When you read this piece of news, you’d think the driver who hit the 59 year old person and left him to die is immoral and an asshole, but the truth is you might want to do the same thing if you ever hit a person with your car in Lebanon.
Why is that? Because of our rotten and archaic laws that blame the driver under any circumstances, even if one throws himself/herself in front of your car. Indeed, looking at the place of the accident, this highway is one of the most dangerous in Lebanon yet people insist on crossing it and not having a bridge is not a good enough excuse to risk your life and blaming the government afterwards.
I remember at some point there were beggars throwing their children in front of cars to get some money out of it and there was nothing you could do about it except driving away.
Even people passing by might not want to call the ambulance because they could be dragged for interrogation later on. I personally saw someone lying on the road on my way up to Mansourieh few years back and did not hesitate to call the ambulance yet luckily did not receive a call afterwards, probably because it was a foreign worker and no one reported him as missing, or officials just ignored the whole thing.
I passed this morning just next to the guy who was lying on the road in a pool of blood.
It’s a very disturbing image to start your day with.
Sorry about that Alf.
Actually “pedestrian negligence” is a valid defense in these cases.
For instance if you run over a person crossing the highway right next to the pedestrian bridge, you can argue in court that the victim was reckless about the consequences to their own lives. Of course recklessness is a bit of a subjective concept, and God help you if you run over someone with some serious connections, but then again if you get caught after a hit and run, THEN you’re royally screwed, especially if the victim had some good connections.
By the way here in Sweden if you run over a pedestrian you are very likely to instantly lose your driver’s license. Instead of running over people and running away, people actually drive more carefully… call it a cultural difference.
Life with subtitles,
You are forgetting a very important point here, that pedestrians are NOT allowed to cross the highway in that case and doing it at their own risk.
I am sure you get penalized in Sweden if pedestrians are allowed to cross the street in the first place, otherwise it’s the pedestrian’s fault.
And driving more carefully does not resolve the problem. You cannot go less than 80 on a highway as you will put your life in danger then.
let me adress another problem in french:
et que dire des assurances qui laissent littéralement les “accidentés publics” crever dans les urgences des hôpitaux parce qu’elles ne veulent pas payer un matériel que l’Hôpital ne possède pas, ou qui attendent 24h (alors qu’il y a traumatisme cérébral) avant de donner un OK à une opération.
It is not only about laws, but the whole system craps
If the guy had stopped, he would’ve been taken to jail until his court date, which would only be scheduled after the formation of the government and we all know that’s not gonna happen any time soon
Lebanese road traffic laws do have a contigency for pedestrians crossing major roadways (highways) if they are run over within 500m of a pedestrian or possible crossover, it’s on them, the driver will not be held accountable (but will have to go through a lot of shit and the conscious of having mowed down a human being).
anywhere else, the pedestrian is the king, and even the law in Lebanon states that priority is always for the pedestrians at crossings, but that is seldom respected here.
I remember i was in the UK a couple of weeks back and got to an intersection in a small town and waited for the car to pass, and she just stodd there and told me to go LOL…felt so stupid, had forgotten that in other countries people do drive with much more awareness to the outside world than in Lebanon….