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Ambulance hits cyclist, rushes him to hospital, then sticks him with $1,800 bill
(www.oregonlive.com)
this post was submitted on 08 Nov 2024
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Why should the ambulance pay when it was entirely the bicyclists fault? The biker tried passing near the curb on the right, as the ambulance was turning right.
This is a classic example of people not respecting bikes. That’s like saying you’re allowed to make a right turn in front of someone from the left lane as long as you’re just a bit ahead of them.
The biker was trying to illegally pass the ambulance on the shoulder, because the bicyclist couldn't be bothered to wait.
Road rules exist for a reason. The reason that it's illegal to pass someone on the right lane is that they might turn right without seeing you.
If you're in a bike on the road you should be as careful as you can, since you're a small thing surrounded by heavy giant machines. And those in the cars are mostly only paying attention to other cars.
Cars that are in the rightmost lane don't expect anything to be at their right, since they are already the rightmost, so they are looking at the traffic coming from their left when turning right, they don't look at what's right of them, since there are no cars coming from that direction.
What're the odds the ambulance driver could actually see the biker, though?
It depends entirely who was at fault. If the bicyclist was at fault then the ambulance shouldn’t pay (which was one of the options I listed for why the ambulance’s insurance might not be paying), but if the ambulance was at fault then their insurance must pay. The article doesn’t state who was at fault from the police reports, so maybe fault was not determined there.
I would assume that if both vehicles were going approximately the same speed at the time of the accident, no more than 10 mph, that’s probably the steady speed for the bike but the speed the ambulance slowed down to for the turn. That would imply that moments earlier the ambulance was going faster and had likely just passed the cyclist moments earlier. Perhaps the driver was oblivious to the cyclist as they focused on where they were about to turn. It could be the cyclist’s fault, that he had sped up to pass a slowing ambulance on the right, but it seems more likely to me that the ambulance had just passed or pulled even with the cyclist and made a turn without considering the cyclist’s path.
Perhaps the bicyclist shouldn't have tried passing the ambulance on the shoulder at an intersection, which is all illegal.