Quote Originally Posted by 7rider View Post
"It's a tough call. While I don't necessarily agree,
I suspect the reason was along these lines: After the exchange, the driver pulls ahead and starts to gradually move over. There is no sudden movement. The truck is almost past the bike when the collision occurs. The bike makes no effort to avoid the truck visibly moving into its lane.

This adds up to a more-likely-than-not case, but that's not good enough for a conviction. A defense attorney would argue that the gradual move over while pulling forward, and the fact that the collision was with the rear of the truck, is plausibly just an instance of a driver passing and then misjudging where they were in relation to the cyclist. And they would bring up the lack of any effort by the cyclist to avoid a crash. Yes, he had no legal obligation to move out of the lane, but all vehicles are obligated to avoid accidents where it is in their power to do so. Same for assaults. It would be like someone intentionally pushing a heavy object at you gradually, and your not moving out of the way. In an assault case, it's tough to win when the victim could have avoided being assaulted and visibly did not do so."

I'm not entirely certain how it matters that the bike didn't take evasive maneuvers. It's like saying if you didn't try to evade getting hit in a car to car accident that the car that didn't get out of the way of the car trying to hit it is at fault.

Or the pedestrian who didn't jump out of the cross walk to avoid being runover is at fault.