On a side note, just a couple weeks ago there was a similar incident here in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. A very pregnant woman and her husband decided to dart across busy, 5-lane, downtown First Avenue in the middle of a block (not at the corner, not in a crosswalk!). She was hit and died from her injuries (the baby lived). Here's the kicker: the driver just happened to be legally drunk at the time. Therefore, he's been charged with vehicular homicide.
I don't know how drunk he was; in my opinion, that could have some bearing on the case. It would be much easier to convict him if his BAC was 0.3 than it would be if 0.081. (Iowa recently bowed to the Federal non-mandate and lowered the threshold to 0.08 BAC, rather than lose millions in highway funds.)
I recently had a ,uh, lady wearing combat boots leap in front of my motorcycle howling "Right of way, Right of way" in the People's Republic of Boulder. Stopping a motorcyle at every ped-xing is a good way to get run over.
The aforementioned Republic has recently installed ped Xing signs which illuminate with the press of a button. Passing pedestrains who are not crossing deliberately push the button to impede the flow of the "evil" SUV's. To make things worse, mountain bikers with no lights zip through the same crossings at dusk without pushing the button.
Negligence resulting in death is a class 1 misdemeanor?? Isn't that normally felony manslaughter?
Dickens was right.
My first experience with them was on vacation with my buddies driving through Kanab, Utah in 1984. We were tooling along and suddenly three girls walked in front of us and I swerved, narrowly missed them. We were like, "Holy sh*t, those girls walked RIGHT in front of us! There's no stop sign there!"
As we looked back, the girls were saying "Holy sh*t, those idiots didn't even slow down for us at a pedestrian crossing!"
"We weren't being arrogant NYers, we just had no clue! Honest, Judge!" Oh, that would have worked well in Kanab, Utah. Whew.