Recent Stories with tag pedestrian

This week City of Seattle attorney Tom Carr and Senate Judiciary Chair Adam Kline (D-37) spoke at a Traffic Justice Summit at City Hall, sponsored by the Cascade Bicycle Club. For the benefit of the non-cycling crowd, what's at issue is how difficult it is to charge drivers who kill cyclists or pedestrians as a result of a traffic infraction with a commensurate crime.

There is the vehicular manslaughter option, but as this requires proof of recklessness or disregard for the safety of others, it's not much used, except in cases involving drunk driving. Drunkenness is easier to prove than recklessness, and in any event, carelessness kills someone just as dead. (Talking on a cell phone, for instance, isn't recklessness.)

As Publicola's ECB reports, Carr is in favor of "making it a crime, punishable by up to a year in jail, to kill someone while committing a traffic infraction."

But it goes a little further than that, to include serious injury. Seattlepi.com says the proposed "Vulnerable User" bill would "expand...

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