The relationship between motorists and bicyclists in major American cities is, er, “complicated,” as the euphemism has it. Most U.S. cities lack any real bike infrastructure—think distinct, separated lanes, like in Amsterdam and Copenhagen—which means that cars and cyclists are forced in most cases to share the road. (No, painting the image of a bicycle on the pavement—a so called “sharrow“—does not a true bike lane make.) Couple that with many bikers’ well-documented tendency to flout the rules of the road, at least when it suits them, and you have a combustible mix.
None of that means, however, that bicyclists (or pedestrians) should be unfairly penalized for their chosen mode of transportation. But Washington, D.C., Maryland, and Virginia are unusual in maintaining a bizarre legal standard that unfairly burdens bicyclists and their biped counterparts.
Unlike in 46 other states, in the D.C. area, should an accident occur involving a car or bicycle, or a car and a pedestrian, unless the driver is found to be 100 percent at fault, the non-drivers are unable to collect any damages whatsoever. That means that, as one blogger points out, if you happen to be biking along and your tail light dies, and you are later hit by a driver who is texting or drunk (or both!), you can’t collect any damages. Even if it’s determined that the driver is 99 percent at fault after an incident, the biker or walker is completely frozen out.
The D.C. government is now considering a law to move to a “comparative fault” standard, whereby accident victims could collect damages in proportion to their contribution to the incident. That is to say, as one writer succinctly explains it, “if the decision-maker finds that the driver opening her door into the bike lane without looking was 75% responsible for the injury and the cyclist’s failure to have a light was 25% responsible for the injury, the injured cyclists could recover 75% of her damages.”
The proposed law is utterly sensible. Cars already have the size advantage on the road; there’s no reason they should have a built-in legal advantage, too.
But the idea is too much for the AAA, the venerable auto club, which sent a letter to its D.C. members blasting the proposed change. AAA, which seems to have forgotten that its members can be multiple things at once (e.g. I’m a car owner; an occasional and reluctant bicyclist; and a frequent pedestrian) claims that the law would boost auto insurance rates by more than 24 percent.
Now, there are reasons to doubt this scare-figure is accurate. But, in a way, if the figure were true, that’s even more damning. Because, as has been noted, if rates would truly skyrocket to such a huge extent, that means that drivers are unfairly getting out of paying for a whole lot of broken bones and bashed-in heads. It’s a talking point that . . . actually isn’t very helpful to the side opposing this law. AAA, without even realizing it, said the quiet part loud.
