Man fatally hit by car outside Maryland court building

not to be rude, but the man was wearing dark clothes, crossing the highway at 9 pm, outside of the crosswalk (the crosswalk that leads directly to the courthouse). looking at google maps, it would probably be good to extend the sidewalk on both sides of the highway, but it seems like this person's own negligence was more of a contributing factor to his death ps, i really like your blog, but had to call you on this one!

I always appreciate some feedback. I'm curious how you would feel about the following hypothetical situations: 1) At 9:30 PM a car drove off an uncompleted bridge and the driver was killed. Police are puzzled why the driver did not use one of the completed bridges a few blocks north or south.of where the motorist was killed. "We think one of the headlights was out, which contributed to the driver not seeing the shear drop off." When asked about the lack of signage saying the bridge was out, the police responded: " We never had a bridge there, everyone knows that. Besides there are places to cross safely near here, if the driver had both headlights working he could have realized his mistake before it was too late." 2) At 9:30 PM a driver drove on to the sidewalk and killed a man walking in all black. The police say if the man walking was more visible at night this tragedy may not have happened. ************************************ If we require signs for incomplete roads should we not require signs for incomplete sidewalks? If there was a sidewalk who is to say the man in black would not have been on it? One of the things I try to accomplish, is to get people to look at the world differently, the streets should accommodate all users fully and completely. The current road design philosophy that the fast users need to go faster so the slow users should have more delay's and have to go needlessly out of their way to accommodate someone else who can easily and effortlessly make up any delay caused by a slow user is just plain dumb.

a foolish user of the road is a foolish user of the road, regardless of whether they're on foot, driving a car, or on a bike. in your first example, the driver is a foolish user of the road. in your second example, the driver is operating his vehicle on the sidewalk, illegally, and would be found at fault. the man in this story was hit in the leftmost southbound lane, while trying to cross the highway; not off to the right were a sidewalk might be. if he's trying to cross, he needs to be in the crosswalk; nowhere else. along that part of the highway, there are grassy areas, and even a few sidewalks (again, there probably could be more). even walking through the parking lots to the next crosswalk would have been safer than what this guy did. he chose the least safe course of action; walk at night, wear dark clothes, cross a highway outside a crosswalk. foolish...perhaps even reckless. i really don't think more sidewalks would've helped this guy.