Would you Splash a Pedestrian?

You don’t need to be a racing driver to know that driving on wet roads can be challenging at occasions as you drop grip and have a higher chance of skidding. This is why motorists are routinely advised to reduce their speed for the duration of wet weather in order to make confident they keep secure on the road. Nonetheless, it is not just motorists that are far more at risk during wet climate, as other road customers like cyclists and pedestrians also have their own concerns to manage.

Lately, it has been reported that police across England and Wales have received a number of complaints from pedestrians who have been splashed by passing automobiles. Naturally, it is not usually feasible as a driver to steer clear of a puddle, even so driving by means of them at such a speed as to lead to it to splash these on the pavement is both unnecessary and unkind. Across England and Wales there have been sixty-3 complaints created against drivers purposely splashing pedestrians throughout a 5 year period from January 2009, with one case even being against a police officer.

Mike Frisby, the Driving Instructors Association chief examiner, said: “Motorists have a duty of care not to splash pedestrians. Usually the maximum penalty would be to get somebody’s clothing dry cleaned – it’s not imprisonable – but splashing can be very easily avoided. It’s almost certainly not widely identified by pedestrians that they can report incidents if they’re splashed, but we don’t actually want to engage in a culture exactly where folks are going to report each little incident.

“The driver has an obligation to strategy properly, as there is constantly a danger when driving through a puddle simply because even in shallow water drivers won’t know what lurks beneath.” Meanwhile, a spokesman for Pedestrian Liberation said: “We often hear stories from pedestrians who have been splashed, from pedestrians who have to take avoiding action so as not be splashed, and also of councils that show valuable little interest in sorting out the dips in the road and blocked drains that are the supply of the puddles in the initial place.”

As pointed out by Mike Frisby, intentionally splashing pedestrians is not only illegal but can also harm your car. It is frequently hard to establish how deep a puddle is, and it only takes a tiny quantity of water to enter your engine in order for it to be written off – a punishment some people might feel is match for those who purposely splash pedestrians.

As a motorist you ought to make certain that you respect other road users at all instances and keep in mind that what might appear like a joke is really both illegal and in poor taste. In order to remain on the appropriate side of pedestrians it is therefore sensible to often make sure that you drive slowly through puddles or – if possible – stay away from them altogether.

Photo by Christine Matthews / CC BY-SA 2.

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Would you Splash a Pedestrian?