distance and definitely been wary at a sudden lane change.

On the dubious assumption that no matter what's immediately in front of you, you can always see around/through them sufficiently to keep track of what's on ftont of them, maybe.

[Andara Bledin]

I've run into people on two occasions and both because I wasn't paying attention to what was going on in front of me. I've had other situations where people have suddenly quit the lane from ahead of me because of an obstruction and others where they've slammed on the brakes while swerving onto the shoulder to avoid a collision, and in neither case have I had any difficulty coming to a full and complete stop because I observe a proper following distance for my vehicle and the conditions.

If the motorcyclist had been doing the same, it wouldn't have mattered at all what the car ahead of him did or what the duck woman did because he, like his wife, would have been able to stop without slamming into the back of the stopped car so hard it caused the car to roll forward and over his daughter who had been thrown over the car in the collision.

Sure, if duck woman hadn't stopped her car where it had no business being, none of this would have happened, but none of us should be driving as though everybody else is doing what they're supposed to because when we do that, stuff like this happens. If you're on a motorcycle with your child riding in back, then it's especially important that you watch out for yourself and expect everybody else to be blithering idiots, because otherwise, it's only a matter of time before you end up dead.

[siead_lietrathua]

... because he, like his wife, would have been able to stop without slamming into the back of the stopped car ...

his wife was riding behind them. you're literally arguing that the person closer should have been able to stop because the person further behind them could. that makes zero sense. and i think you are being very unrealistic about what a moterbike can do. if you try to "slam on the brakes", you flip over the handlebars. braking is a multi-part procedure with a longer stop time than a car. you cannot compare the two, just as you can't compare a car to a transport truck.

and sorry, but i have to disagree with you on the last part. we have an expectation of the other drivers around us to follow the basics of the road we are on, and can anticipate the kind of stupid we will have to adjust for. so on a suburb road we expect more sudden stopping as people turn into driveways or people cutting us off as they're pulling out from sidestreets. in downtown cores we learn to anticipate pedestrians and people jumping lights. on a highway we anticipate sudden merges or speeders.

however we cannot be expected to anticipate something that is more extreme. we don't expect someone blowing a red at 100mph in the city. we don't expect a moose to jump out in the middle of a sprawling suburb. and we don't expect a dumbass to suddenly stop in the fastlane for ducks.

you cannot blame a victim for not being prescient to epic levels of stupid.

[SkullKing]

Where I live, the law states that when driving one has the obligation of keeping a distance and atention level such that if the car imediatelly in front suddenly stops, one can brake without coliding.

As such no matter how suddenly the person in front of you stops, if you hit them you are at fault.

Does anyone know if canada has anything similar in it´s laws?

[Andara Bledin]

Actually, I do plan for the chance of people being stopped in the fast lane on the freeway.

Which is why I didn't actually hit the car broken down in the fast lane on the freeway the one time I encountered such a situation. And that was after a curve. It's doable if people drive smart.

The only accidents I've had were entirely avoidable. Based on the fact that there was nobody in sight of this women prior to her stopping on the freeway, this accident was also entirely avoidable.

[Gravekeeper]

Does anyone know if canada has anything similar in it´s laws?

There's nothing specific to the amount of distance between vehicles but:

It is an offence to operate a motor vehicle in a manner that is dangerous to the public, having regard to all the circumstances, including the nature, condition and use of the road, as well as the amount of traffic in the vicinity.

Every person is guilty of the offence of driving carelessly who drives a vehicle or street car on a highway without due care and attention or without reasonable consideration for other persons using the highway.

"highway" includes a common and public highway, street, avenue, parkway, driveway, square, place, bridge, viaduct or trestle, any part of which is intended for or used by the general public for the passage of vehicles and includes the area between the lateral property lines thereof; ("voie publique")